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♪ When I survey the wondrous cross ♪

You need to understand

that the message of the cross is foolishness

to those who are perishing.

Given that that is the case

there is an immediate temptation

on the part of the proclaimer of the good news

to try then to diminish, if not remove

the difficult parts.

In a sense, you're creating a Christian message

that's warm, kind, and popular

for contemporary culture,

but it's frankly, according to this critic,

"unbiblical and historically unreliable..."

That's true isn't it?

♪ And pour contempt on all my pride. ♪

I'm concerned that people today

don't know who God is.

Sometimes when I hear people speak about God

I feel like an atheist.

The God they speak of- I just don't believe in!

People say like, "When did you lose your faith?"

It started fifteen minutes after I accepted Jesus Christ as my

personal Lord and Savior!

Immediately encountered stuff in scripture and was like,

"That makes no sense to me!"

When we say "Christ died for our sins"

do we mean that God required the murder of His son

in order to forgive? No!

That maligns the character of God!

It is frightening to me

that the doctrine most loved by believers through church history

- the only doctrine that gives me complete and solid hope-

so many modern writers today hate!

I had this one experience where

I was in a sanctuary of a big Lutheran church

speaking to their hundreds of confirmation students

and all of the parents in the room,

and I said, "Raise your hand if you've ever been told,

"'Jesus died for your sins.'"

And of course everybody raised their hands.

And so then I said, "Alright, I want all the parents

to explain to their confirmation student,

'How does that work exactly?' Like by what

cosmic mechanism does the death of Jesus

take care of your personal sins?"

And I could hear the groan- like there was a groan

that went across this full sanctuary

of hundreds of people. Because all these adults were like,

"I don't know how it works! I just know its true!"

♪ Love so amazing, so divine ♪

♪ Demands my soul, my life, my all. ♪

Progressive Christianity actually changed

my life in a radical way.

I grew up in the church-

grew up in a family that

really had a genuine love for Jesus,

genuine love for the Bible.

And it wasn't by any measure perfect.

My family is not perfect, and the churches I grew up in

were not perfect.

But I didn't really go through any doubt

as a young child or even as an adult I never experienced doubts

about the existence of God,

about the truthfulness of Christianity,

about the reliability of the Bible.

I just believed those things.

And spent some time in the Christian music business

in a group called ZOEgirl.

We toured the country and even certain parts of the world,

singing about Jesus to young girls and to young people.

And that was something that was very real for me.

Every Christian I know sort of

is on some kind of a journey.

I grew up among Christians-my dad is Tony Campolo,

a famous Christian.

And I thought my dad was wonderful,

and I didn't become a Christian until I was fifteen years old.

And it wasn't because like, I hated my father,

or I was a rebellious kid.

It was just that I didn't really believe in God.

So neither my wife nor myself

were raised in Christian homes.

I was raised by a nominally Christian mother,

and an atheist father.

And from a very early age decided that I

was an atheist as well.

When I first became a Christian I was crushed

under the conviction of sin.

And my selfishness was hurting my marriage, hurting my family.

And God opened my eyes to that in a very...

in a very painful way.

I mean I was a nice kid-

I wanted to make the world a better place,

and the church seemed to me to be a vehicle to do that-

seemed to me like-

it felt like the only game in town!

Like if you want to make the world a better place-

this is the way you do it.

And so they kind of had me at "Hello."

I walked in, I was like, "I love this community!"

I was so attracted to it.

And what attracted me more than anything to the Christian faith

was the truth of God's word.

It was the first time I'd ever read His word.

And I had no church community, I had no friends.

I didn't have a positive support group-

I had a Bible that I read in the dark

every night while I put my son to sleep.

I still didn't believe in God,

but I wanted to be part of the community so bad that I sort of

went along.

You know in Alcoholics Anonymous they say you've got to

"fake it until you make it."

And so like, I faked it!

All that supernatural stuff-

that wasn't the attraction to Christianity for me-

that was the price of admission.

