The following is an article written by my good friend, Adam Brewer - pastor of Glory Fellowship in Jasper, AL. I support what he says wholeheartedly.
“The Wrath of God was Satisfied”:
A Biblical Response to Dr. Bob Terry & The
Alabama Baptist Newspaper
One of
the songs that we often sing at Glory Fellowship is under attack. Related
& more importantly, a vital aspect of Christ’s atonement is being
minimized, if not outright denied, even in some Southern Baptist circles.
Here’s some quick background on this centuries-long controversy that has again
come to the forefront in our own backyard. Recently, the Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.) made an attempt to change the lyrics of the song “In Christ
Alone” from “till on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied”
to “till on that cross as Jesus died, the love of God was magnified.” The
writers of the song, Keith Getty & Stuart Townend, refused to allow those
lyrics to be changed (Good for them!). Therefore the hymnal
committee of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) refused to put the song into its
new hymnal. Now, Dr. Bob Terry, president & editor of your Alabama
Baptist Newspaper, has engaged in this controversy by writing a tragic
editorial that at best minimizes, and at worst completely denies, the penal
substitutionary atonement of Christ (Aug. 8 edition pg. 2).
If you’ve attended Glory Fellowship for any length of time, you know that
I often preach that God’s love, demonstrated most vividly in Christ, cannot be
fully & rightly understood apart from God’s wrath. However, let’s again go
over what penal substitution is & why is it so vitally important.
Theologian Wayne Grudem offers a clear definition for us, “Christ’s
death was ‘penal’ in that He bore a penalty when He died. His death was also a
‘substitution’ in that He was a substitute for us when he died…This has been
the orthodox understanding of the atonement held by evangelical theologians, in
contrast to other views that attempt to explain the atonement apart from the
idea of the wrath of God or payment of the penalty for sin.”[1]
Those who, like Terry, argue against penal substitution often base their
position on the love of God. They would say something like what Dr. Terry
says in his editorial of this week’s Alabama Baptist Newspaper, “Sometimes
Christians carelessly make God out to be some kind of ogre whose angry wrath
overflowed until the innocent blood of Jesus suffered enough to calm Him down.
It is the ultimate ‘good cop/bad cop’ routine where God is against us but Jesus
is for us…But God is not the enemy. He is our seeking Friend. That is why I
prefer to focus on His love evidenced at Calvary rather than on His wrath.”[2]
As one author labeled it, this perception of God’s love is a “squishy love.” This understanding of God’s wrath (an ogre, really?)
is flawed, which makes the remainder of his argument flawed & dangerous.
The powerful promise of Romans 3:26 doesn’t occur without Romans 3:24-25!! God
cannot be “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” unless
“God puts forward (Jesus Christ) as a propitiation (“covering &
wrath-bearer”) by his blood.” Well-known pastor and theologian John Stott
beautiful & powerfully intertwines God’s love and God’s wrath, “It
is those who cannot come to terms with any concept of the wrath of God who
repudiate any concept of propitiation… It is God himself who in holy wrath
needs to be propitiated, God himself who in holy love undertook to do the
propitiating and God himself who in the person of his Son died for the
propitiation of our sins. Thus God took his own loving initiative to appease
his own righteous anger by bearing it his own self in his own Son when he took
our place and died for us.”[4]
In short, the
“love of God was magnified” on the cross because “the wrath of God was satisfied.”
Dr. Terry’s unbiblical understanding of the atonement, and the fact that is
presented as truth in a Baptist arena, is repulsive and demands action on the
part of Alabama Baptists and our leadership.
Walking with
Christ,
Adam
Adam
Wayne
Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, (Zondervan,
Grand Rapids, MI: 1994) pg. 579.
Griffin
Gulledge, “Squishy Love at the Alabama Baptist,” (Aug. 8, 2013) http://griffingulledge.blogspot.com/2013/08/squishy-love-at-alabama-baptist.html
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