Recently I asked the question, in a Christian book discussion group, “What is greater God’s love or God’s wrath?” Some folks objected to the question, with one fine older minister saying it was “a question that was inappropriate.”
Well, I must admit I asked it because it was once asked of me by a great Native Alaskan preacher in Alaska, who also gave me the answer after I was quiet in my thoughts – “God’s love is greater, because He chose to send Jesus Christ to save us from His wrath. By God’s own choice, His love has a greater power in His creation than His wrath.’
Sadly, a lot of people have not received the memo yet. They dwell on God’s wrath and destruction, and the fires of hell, not on the benefits of knowing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, which saves you from all of those things. That is the emphases the church needs to embrace, lock, stock and barrel.
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” was an effective evangelism sermon preached by theologian Jonathan Edwards on July 8, 1741 in Enfield, Connecticutt. It helped spawn the Great Awakening, and its imagery of hell is still effecive today to get people’s attention. But it is entry level Christianity. Once you understand that Jesus as your Lord and Savior you no longer qualify as a sinner in the hands of an angry God. You are now a part of His body of “Sinners Saved By Grace in the Hands of a Loving Christ!”
Certainly, we live in a broken world and sin touches us all. The insights of the great 20th century theologian Karl Barth speak to a universal theme of life. When Barth faces the nature of man, his deeply held convictions demonstrate a theological view of our condition. Karl Barth stated: "Sin is man as we now know him."
Barth’s whole theology is highly christocentric. His epistemology is to look first to Jesus Christ and deduce everything from there. Barth puts his epistemology on Christ, because Jesus Christ is the revelation revealed to us. Nothing can be known outside of Christ. In other words, in order to understand what sin, Barth looks at Christ. This seems counterintuitive at first, because Christ is sinless. But by comparing ourselves to Christ, we can be aware of the sins within us.
First, Barth states that in Jesus Christ God became Man. Jesus Christ is the Son of God who walked among men in flesh as Man. This is in striking contrast against men who want to become gods. This attempt to become God is threefold: man loves himself, he sees himself as the standard, and he tries to become his own God. (1: Barth IV,1, p.423). Sin is pride; it makes us want to become God.
Second, Barth states in Church Dogmatics that in Jesus Christ the Lord becomes a servant. In contrast to Jesus, as creatures of God, we try to become lords. This attempt is threefold: man sees himself as a self-alienated slave, he strives to make others his servants, and he sees God as a harsh Lord standing against him. In contrast to Christ, man tries to become his own lord, because he is unwilling to serve the Lord. (2 CD IV.1, p.435). From this Barth deduces that sin is sloth.
Third, Barth states that in Jesus Christ, the Judge was judged. As guilty sinners, men try to become judge over others. Man makes an effort to be his own judge of good and evil. This effort is threefold: man misunderstands his role as the guilty, man thinks he is right when he is wrong, man thinks that God needs our assistance in judging others. (3 CD IV.1, p. 453). From this Barth deduces that sin is falsehood.
As King, Jesus proclaims His Kingdom by becoming Man. As Priest, Jesus serves. As Prophet, Jesus bears judgment and foretells future judgment. This threefold office of Christ reveals the threefold nature of sin as pride, sloth and falsehood. (Bromiley 179)
Barth Took Great Joy in the Salvation of the Finished Work of Christ – Not Our Works, But His Finished, Already Done, Once and For All, Work
Read this passage from Coloassions 2 and then read Barth’s sage commentary below:
6 So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, 7 rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. 8 See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces[a] of this world rather than on Christ 9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. 11 In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh[b] was put off when you were circumcised by[c] Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you[d] alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.[e]
"As the one thing which has to be done it is already wholly and utterly accomplished in Him. As that which has taken place in God--in which we are indeed participators on the strength of the nature of the person and work of Jesus Christ--it is in itself and from the very outset something which has taken place to and in us." (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/1:158).
"Again, the act of God accomplished and expressed in Jesus Christ is the justification and sanctification of man. It is thus the act in which man, whether he realizes it or not, is objectively alienated, separated and torn away from this resisting element in him, because he is already set in the liberty of the children of God." (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/3:269).
"Their saving death took place, not now and here, but in supreme actuality then and there, when they, too, were baptized in and with Jesus' baptism of death..." (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/4:17).
"We ask where and when there has taken place, takes place and will take place, as an actual event, this movement of man in the totality and with the radical dispute in which the old man dies and the new arises, this liberation by God's free grace. And the answer is simply that in the strict sense it is an actual event only in Him, in His life, in His obedience as the true Son of God and true Son of Man." (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/2:582).
"In His death there took place the regeneration and conversion of man." (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/2:291).
"The event of redemption took place then and there in Him, and therefore 'for us'.... It calls us to discipleship, but not in such a way that it becomes an event of redemption only through our obedience to this call.... It has happened fully and exclusively in Him, excluding any need for completion." (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/1:229f).3
Epiphany, Part Four of Six, S. Glenn Wilson, 2011
Epiphany, Part Four of Six, S. Glenn Wilson, 2011
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