The Good News & The Bad News
Many people have boldly made the claim that the God of the Old Testament is at odds with the God of the New Testament. The God of the Old Testament is all wrath and no grace, while the God of the New Testament is all grace and no wrath - or so they claim. The God of the Bible is inconsistent, they say; the God of the Old and New Testaments cannot be one and the same, these scoffers postulate.
This cannot be further from the truth. There is only one God, and His character is unchanging and eternal - "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). The same God who laid the foundations of the world in Genesis by the very word of His mouth is the same God who will roll up the heavens like a scroll at the end of all things (Isaiah 34:4). God is utterly perfect; perfection cannot be improved upon.
And yet, sinful humanity remains shocked with horror that God would be angry about anything. We are not so shocked that God is loving and gracious, this we expect of Him; but filled with wrath against sin? Well, that simply cannot be. What men fail to realize is that God's loving grace shines brightest against the dreadful shadow of His righteous judgement. If He had never revealed to us the unimaginable consequences of our sin, we would have no reason to praise His glorious grace in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In our natural state, sinful man cannot even begin to grapple with the reality that a holy and good God must exercise His wrath and justice against all evil. If He failed to do so He would cease to be good - He would cease to be God. Just as God cannot change, so too is it impossible for Him to turn a blind eye to sin. Did the God of the Old Testament destroy the earth with a flood because of sin? Indeed He did. Did the God of the Old Testament wipe out cities and cleanse entire populations because of their wickedness? Indeed He did. And yet, countless generations of men and women, each and every one in obstinate rebellion against their Creator, still lived - many perished to be sure, but far more were spared. To echo the words of R.C. Sproul, the real mystery of the Old Testament is not why so many people died, but rather, why did God allow anyone to live?
It is a good thing that God is good. To live under the thumb of an all-powerful, all-present, and all-knowing deity that lacked complete and utter goodness is a nightmare too horrifying to fathom. God is good, and God is love (1 John 4:16) - therein lies the good news, and the bad news.
The good news is that God is good, and the bad news is that we are not. Jesus said, "No one is good except God alone" (Mark 10:18). The Apostle Paul begins his letter to the Romans by first indicting the entire human race of their sin and cosmic rebellion against a good and holy God:
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth" (Romans 1:18).
Two chapters later, Paul deals the final and fatal death-blow against his fellow Jews who cower behind their traditions and works, and against stubborn humanity itself - "None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God" (Romans 3:10-11). Like the prophet Isaiah, we are all undone, unravelled, coming apart at the very seams before the thrice-holy God of the universe:
"'Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!' And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: 'Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!'" (Isaiah 6:3-5).
The Lord is good, and we are not. Our God is a consuming fire, and He is the One, the only One, with whom we have to do: "And no creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account" (Hebrews 4:13). As Luke Walter put it, "The sun will burn your eyes out from a distance of 92 million miles and do you expect to casually stroll into the presence of its Maker?" Perfect and righteous judgement await those who presume upon their own morality and fleeting goodness as a defense before Almighty God. A great storm cloud gathers above the head of the unbelieving sinner, filled with mighty peels of thunder and flashes of lightning, heralding the wrath to come upon those who are in rebellion against God and reject His Christ.
What then shall we do?
It is only by first becoming undone by the bad news that we can then even begin to grasp the depths and wonders of the good news. And what is the good news? It is simply this: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
God the Father sent His Son - the One who was in the beginning with God and God Himself - to save sinners from the wrath to come. He did not come into the world to save the 'righteous', for there are none who do good - no, Jesus came into the world to save sinners like you and sinners like me.
Jesus Christ began His earthly ministry with these simple and sobering words: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). To repent is to consider the holiness and righteousness of God and your hopeless state before Him; to recognize that His wrath rightly rests upon you, and then to beg Him for forgiveness. He is good and faithful to forgive you. He has promised to do so if we call upon Him in faith, for He is "the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26). "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). If we come to Him, He will in no wise cast us out, for Jesus Himself said, "and whoever comes to me I will never cast out" (John 6:37).