I was reading words that had a divine

character and nature that was unmistakable to me

all of a sudden.

The Spirit of God had lifted the veil from my eyes

and I was seeing the words of God on paper.

But at some point I'm up there on a youth retreat.

And there's three hundred kids, and there's candlelight,

and we're swaying to the music and singing, "I love you Lord!"

You know? And I had...

...a transcendent experience.

And I had one of those moments in which I felt something!

Felt God speaking to me!

And that was it! Like, I was like, "This is real!"

And then I was in.

What happened there was a dramatic

change of worldview. I went from

an atheist who held my reason, and my intellect,

and my senses-all of my faculties as the

ultimate standard of reality.

Now all of a sudden I have the word of God

telling me

from God, things about reality

that were different than I believed before.

You know it's funny like I'm totally secular now! So like-

you know I don't believe in any form of supernaturalism so-

like I would have a different explanation for that experience.

But when I'm with secular people and they're like,

"I bet you're embarrassed that you-

that you say you felt the Holy Spirit, or that you heard

God speaking to you." I'm like, "Oh no!"

"That happened!"

Like I felt something, I heard a voice! You know?

People don't believe in transcendent experiences

I always say like, "Haven't used the right drugs!"

"Haven't fallen in love with the right partner."

"Haven't been to the right rock concert."

Because like we've all had these experiences where

we've felt swept up in something bigger than ourselves.

And I think whatever narrative you're in when that happens,

it confirms that narrative.

And so for me I was in a Christian context-

I was like, "This is Jesus!"

Even though my heart was with Jesus,

I wasn't really churched during that time.

I didn't have a pastor during that time. And I think that

made me vulnerable to some things. And-

you know, travelling in the Christian music business

you go to all kinds of different churches.

You go to the big megachurches with the celebrity pastors.

You go to the small little churches that

just have a piano and not much else. And-

you see it all!

And I think I began to become a little bit jaded

I just went, "This can't be the real thing."

Like, "This can't be right."

The Emerging Church movement began

several years ago as a conversation

among Evangelical Gen-X leaders

who were alarmed at church dropout rates among twenties, and thirties.

About the same time, a pastor from Maryland, Brian McLaren,

began writing about what he saw as a growing disillusionment

with the way evangelical Christianity

was being practiced.

The two paths that came together

to form the Emerging Church Movement in the late 1990's

were one, was a group of people who were questioning the methods

of church as big business...

And I wonder about these multi- millionaire preachers who are

fleecing their congregations,

and they watch their own people in dire poverty!

They have this world's goods and they're not

sharing what they have with those who are in need

in their own communities- it scares me!

The Emerging Church movement

actually was right in a lot of their criticisms

of shallow evangelicalism. Pragmatic evangelicalism. The-

entire millennial generation had-

for the most part-those that had grown up as evangelicals-

had grown up in children's church and then youth group

movements where pretty much the emphasis was on fun and games-

not teaching. And so it's a generation of people

who were not taught scripture,

and so they were pretty quick to throw it out!

There's a sort of a comfort in knowing that, one,

I don't have to have the answers

and that there aren't necessarily answers.

Then you had another stream that was

people who were questioning the theology,

the doctrine,

the core message of the gospel, like,

"What's the gospel really about?"

And we were reading

people who had been considered "off limits"

by a lot of evangelicals.

We were reading like feminist theology,

and liberation theology, and things like that.

But the idea was, "Look, times are changing

we're moving out of the modern realm,

and into the postmodern realm."

And the distinctive feature of postmodernism was always

skepticism.

The modernist thought,

"We can know for sure what truth is because

science will tell us."

And postmodernism has given up on that fallacy.

And now concluded that really, "Nothing can tell us for sure-

what truth is."

We talked a lot about the Bible.

How reliable and trustworthy is the Bible?

And how reliable and trustworthy are our

interpretations and applications of the Bible?

