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By W. Tullian Tchividjian W. Tullian Tchividjian As a pastor, I never tire of seeing the reaction of non-Christians when I tell them what I do. Some are intrigued by what I do and want to discuss spiritual issues, while others seem annoyed by what I do and desperately attempt to avoid spiritual issues. Some are thrilled to see such a 'young man' dedicate his life to the work of 'serving others', while others show immediate disgust, assuming that I am a narrow fundamentalist-type who 'belittles women' and 'berates homosexuals'. But, whether they seem intrigued or annoyed, thrilled or disgusted, many seem unable to resist asking the question, 'How can a good God allow so much pain and suffering in this world?' And while the question may be asked sincerely, it reveals a common misunderstanding of God and his ways. CLARIFYING A COMMON MISUNDERSTANDING Many look at the decaying nature of our world and question God's goodness, as if the dreadful condition of our society is his fault. Many do not realize that until Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit, 'God saw all that he had made and it was very good' (Gen. 1:31). It was human disobedience that plunged the world into disarray, not God's lack of goodness. To be sure, Adam and Eve did not catch God off guard by their disobedience. The Bible presents God as absolutely sovereign over all things, good and bad: 'Who has commanded and it came to pass, unless the Lord has ordained it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and evil come?' (Lam. 3:37-38). God could have prevented sin from entering into his 'very good' world, but for reasons that God has chosen not to fully disclose, he decreed to allow the entrance of sin. Nevertheless, his decree to allow the entrance of sin through the disobedience of Adam and Eve does not make him guilty of sin. The Westminster Confession of Faith sums it up well: 'God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creature.' The mysterious tension that we Bible-believing Christians have to live with is that God can decree that sin be, without himself being immediately responsible for sin. Carl F. H. Henry put it like this: 'The foreordination of an evil act is not itself evil, since God need not will what he wills for the reasons others may will them." (Carl F. H. Henry, God, ReveIation, and Authority, vol.5, part 1, God Who Stands and Stays [Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1999] p 315.) So while God is absolutely sovereign over sin, man is guilty of sin. Therefore, it is man's fault, not God's fault, that there is pain and suffering in this world. We are immediately responsible for the detrimental condition of our society, not God. C. J. Mahaney recently touched on this common misunderstanding: "It is regrettable that so many evangelicals in America - not to mention probably most of the non-Christian population in this country - simply assume that God holds a gracious disposition toward mankind. No one is stunned, perplexed, or amazed to be told, 'God loves you.' But why not? Why aren't people stunned? Why aren't they amazed? How can anyone presume upon God's love and mercy, while neglecting his holiness and justice. Love and mercy are taken for granted, while holiness and justice are brushed aside and downplayed. We celebrate the idea of God's love, but are reluctant to admit that, because of God's holiness, our sins justly demand the most severe retribution. How is this possible? 'We have lost sight of the awesome holiness of God,' writes Peter Lewis. 'We have become desensitized to sin. We do not realize how extraordinary it is that we can survive in God's presence.' We are not sufficiently amazed by grace, and are far too casual about our sin. And the reason we are far too casual about our sin is because we do not realize the effect that our sin has had on us, and on the whole world. THE EFFECT OF SIN ON INDIVIDUALS The Bible makes it clear that because of sin we are born enemies of God. In Ephesians 2:1, Paul tells us 'we were [by nature] dead in our trespasses and sins . That is, sin has affected our individual constitution in such a way that it has rendered all human beings spiritually lifeless. This is what theologians mean when they speak of total depravity. Totaldepravity does not mean utter depravity. Utter depravity means that one is as bad as he or she could possibly be. Thankfully, God's restraining grace prevents even the worst of us from becoming utterly depraved. Total depravity, on the other hand, means that sin has corrupted us in the totality of our being. In other words, there is no part of us that is free from the effects of sin. Or as J. I. Packer puts it: 'Total depravity. . . signifies a corruption of our moral and spiritual nature that is total not in degree (for no one is as bad as he or she might be), but in extent. It declares that no part of us is untouched by sin and therefore no action of ours is as good as it