My church has been studying Hebrews since last year. Recently, our pastor taught on Hebrews 12, where the author reminds his readers that God disciplines those whom he loves. That led to an extended and thoughtful sermon that distinguished three terms--punishment, discipline, and consequences--that parents (and people generally) tend to use interchangeably.
I think it is fair to say that our pastor characterized "punishment" as problematic. He quoted from a blog by Mark Bellanger which said the following:
"Punishment is condemning. Discipline is correcting. Consequences are causational...Punishment is a punitive action done to make the offender repay the debt they have incurred. It is done for the benefit of the offended rather than for the offender."
(there are a couple of other reflections and quotes in the article that more explicitly critique "punishment")
Our pastor went on to say that punishment isn't about seeing reconciliation between the parties or helping the offender get right. It's about "teaching 'em a lesson" and "feeling good about that lesson." "You hurt me!?" mimicked our pastor. "Well, I'm going to hurt you back! And I'm going to show you what hurt feels like." And he was very clear that God doesn't punish us, that he isn't "taking a giant rod and beating us down with it."
And then...he went on to characterize God as "punishing" Jesus.
We aren't punished, our pastor explained, because instead God punished Jesus in our place. God is a loving God, yes, but he also gets angry! And if we want a God who never gets angry, well, we don't want a God who can relate to us. Sin breaks his heart. "And in order to deal with this anger," God says, "I will allow Jesus to step in your place." Romans 5:9 was cited to support this teaching: “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!
I would like to offer two thoughts in response: one concern and one alternative.
First, the concern: I think it is self-evidently problematic to attribute to God the very moral failings that Christian people are called to confront and overcome. And when I listened to the cross characterized as God punishing Jesus in our place, I heard about a God enslaved to an uncontrollable, violent anger.
As was stated, when God sees our sin, it breaks his heart. That heartbreak leads to anger, an anger that wells up inside him, that needs to be unleashed, that will wipe us from existence. And when his anger turns to action, its punishment. Punishment, as defined in this very sermon, is punitive. It is condemning. It has nothing to do with restoration or reconciliation. It is about teaching your offender a lesson and "feeling good" about it afterwards. And, in this case, it is intended for God's benefit, not ours.
If it is problematic for earthly fathers to deal with their children in this way, then how can it be appropriate for our heavenly Father? Remember that he is our truly good "father," the one who gives good gifts to his children (Matthew 7). What is lacking in God that must be satisfied by the unleashing of his punitive rage? This is, after all, the same God whose love and mercies are steadfast and never ending (Lamentations 3), and whose momentary anger is overshadowed by a lifetime of favor (Psalm 30). How is that God compelled to violence, such that his beloved creation would be destroyed by it (but for the trinity-splintering, unjust sacrifice of an innocent Jesus)?
Taken together, this portrayal of God is devastating. Satan appears to have leveraged God's wrathful nature against his divine purposes, ensuring the destruction of God's beloved creation at God's own hand. And even after Jesus's death and resurrection, presumably the vast majority of that same creation will still be laid waste by that same wrath.
These sorts of questions and interpretations inevitably flow from a view that demands God must punish someone to appease his anger. Frankly, I believe that it portrays God as behaving in an undeniably un-Christlike manner.
Second, the alternative. I am convinced that we can embrace the reality of God's anger without teaching a theology that leaves him enslaved to, and compelled to destroy, by that anger.
I want to be clear from the beginning--God gets angry! He can relate to our anger, even though we will never be able to relate to his. But we must also begin by remembering that God is the life-giver, not the death-dealer. "It is the thief who steals, kills, and destroys. But I [Jesus] come to bring life, and that to the full" (John 10). Sin is the enemy, crouching at our door (Genesis 4). It is the cancerous sickness that has invaded our mortal bodies and cursed us with an incurable death sentence (Romans 5). Our only hope is the healing of the "great physician" (Mark 2), the one who can birth within us a spring of living water that will never run dry (Isaiah 58, John 4). That is the gospel, the good news: we are saved from sin by our Savior, not from that same Savior's uncontrollable wrath against sinners.
From there, we can recognize that Jesus' death and resurrection is not an appeasement of God's wrath--it is a great act of deliverance from an appallingly violent and destructive slave-master, the "god of this world" (2 Corinthians 4) and "ruler of this age" (John 14), who tried and failed to curse Jesus with the same sickness, and who was instead eschatologically conquered by the Crucified One (Hebrews 2). Jesus didn't swallow up God's wrath; he injected the full, infectious effects of sin and death into his own human body, overcoming it through divine surrender. This is why Paul says the satanic powers were disempowered and publicly humiliated at the cross (Colossians 2). They gave Jesus their worst, and he overcame. That is the earliest conception of the gospel, going back to the Patristics, and I think it is the right one.
Now, what does that mean about "God's wrath" elsewhere in scripture? Honestly, I am still working my way through that question. For starters, though, let's return to Romans 5:9. One thing about that verse is clear: the word “God” is not present anywhere in the original Greek. Go ahead, check it out! Of course, virtually every English translation inserts "God" into the text. The various translation teams almost universally assume that this wrath must be God's, rather than, say, understanding "wrath" as a way of describing the consequences of sin (as the Patristics often did).
I wonder if we do the same thing with our theology sometimes. I wonder if we attribute things to God that he never claims. Yes, Jesus' death has substitutionary elements to it, and yes, he suffered tremendous wrath and pain. But was it God's punishment? Was it God's wrath? No, no I don't think so. "For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thessalonians 5).
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Note: I intend to write a small series on tough topics like this one, and I welcome your thoughts all along the way! Please feel free to respond with questions, comments, and/or reflections of your own.
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