So we can't be absolutely confident

that we know anything.

And therefore postmodernism is really the abandonment of

certainty, and knowledge.

In fact, if there's one sin in the progressive church,

it's the "sin of certainty."

Beware of people who charge in with certainty and Bible verses.

And by the time ZOEgirl came to an end

my husband and I had found a local non-denominational,

just run-of-the-mill evangelical church here in the heart of

middle Tennessee where I live.

And we went to this church for about eight months and

after about eight months the pastor invited me

to be a part of a bit of a deeper study group.

An inner-circle kind of discussion group

where we would be studying the Bible, we'd be studying

Christianity, theology.

And so the class unfolded,

and then he revealed that although he didn't say this on

Sunday mornings-

he was actually more of an agnostic!

And he called himself a "hopeful agnostic."

And he would bring up claim after claim

against the Bible.

A lot of it had to do with the reliability of the Bible,

core doctrines that Christians have believed for 2000 years.

And I wasn't prepared to answer- I'd never even heard

of some of the questions, let alone have thought through

some of the answers.

I look back now and I realize that what was happening

was his deconstruction.

When I think about what our podcast is,

and even the word "decontruction,"

it's really to me as simple as just encouraging people

to take part-to participate in their own spiritual journey.

It's-I think taking a more mature look at your faith,

taking ownership over your faith.

Really digging into it to determine what it is

that I believe.

And a lot of times what that means is kind of

removing some of the things that you grew up believing,

but certainly by no means getting rid of everything.

Often, when a Christian goes through a

process of deconstruction,

what they reconstruct to is something that

doesn't look anything like historic Christianity.

In my case, I went through that process of deconstructing.

I didn't go quite to atheism. I always did believe

that God was there.

But it sent me into a crisis of faith,

a really dark time of doubt where

I would rock my baby in the rocking chair,

and just sing hymns into the darkness, just-

not even really sure that they were true.

It was as if I had been thrown into the middle of the ocean

with just these high crazy waves,

with nothing-nothing to grab on to.

And I said, "God, send me a lifeboat!

If Christianity is true, send me a lifeboat!"

Because so many Emergents wanted to be

politically correct,

even the moral foundations of Christianity were beginning to

sort of crumble underneath them,

because they wanted to follow the spirit of the age

in being tolerant and diverse.

So you can't say, "Homosexuality is a sin."

So as a young Christian reading my Bible for the first time,

I ran into things like

the way God's word talks about sexual sin.

I had homosexual friends in high school and I-

I'd look at God's word telling me that this is a sin,

and tried hard!

Because I love these people, I care about these people!

I don't want to see their lifestyle as something that is

sinful and needs to be repented of.

And also, on top of that, it's really culturally unpopular

and frowned upon to think that way.

There's been a lot of progress -so to speak-

for that community in the last decade.

We now see politicians have evolved on their stance on

same sex marriage.

I have to tell you, as I've said I've been going through

an evolution on this issue.

I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman.

Now for me as a Christian...

I had gay roommates when I was in college.

And they had been-

this was 1985! It was not okay to be gay in any part of

Christian America. Certainly not the conservative church

I was growing up in.

When I came out in favor of marriage equality,

I lost work, I lost publishing contracts...

But these guys- they were wonderful!

And they had been gay from the moment that they were

aware of themselves sexually.

I'm straight, but I even know like, being gay is not a choice!

It's our lifestyle, it's who we are!

It's not something that we choose to do, like lying is

or something like that. Like this is how we are born,

how we feel.

Through the sins of Adam, sin had come into the world...

This guy doesn't even know what a dinosaur is!

We are all born in sin!

We are born with a sin nature.

All men were born into sin. All men have a sin nature.

We're all rebelling against the will of God apart from Christ.

And I don't think that it's fair to tell us that how-

how we feel everyday, and how our natural feelings come

is wrong. That's just...

Even if they honestly believe they

were born that way,

Jesus says, "You must be born again."