should be, and consequently nothing in us or about us ever appears meritorious in God's eyes.' (J.I. Packer, Concise Theology [Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House, 1993] pp. 83-4.) So, contrary to what many think today, man is not basically good. In fact, because of sin, man is basically bad. Man is not born desiring the things of God; man is not born morally neutral, even. On the contrary, our affections and desires are, by nature, captivated by the 'ways of the world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air' (Eph. 2:2). King David confirms this sad fact when he confesses in Psalm 51, 'Surely I was sinful from the time my mother conceived me.' He was expressing the fact that his rejection of God was not something he picked up 'along the way'; he, along with all mankind, was born rejecting God. Furthermore, Paul tells us in Romans that 'none are righteous, no not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God . . . by nature we are hostile toward God. We do not submit to God's law, in fact, we are incapable of submitting to God's law. By nature we are unable to please God' (Rom. 3:11; 8:7-8). By nature we have no desire for God, therefore we are incapable of inclining ourselves godward. This truth is summed up best in a phrase that many of us learned as children: 'We sin because we are sinners; we are not sinners because we sin.' Sinning is what we do because sinners are what we are. But in order for us to see how our sin affects the condition of the world in which we live, we must turn to Romans 1. THE EFFECT OF SIN ON THE WORLD Romans 1:18-25 speaks of the universal condition of humanity by telling us that all men and women, boys and girls, have a God-consciousness. That is, all have been created in the image of God and therefore know God at some level. They are vaguely aware of a transcendent need - a thirst - but the effect of sin is such that they are unable to pinpoint what they are thirsty for and where that thirst can be quenched. Because of sin, the world spends all of its time and energy suppressing that vague sense of transcendence - that knowledge of God - that they do have. They attempt to drown it out with the fleeting pleasures and pursuits of this world, whatever these may be. They 'exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles' (Rom. 1:23). Sin, according to John Piper, 'is a suicidal exchange of infinite value and beauty for some fleeting, inferior substitute'. And this 'suicidal exchange', according to Romans 1:18, justly triggers God's wrath. 'Moral evil', says one theologian, 'evokes righteous anger and personal revulsion from God.' So the decaying nature of our world can be explained in part as 'the wrath of God revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men' (Rom. 1:1 8). 'Wait a minute,' someone might say. 'I thought you said that it is man's fault, not God's fault, that there is pain and suffering in this world; that we are responsible for the detrimental condition of our society, not God. And now you are saying that the decaying nature of our world can be explained in part as the wrath of God against ungodliness. It sounds like you are speaking out of both sides of your mouth. Is it man's sin or God's wrath which is behind the disarray of this world?' The answer, of course, is both! God executes his wrath against ungodliness by 'giving sinners over to their sin . Three times in Romans 1, Paul tells us that because sinners exchange the glory of the Creator for the creation, God '[gives] them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity . . . to dishonorable passions . . . to a debased mind' (verses 24, 26, 28). And this 'giving them up' is the execution of God's wrath. Jonathan Edwards sums it up clearly: 'All mankind are by nature in a state of total ruin, both with respect to the moral evil of which they are the subjects, and the afflictive evil to which they are exposed, the one as the consequence and punishment of the other.' (Jonathan Edwards, 'The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended', in Works (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1979), vol.1, p. 145). In other words, God executes his wrath against an unrepentant, idolatrous world by gradually removing his restraining grace, giving this world over to the sin that it craves, ensuring its self-destruction. That is why Piper calls sin a 'suicidal exchange'. All of human history testifies to the fact that self-indulgent sin is self-destructive. In the last hundred years alone, we have seen the rise and fall of various evil empires. We have witnessed revolutions and counter-revolutions, both political and cultural. We are now experiencing the global threat of militant dictators and terrorists cut out of the same twisted mould as Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. We have endured two World Wars and one Cold War, not to mention Korea, Vietnam, and two wars with Iraq. The turmoil in the Middle East continues in