If you want to see folk damned, there is something wrong with you! - Randal Rauser

J.I. Packer has long distinguished himself as among the foremost evangelical critics of universalism. At the same time, he also made the following admission:

“No evangelical, I think, need hesitate to admit that in his heart of hearts he would like universalism to be true. Who can take pleasure in the thought of people being eternally lost? If you want to see folk damned, there is something wrong with you!”

Packer’s certainly right about that. And yet, the disturbing truth is that many conservative Christians don’t want universalism to be true. I wrote about this problem four years ago in “The very worst reason to reject universalism.” In that article I noted that acerbic Christian apologist Ray Comfort repudiated universalism because it entailed that Nazis and pedophiles could end up in heaven. Yes, it does mean that. It also means that acerbic Christian apologists like Ray Comfort can end up in heaven. And even a few tentative apologists too!

I was reminded of this topic the other day while reading the following passage in Brad Jersak’s A More Christlike God:

“According to Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, moral outrage at others’ sin is often a confession of one’s own deeply repressed cravings. Do we ourselves need hell to keep our envy of sinners at bay? One pastor in my city even confessed that without the threat of hell, he would not be a Christian.” (20)

The notion that people are most vociferous against the sins with which they most struggle is so familiar as to be called a cliché. The pastor who regularly rails against “demon alcohol” or “lust” invites suspicions as to his own struggles.

What I find especially haunting is the suggestion that we might need hell to reassure us of our own life decisions to eschew certain temptations (and, dare we say it, our inherent worth and superior moral standing over the “sinners”).

Two of Jesus’ parables speak powerfully to this. 

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More Christlike God Q & A: "Doesn't Isaiah 59:2 clearly state that our sins separate us from God?" - Brad Jersak

QUESTION:

Dear Brad,

I have had the privilege of hearing your teaching both at the WTC residential and at my own church. I also love your book, Stricken by God?  In it you dispel the idea that God cannot look on sin and I totally agree with your reasoning.  But although you mention Habakkuk 1:13, you do not comment on Isaiah 59:2. It seems to be clearly stating that the people's sin had separated them from God and hidden his face from them. I would be most interested in your interpretation of this verse, if you have the time to answer.
Thank you.

May God bless you, 

Sarah S.

RESPONSE:

What a great question, Sarah!

Yes, Isaiah 59 is a key text in the discussion, and our Old Testament scholar, Dr. Matt Lynch, has been fantastic in walking me through the chapter details. I cover it briefly in my new book, A More Christlike God. Before I get to that, it's helpful to read the verse in question super-carefully. 

“But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear” (Isa. 59:2).

What separates us from God? God? No. Our iniquities. 

What hides his face from us? God? No. Our sins. 

This is the all-essential distinction: in our rebellion and shame, like Adam and Eve, two things are at play in obscuring his face: 1. "Our" [we do it] and 2. "Sins" [what we do]. 

This is reminiscent of Adam and Eve, trying to hide their nakedness in the Garden. In fact, they were hiding God from themselves but they were not hidden from God at all ... unless we think God literally didn't know where they were. It's a bit like covering our eyes and believing the sun is no longer shining.    

Back to Isaiah: In turning from God's loving care, we reject his blessings, so that 'he does not hear us' ... Of course, we know God actually hears everything, because he is God, so this last phrase is poetic (indeed, the whole chapter is a Hebrew poem) ... To say God "doesn't hear us" is a metaphor for the real experience of not perceiving or receiving God's promised blessings. And why don't we? Because God is angry and has turned away? Not at all! Rather, because in our sin, we have turned away from God and rebuffed the blessings that come with knowing him. 

At the same time, while we have turned from God, God has not turned from us. While our sins hide his face from us we are not hidden from him at all. That is, our sin obscures the joy of his presence, even though God may still feel very 'in our face' ... as he is in Isaiah 59! 

And what does God do? 

God sees, and in Isaiah 59, Isaiah says that God is displeased with the whole situation ... the injustice, the alienation, and the interrupted flow of blessings to God's children. But far from concluding that God rejects or abandons us, we must keep reading ... God springs into action. God initiates a saving act whereby he rolls up his sleeves and comes to us himself through his Messianic Redeemer. Those who turn to God will find that he was already for them and toward them. In other words, our repentance does not cause God to come, but rather, God's grace precedes and even generates our repentance. This is how the New Covenant (announced in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea and elsewhere) works. Unilateral grace to self-alienated children. And his New Covenant, according to Isaiah, also assures us that God's Spirit will not depart ... ever. 

Here's how I address it in A More Christlike God:

Some may have been thrown off by a passage in Isaiah, which says, “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear” (Isa. 59:2). 

Well, that’s quite damning, isn’t it! Pretty clear, right? The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it, right? If only we would keep reading! The chapter as a whole goes like this—God sees the injustice in the land and how that injustice has broken the flow of blessing and favor he intends. He grieves the situation. So what does God do? 

