I am currently reading (among other books) The Great Work of the Gospel by John Ensor. In proclaiming the greatness of God’s work for our salvation, John takes a very different approach than Rob Bell. Bell, during his Sex God tour, talked about how God was not angry with sinners, but sinners only seemed to think he was. Bell’s upcoming book seems to allude that God is not an angry God.
Ensor, on the other hand, spends a chapter on the great need for the great work of the gospel. He focuses there on the justice of God’s judgment, or the reality of God’s wrath.
11 God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day. Psalm 7
In one of his sermons on Colossians 3, Matt Chandler distinguishes between God’s active and passive wrath. His active wrath is clearly seen in judgment upon nations and people. Think the flood, or Sodom and Gemorrah. His passive wrath, as noted in Romans 1, is to give us over to our own dark desires. He gives us over to the sin we love that it might ruin us. Then, some of us cry out for mercy.
Ensor notes that the frequency with which the Bible speaks of God’s wrath should lead us to some startling conclusions.
“Either our sin and guilt is far, far greater than we ever knew, or God’s punishment far, far exceeds the crime.”
If God is just (and He is), then the latter proposition is not the case. In other words, our sin and guilt are far greater than we ever imagined. As Anselm noted to Boso, “You have not yet considered how great the weight of sin is.” We need only look to the cross to discover the greatness of sin and guilt. Our perception is off, by a large margin. Instead of seeking mercy, we tend to excuse, overlook and ignore our sin and guilt.
Ensor, like Chandler, brings Romans 1 into the picture. Our sin suppresses the clearly seen truth about God and his invisible attributes revealed in creation. We exchanged the real God for any number of fake gods in creation: the Creator for the created. We have turned our backs on God, and sought life in a wide variety of created goods- sex, money, family, music, food…
Hulk Smash!
Ensor reveals the compatibility of love and anger. The sermon by Chandler, and one by Tim Keller, takes the same approach. We tend to think of love and anger opposed to one another. But anger is the proper response to a threat against that which is loved. God hates sin because sin threatens to destroy creation, and people. In the most recent version of The Hulk, the Hulk’s rage is greatest when the woman he loves is in danger. Wrath seeks to eliminate the threat. Sinful anger is sinful, in part, because it takes out more than the threat. It adopts a scorched earth policy. But love must get angry when the object of love is threatened. If you don’t get angry when your spouse (or child) is physically or sexually assaulted, you don’t love them.
God, because He is love, is angry at sin and sinners. Because God is just, His anger is perfectly proportioned and properly applied. This is true not only on earth, but also in hell.
“Hell represents God’s final response to persistent unbelief, when human depravity has reached full maturity and every loving warning has been rejected. Hell signals that there is a time when God’s patience with unrepentant sinners runs out.”
In Velvet Elvis, Bell tries the old neonomian approach to a universal atonement (Jesus died for all persons). He says there are forgiven people in hell. What he doesn’t say is that they are there due to unbelief. What the neonomian approach fails to consider is that unbelief is a sin. So, either Jesus died for that sin too and they are saved or Jesus didn’t die for that sin and everyone is lost because we are all guilty of unbelief. This is the problem of a universal atonement. I suspect that Bell has moved from neonomianism to Christian universalism, which is a different error but an error nonetheless.
Ensor brings up a common misconception people have about God’s judgment. That judgment is not on “people” but in Scripture is upon the wicked. Sodom & Gemorrah were destroyed because their people were wicked (God delivered righteous Lot). The flood was a judgment on wicked humanity. The Canaanites were destroyed when the Israelites entered the land because their sin was complete or full. They were wicked!
“When a man is sent to prison for his criminal behavior, he is sent there. He does not choose to go there. In the same way, when the final judgment comes, God is active, not passive, in his role as the righteous Judge.”
This is part of what is so disturbing about Rob Bell’s various errors regarding hell. He denies a common title and work of God as revealed in the Bible. The wrath of God is not the invention of fundamentalists. It is not the invention of any man. It is the revelation of God.
Thankfully God also reveals that He is abundant in mercy. The sacrifices in the Old Testament were His idea. It was not invented by some guy to try and appease God. The sacrifices were invented by God to prepare people to receive His forgiveness in the sacrifice of His Son. They reveal the merciful, compassionate nature of a God who forgives all who come to Him by faith in Jesus Christ.
Cavman Considers 
Leave a Reply