It took me a long time to be open about that but like

very early on I realized like, look-

the Bible's wrong about this one!

It is important for me to go ahead and affirm

that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.

And when I look at the evolution of how

not only our nation,

but how professing Christians view this issue,

you can definitely see how this particular sin

has become somewhat of a "line in the sand."

And what I was faced with was the decision-

am I going to trust what God says about this sin?

Or am I just going to go with what the world and my feelings

say about this sin?

There's a time where you have to look in the mirror and say,

"I have to go where my heart's leading me."

I just knew too many wonderful Christian people

who were in gay relationships.

My dad has since come out in support of gay marriage,

but for many years was not, and was like, "You've gone too far!"

Because I'm marrying gay couples! You know?

And having been an atheist for years, I knew

what following my feelings would get me.

And I was done with that.

To say that homosexuality is a sin

is practically social suicide!

Yesterday CrossFitHQ fired Russell Berger

for basically saying homosexuality is a sin.

And I was watching a lot of my friends

reject the Christianity they grew up with.

And so I started to think, "Well I'm not going to reject

just what I was raised with.

'Cause maybe what I was raised with wasn't the real thing.

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.

But I need to find out what historic Christianity is.

And if I'm going to reject Christianity, it's going to be

that I'm rejecting authentic, real, historic Christianity,

and not just something I was raised with."

And you had a lot of people at the time

arguing against us saying,

"The methods change, the message never changes." Like-

as though the gospel has never changed. Which is again,

like theologically, and historically unjustifiable.

The message of the church has evolved.

So there are some that would try to pit

the gospel of Jesus against the gospel of Paul as if they were

somehow saying different things, or making different messages.

I think the book of Romans is the wrong place

to go to get a definition of the gospel. I think-

we have to get a definition of the gospel from Jesus!

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

That's where He's defining the gospel.

But we have to see what the book of Romans is really about.

It's a bad question, that is not answerable!

You cannot answer, "What is the gospel?"

"Jesus died on the cross for my sin!"

That's not the gospel!

Jesus was preaching the gospel

before He died on the cross for sin!

So like, Mark Chapter 1...

Jesus starts preaching the gospel.

What was He preaching? He hadn't died yet!

Nobody had unpacked any of it!

So it must be more than His death on the cross

or we wouldn't even have the gospels!

We would just have, "Jesus died! Here's some Paul!"

So if He went out and started preaching the gospel,

I know that no matter what- whatever He was preaching

is different than what I've been told the gospel is!

Yeah! Yeah!

As a boy growing up

it was explained to me that the Bible is a book about Jesus.

Jesus is Himself "the gospel." The good news.

He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world

as John the Baptist points to Him.

So, in the Old Testament He is predicted,

in the Gospels He's revealed,

in the Acts He's preached,

in the Epistles He's explained,

and in the book of Revelation He's expected!

The center of the message of both Jesus and Paul

was Christ Himself, Christ-His work,

and the response that says, I will submit, I will follow

after Christ.

I do not sum up the gospel! I'm not going to do it!

You're not going to bait me into it!

Tony's right!

Yeah! Yeah!

I can't answer that!

Yeah!

The good news is the kingdom of God is at hand!

It's available. We can reach out and touch it!

Of course, that raises the question

what does the "kingdom of God" mean?

Jesus preached the kingdom

as the forgiveness of sins.

Jesus bypassed the temple

and its sacrifices

by offering in His own person the forgiveness of sins.

Let His enemies tell us who He was.

The Pharisee says, "Who does He think He is-this man,

who imagines that He has the power to forgive sins?

Only God has the power to forgive sins!

What a blasphemer!"

Paul stated plainly what the gospel was in 1 Cor. 15

when he said, "Christ died for our sins

according to the scriptures,

He was buried, and He was raised on the third day."

But Jesus came preaching a gospel

that said, "the kingdom is here!"

"And I'm the king!"

And wherever my reign and my influence is-

there's the kingdom!