To repent is not merely to say sorry and then move on, continuing in sin, but it is to reorient the entire posture of one's heart towards God. It is a renewed heart of humility and sorrow for sin and trust in His promises. It requires the Spirit of God to be at work in your heart, turning it from stone to flesh; giving you eyes to see Him as He is, and in turn to see yourself as you are apart from Him. Repentance means to turn from your sin and turn to God in total confidence and faith that He is who He says He is, and that He will do what He has promised. Trust in Him only for salvation; not your works, not your upbringing, but in Christ alone.
Look unto Jesus. Not in our own works or in the strength of our faith, but in Him. As the hymn goes,
“Upon a life I have not lived, Upon a death I did not die, Another’s life, Another’s death, I stake my whole eternity.”
Assurance of salvation is found and secured in His finished work upon the cross whereby the Father has “forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13-14). We can only enter into the presence of and friendship with this thrice-holy God because of the finished work of His Son on the cross and His triumphant resurrection. Through faith in Christ, we are made righteous - we are justified, cleared of our moral debt - in the eyes of the Father.
When Christ was praying in the garden that "this cup" should pass from Him, it was not the scourge of the Roman Empire that He feared or the nails that would soon break His flesh. It was the cup of God's wrath that He dreaded; it was His bearing the sins of the world that so shook His soul. Every iota of God's wrath displayed in the Old Testament becomes dim and pale when held against the dreadful backdrop of the cross of Jesus Christ. The Holy of holies was to take on that which was unholy, our sins, so that any who believe in Him would become holy as He is holy. As Paul says, "For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21).
I believe it was John Piper who put it this way: "In three hours Jesus drank the cup of God's wrath that would have taken an eternity to pour out on me." Jesus drank every drop of His people's condemnation; and through faith we take upon ourselves the robes of His righteousness, even as He took upon Himself our sins and punishment. At the cross of Jesus Christ, God's perfect justice shook hands with His perfect grace.
Cast your soul upon these truths, upon the reality that “a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16). As the great 18th-century evangelist George Whitfield so vehemently declared, “What! Get to heaven on your own strength? Why, you might as well try to climb to the moon on a rope of sand!”
Look unto Jesus in the Gospels and take hold of these glorious truths through faith. And what is faith? As Dr. Stephen Yuille so wonderfully puts it, “Faith is the hand of the soul by which we receive Christ and become one with Him.” This faith is not of our own meritorious concoction, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). We are saved by Him, from Him, and for Him, secured eternally in the unbroken chain of salvation that Paul lays out: “And those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified” (Romans 8:30).
The atoning death of Jesus Christ was the most weighty and horrifying display of God's wrath in the entirety of the Bible. The human race in the time of Noah deserved death; Sodom and Gomorrah deserved to be wiped from the face of the earth; Uzzah, presuming that his hands were purer than the ground upon which the Ark of the Covenant was bound, deserved death for his disobedience; Jesus Christ, who knew no sin, took on the sin of deserving sinners. The sinless Son of God took upon Himself the sins of a hell-bound race, extending the gospel of reconciliation to all those who despair of themselves and call upon God in faith, repenting of their sins and trusting in Him alone.
When the bad news of God's wrath upon us cuts to our very heart by the work of His Spirit, it is only then that we can see and savor the good news: the unfathomably deep love, patience, and grace of the Triune God extended to unworthy sinners like you and I. By faith in the atoning death and resurrection of the person of Jesus Christ, we are brought in from the howling infinite of God's holy wrath, forgiven of our sins, washed of our guilt, and given a seat at His table, unending fellowship with Him both now and in the age to come, and crowned with the family name itself.
In the words of Augustine, “I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: 'Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.'”
"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30).
Photo by Michael Olsen, Unsplash
