Amazing Wrath
book's Prayer of General Confession, which includes a request for the forgiveness of the sins of "miserable offenders." Why, then, were the monthly magazines pulled? The official comment: "We don't want to give the impression that the While I’m not convinced that calling people “miserable sinners” is necessary to drive home the message of the gospel, but we do need to understand that we are sinners who are deserving of judgment. But that’s not what we want to hear. We live in an age that demands we preach a kinder and gentler gospel. We, as a culture do not care to hear about the horror of the cross. The cross itself is offensive to us. And so is its message. Years ago, when Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion came out, I, like so many of you, went to see it. But I never want to see it again. The images of In our attempts to soften the brutality of the cross, we stray away from one of the harshest images of the atonement—that on the cross, God the Father cursed the Son. R.C. Sproul said that this disregard for the curse motif of the atonement actually betrays a serious misunderstanding of God himself. The God we have fashioned loves all people and blesses all people. He’s incapable of cursing anyone, much less his own Son. But if we declare that there is no divine wrath, then we are saying that there is no need for the cross. If there is no wrath, then what would sinners need to be saved from? It is only when we recognize the reality of God’s wrath against those deserving of judgment that we find the cross to be such glorious news. You know that the message of the gospel has sunk in when the shocking thing about the gospel is not that God extends wrath to sinners, but that he extends grace. Here’s why: The basic human condition is to believe that God isn’t really all that holy and that I’m not really that bad. God is lenient toward sin, we say, |
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