And He's introduced the kingdom to all

who have a broken and a contrite heart-poor in spirit.

And so, even in the Sermon on the Mount

Jesus makes it plain that it is not our works that save us.

He said at the very opening of the Sermon on the Mount,

"Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs, and theirs alone is the kingdom of heaven."

The only people that belong to the realm of Christ,

are those who recognize that they are spiritually bankrupt.

That they have no righteousness of their own-

that's what "poor in spirit" means.

And He goes on to say, "Blessed are those who mourn,

for they shall be comforted."

The idea being that-that the Christian is someone who

mourns over his sin,

mourns over his lack of righteousness,

looks at the perfection of God

looks at the perfection of His law, and says, "I fall short!"

And he mourns over his personal inadequacy before a holy God.

Jesus begins Mark,

steps out in Mark's gospel,

"The time is fulfilled,

the kingdom of God is at hand;

repent and believe the good news."

What good news?

That "I am the light of the world."

That "I am the bread of life."

That "I am the good shepherd who gives His life for the sheep."

Gives His life for the sheep?

Why would He give His life for the sheep?

"All we like sheep have gone astray,

we've turned, everyone, to his own way;

and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all."

"I am the 'Him'" says Jesus.

Anytime, anywhere, anyone has ever been saved,

it is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

The call of the gospel is a call to follow Christ.

And Christ made that call, He said, "Follow me."

Paul makes the call in the same way saying,

"We preach Christ and Him crucified."

One of the problems, I think,

with the American Gospel today, is that we start

in the very wrong place.

We start with the cross of Jesus Christ.

We're asking them to accept a Savior

that they don't even know they need!

So to me, this is why we have so many false conversions today-

we've only given them half the message.

What we have to understand

is the gospel primarily has to do with the attributes of God,

not just the sin of man.

You see, the sin of man wouldn't be a problem

if God was like us.

But God is not like us.

And all His attributes fit perfectly

together into one glorious whole.

And you can sum them all up by saying, "God is holy."

And of course the signature text for that is

Isaiah chapter 6, when the year that King Uzziah died,

the prophet Isaiah went into the temple,

and he encounters God

in a vision that is just extraordinary,

as he sees God high and lifted up.

And then he hears the angels crying out, "Holy, holy, holy!"

When something is repeated three times

it takes it to the superlative degree.

What the angels are crying out is, "Holy, holier, holiest!"

Something we see very often in

progressive Christianity

is the redefinition of words.

So they will takes words that Christians have

historically understood to be defined in a certain way,

they will assign them a new definition

and then just use them in regular conversation as if

we all understand the new meaning!

So, a great example of this comes from Nadia Bolz-Weber

who is a progressive Lutheran minister who wrote a book

on biblical sexuality. And in her view,

we need to completely have an absolute upheaval of

the Christian view of sexuality. In fact she says

we need to take everything that we've believed

for the last 2000 years and burn it to the ground!

So one of the foundations upon which she builds her argument

is her definition of the word "holy" or "holiness".

And so she defines the word "holiness" to mean

something more like "unity."

Being together. It means there being a unity between people

and unity with God.

And so this is why she can

give an example of someone having a one night stand

and call it "holy," because there's the unifying of

two people.

Well of course, biblically speaking,

"holiness" actually means the exact opposite!

In fact, biblical holiness has to do with God

being separate from sin, being completely "other" than sin.

He's transcendent, totally set apart from His creation.

And whenever sinful man is in the presence

of holy God, he becomes

painfully aware of his own unholiness.

And Isaiah-he's undone!

And when he says, "Woe is me" he is saying "cursed is me!"

Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a

burning coal in his hand,

which he had taken from the altar with tongs.

He touched my mouth with it and said,

"Behold, this has touched your lips;

and your iniquity is taken away.

and your sin is forgiven."

The fact that God forgives wicked men

presents a theological problem.

Now people say, "Why would that be a problem?