15 The Lord looked and was displeased that there was no justice.  

16 He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm achieved salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him. 

Who or what is this arm of the Lord? Keep reading: 

20 “The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins,” declares the Lord. 

21 “As for me, this is my covenant with them,” says the Lord. “My Spirit, who is on you, will not depart from you, and my words that I have put in your mouth will always be on your lips, on the lips of your children and on the lips of their descendants—from this time on and forever,” says the Lord.

  

In other words, when God sees individuals or nations wallowing in sin—personal or social, far from turning his back on us and alienating us, he rolls up his sleeves and stretches out his hand to save. In this case the ‘hand’ is a metaphor for the Messiah, a prophetic pronouncement of God’s remedy, and a promise that he will not abandon us. 

Review of Brad Jersak's 'A More Christlike God' by Rob Grayson

Today I have the honour of reviewing Brad Jersak’s soon-to-be-released new book A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel.

“God is like Jesus.”

There has been an increasing chorus of voices making this proclamation in recent times. In my opinion, it’s been a very welcome chorus, because it’s a most necessary message.

But… for all its increasing popularity, if this message is not to become a mere soundbite, it needs to be explained, nuanced, understood in all its myriad implications, and generally shown to be the premier way of understanding what God is like.

Enter Brad Jersak.

I hold Brad in high esteem for two reasons. First, it was listening to him speak about the atonement that spurred me on to the earth-shattering realisation that God did not in any way, shape or form kill Jesus – a seminal moment in my theological journey. And second, I had the privilege of meeting him last year. The opportunity to put a name and a story to a face is worth more than many printed words on pages.

Brad is a Canadian author and teacher based in Abbotsford, British Columbia. His active, ongoing experience in the evangelical and charismatic streams and his interest in the Orthodox Church, in which he is a confirmed Reader, give him a unique perspective on what it means to live out an ancient faith in a modern, fast-changing world. Brad has solid theological credentials and is currently part of the core faculty of Westminster Theological Centre (UK).

One of Brad’s gifts, then, is to take profound and complex theological truths and translate them into language that the rest of us can understand.

So… what are the implications of the statement “God is like Jesus”? Brad basically spends three hundred pages answering this question.

The book is divided into three parts. In the first part, “What is God? Competing Images of Will and Love”, Brad surveys predominant images of God that have held sway through the ages, drawing a distinction between those understandings of God based on sheer, omnipotent will and those earthed in pure love. He concludes this part by pointing to the fullest revelation of God we have: “Word Made Flesh: The Christlike God”.

The second part is titled “The Cruciform God”. Such terminology may be nothing new to readers of Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Jürgen Moltmann or assorted other recent theologians. But Brad goes a long way in exploring what it means in practical, twenty-first terms to say that God is most perfectly revealed in Christ upon the cross. For me, the real heart of his book is here, in chapters 7 and 8, “The Cross as Divine Consent” and “The Cross as Divine Participation”. Drawing on sources old and new, he dares to reconcile the idea of the God who is Love with the reality of pain and suffering that we observe all around us day to day. In my experience, such honesty is rare in a Christian book written for a “popular” audience. Yet, even as he confronts head on the brutal reality in which we live, Brad refuses to let go of his core thesis that God really is like Jesus – that is, he is not only sympathetic to our plight, but is deeply and personally involved in it alongside us.

In the title of third and final part of the book, Brad coins a new and delightful word that I hadn’t previously come across: “Unwrathing God”. The prevalence of the notion of God’s wrath throughout both testaments of scripture is deeply problematic to many Christians who would sincerely like to believe that God is as compassionate and forgiving as Jesus on the cross, but who can’t ignore the frequency with which this word is mentioned. Well, there’s no need to ignore it: the author sets himself the seemingly impossible task of keeping hold of the perceptible fact of wrath as referenced throughout scripture, while at the same time remaining utterly committed to the truth of the Christlike God who chose to submit to humanity’s wrath, at the cost of his own lifeblood, rather than exercise any proactive wrath of his own.

A More Christlike God is that rarest of things: a deeply theological book that an average reader can comfortably absorb without feeling at all intimated. The combination of theological sources old and new and Brad’s own exegesis and pastoral experience makes this a book that is easy to relate to, wherever you happen to be on the theological spectrum. The use of in-page callouts to define important and potentially problematic terms is a particularly nice touch. And, as I said in my review of Brad’s book Her Gates Will Never Be Shut, Brad has a gift for making compelling, hard-to-ignore points without once slipping into dogmatism. You will come away from this book with the feeling not that you have been lectured, but rather that you have just finished a richly engaging and personal conversation.

A More Christlike God is due to be released in early May. It is available to order here, and will be available via Amazon on or around 7 May.