full force proving that today, perhaps more than ever, 'Everybody wants to rule the world.' God executes his wrath against sin by allowing this self-destruction to take place. THE CROSS AS GOD'S SALVATION If the cross of Christ tells us anything at all, it tells us that God confronts sin in the most serious way. God cannot ignore, or overlook sin and remain just. Sin is a serious offence that requires a serious penalty. So if anyone is to become a child of God, sin must be dealt with; a payment must be made. Paul tells us in Romans 3:23 that the payment for sin is death. Blood is required in order for there to be peace with God. And because the penalty of offending an infinite God requires an infinite price, it is God and only God who can pay it. 1 John 4:10 says, 'And this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.' Propitiation simply means that Christ's payment satisfied God's justice. It presupposes the wrath of God which is 'revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men' (Rom. 1:18). It admits that God does not tolerate sin and that his wrath burns against it. God's displeasure can only be appeased, then, if a propitiatory sacrifice is made. It is important here to note that there has been much controversy over the word 'propitiation'. Some have contended that the idea of God's justice having to be satisfied in order for God's wrath to be turned away is not a biblical one. According to C. H. Dodd, 'There is no such thing as wrath in God occasioned by human sin... the Bible deals only with the putting away of sin'. (cited in James M. Boice, Foundations of the Christian Faith [Downers Grove: IVP, 1988] p.312.) Therefore, he prefers the term 'expiation' which means 'the covering over of sin.' Expiation is certainly a biblical idea. The Psalmist tells us in Psalm 32:1, 'Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.' It is one of the most precious truths of scripture that Christ's sacrifice covers our sin. 'As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us' (Psa. 103:12). But the putting away of our sin is only made possible once the wrath of God has been satisfied. Propitiation and expiation are like two sides of the same coin. God's wrath is satisfied due to the putting away of our sin. And the putting away of our sin is made possible due to God's wrath having been satisfied. One does not need to choose between the two. The cross of Christ expresses and accomplishes both the satisfaction of God's wrath and the putting away of our sin. Therefore the cross of Christ is exalted as the only solution to this world's woes. CONCLUSION In our day of rampant evil and moral decay, mankind has only itself to blame. We cannot pin our self-imposed problems on God. It is, in fact, God's wrathful response to our sin that explains why things are as they are. But we dare not despair. For the one who 'gives this world over to their sin' is the same one who 'loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son.' The cross of Christ satisfied the wrath of God, which had formerly been directed against all who now call on Jesus for salvation. The cross ensures that when Jesus comes back, the process of reversing the curse of sin and recreating all things will be complete. For those who have found forgiveness of sins in Christ, there will one day be no more sickness, no more death, no more tears, no more division, and no more tension. There will be, for the pardoned children of God, complete harmony. We will work and worship without the interference of sin. We who believe the gospel will enjoy sinless hearts and minds along with disease-free bodies. All that causes us pain and discomfort will be destroyed, and we will live forever. We will finally be able, as John Piper says, 'to enjoy what is most enjoyable with unbounded energy and passion forever' (John Piper, The Pleasures of God [Portland, Ore.: Multnomah Press, 1991] p.24) . J. I. Packer describes well what the Christian's experience will one day be: 'The life of heavenly glory is a compound of seeing God in and through Christ and being loved by the Father and Son, of rest and work, of praise and worship, and of fellowship with the Lamb and the saints. The hearts of those in heaven say, "I want this to go on forever" - and it will.' (J.I. Packer, Concise Theology [Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House, 1993] pp. 266-7). One day the New Heavens and the New Earth will be set up and there will no longer be any trace of decay. But until that time, for saint and sinner alike in this world, there will be pain and suffering, there will be discomfort and disease, there will be an environment of rampant moral evil. But we Christians have the unique opportunity in a world of sin and misery to point everyone toward God's goodness in Jesus Christ as the only hope in our otherwise hopeless world, and the only hope for a glorious world to come. Banner of Truth Magazine January 2004 |
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