It demonstrates that God's love, and that God is merciful."

Well God is love, and God is merciful,

but He's not only that.

And if you look over here in Exodus 34

I'll read this to you. It's one of the greatest revelations

of God in the scriptures!

Moses asks God to show him His glory.

And He does! And then this is the following that pursues,

It says, "The Lord descended in the cloud and stood there

with him as he called upon the name of the Lord.

Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed,

"The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious,

slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth;

who keeps lovingkindness for thousands,

who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin..."

So far so good!

That's really good news for fallen man!

But then we go a little bit farther and it says this,

"He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished."

How does that go together?

That's the tension-

I call that sort of the riddle of the Old Testament!

It's not tap-dancing around the nature of God-

it's saying very straightforwardly,

this is what God is like.

Now look at this-

How can God forgive all types and kinds of sin,

and yet at the same time punish every type and kind of sin?

Ultimately, verses like that drive me

into the mystical side of theology.

I have to disabuse myself of thinking,

"That is a rational contradiction!"

How can you say you forgive everybody, but not the guilty?

We're all guilty, so you don't forgive anybody?!

If you're not forgiving the guilty,

who are you forgiving?!

God is no fool, and He does not give contradictions.

That is who God is.

God is a God who in our minds is constantly at tension.

Merciful, loving, forgiving...

but also not forgiving!

And He says, "I am loving, but I am just."

That's interpretation!

That's not actually what the verse says!

So I'm, I'm-

you know we all have our right to interpret it

but it doesn't say,

"And God is just" in that verse- that's not what it says.

That may be what it means.

But what the verse actually says is,

"He does not forgive the guilty."

That drives me out of my head and into my heart, and say

this is verse

for me to

reflect on and digest,

and kind of existentially experience,

as opposed to it being a verse for me to figure out.

And then we go a little bit further in the scriptures

and we can also see this in Proverbs 17:15,

"He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous,

Both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord."

Most of our hymns in the church have to do with God

justifying us who were wicked!

But here in Proverbs it says that

anyone who justifies the wicked-it's an abomination to God!

so how can God justify wicked men,

as we see in Romans chapter 4, and at the same time,

avoid the title of "an abomination?"

The question is, "How is forgiveness

meted out by God?"

Are there strings attached to God's forgiveness?

Now, this is one of the most

comforting and beautiful passages in the entire Bible,

taken from the book of Psalms, and found in Romans 4:7-8.

And it says this: "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds

have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered.

Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account."

What do we call a judge who "covers" sin?

We say that he's unjust, we say that he's corrupt.

And yet here we see God,

who makes the claim to be righteous and holy

and He's covering sin.

The justice of God is something that is

revealed in the Bible

as being fundamentally rooted in the nature of God.

God is called, "The Judge of all."

God is a righteous judge,

and a God who has indignation every day.

And the reason why He is the judge is because He is

morally righteous.

"Righteousness and justice

are the foundation of your throne;

lovingkindness and truth go before you."

All human beings have this longing for justice.

It's in our bones. It is deep into the human psyche

that we want the world to be made right!

As an atheist,

I often saw the suffering in the world as-

as giving me justification for my hatred towards God.

"How would He allow this to happen?"

You know, right after I became a Christian I started

working in the inner city with poor people,

and I would meet people that were suffering!

I met girls that had been raped,

and kids that had their fathers be killed!

I struggled with evil

to the degree that I wanted to take vengeance

against evil people.

And I'll be perfectly honest, I joined the military

so that I could go kill evil people.

I learned through scripture

that that is misplaced.

Scripture says that, "Vengeance is the Lord's."

And over the course of that time I would say

that my commitment to loving relationships

and to social justice

grew and grew and grew,

and my ability to believe in a supernatural person

who intervened on behalf of human beings,

kind of died the death of a thousand unanswered prayers.

I was a believer in a sovereign God who actually

predestined everything and ran the world, and-

when somebody was sick, we would pray like, "God,

heal sister Mary!"

And in my own life,

my wife suffered through years and years- and continues to

suffer through years of medical problems,

very serious genetic disorders, and botched surgeries,

and near-death experiences.

And I mean, in my personal experience even

just this last week, I've had a lot of pain!

My daughter's in a lot of pain.

She has the same genetic disorder that I do.

I told her, you know, there will be times in your life

where whether it's mental suffering, emotional, spiritual,

or physical,

where there is nothing you can say, but "God, please!"

And we realize that there is no way that we can go on

without Him!

I have a friend who says like, "Nothing fails like prayer."

ANd that was my experience like in the inner city.

Could you heal this lady who's got six kids

that are depending on her? Could you heal her from cancer?

And she would die!

Life shouldn't look like

a kid in a wheelchair.

Life shouldn't look like cancer for the second time.

But the thing is- it's not about that!

It's about giving God glory!

Either God knows this is happening,

and this is His idea of a "good time," in which case,

I'm not sure I like God anymore!

Or maybe God isn't as much in control of the world

as I thought He was.

And in rapid succession,

as a young Christian, of facing these really terrible situations

God showed me how He was working through those things,

and He reoriented me from a perspective of entitlement

and pride and judging God for He did,

to a perspective of seeing God glorified in suffering.

And rejoicing for the way He was able to turn terrible things

into good things.

In my lily-white suburb you could get away with

the sovereignty argument!

You can't...

You can't have a God who is in charge of everything

if you're in the inner city and still end up liking Him!

Once I started suffering

it's almost like that taught me

more and more about how much God loved me.

And the only way I can explain that is by God's grace!

Because it makes no sense!

If I could get those years that she suffered

back, and allow her to be happy and healthy in those years-

I wouldn't!

Because I can see how God in His sovereignty

lead us closer to Him

than we ever would have been had we not suffered in that way.

He just shows us that ultimate act of

surrendering into suffering.

And ours is nothing, nothing, and nowhere near His.

We also have to be honest to realize

if God is going to purge the world of all evil,

get rid of all the sin and

brokenness and evil of this world-

just a little bit of self- examination, and self-reflection

would lead us to realize, "Uh oh!"

Our longing for justice would come back against us!

So the great question in the entire Bible is this:

If God is righteous, how can He pardon men who are wicked

and still maintain His righteousness?

Well, forgiveness in the Bible carries a great cost,

because in order for God to forgive the sinner,

God's justice must be satisfied!

And therefore, Jesus had to pay a penalty

that would satisfy the wrath of an infinite God!

I think in the present day

there's a lot of discomfort

with the idea of God being wrathful,

and there's a lot of discomfort with the idea of

divinely sanctioned violence!

Is it not true, not that long ago USA Today

talks about the Presbyterian Church fighting over a song-

"In Christ Alone."

♪ In Christ alone my hope is found ♪

And for years people had been changing one of the lyrics!

♪ 'Til on that cross as Jesus died ♪

♪ The wrath of God was satisfied ♪

Some churches on the more progressive side who had trouble

with this idea that God's wrath needed to be satisfied,

had just changed that one line to

God's love was magnified.

So when Jesus died on the cross, God's love was magnified.

Well, when the new hymnal of the Presbyterian Church USA-

which is one of the larger denominations-

when they were doing their new hymnal,

they actually went to the copyright holders of the song

and said, you know,

"We want permission to change this one line."

And the answer on the part of the hymn writers, I think

has been a very strong, "No! You mustn't change it!"

Because they understand

that God's wrath and God's love

are not in opposition to one another,

but the one explains the other.

And this is the dilemma of the American pulpit:

we've got a God of wrath versus a God of love,

which is a dichotomy that the Bible doesn't present!

So it just shows the split!

I mean both that the Presbyterians wouldn't include it,

and that the song writers

wouldn't allow a pretty minor change!

It's a classic illustration of the attempt to kind of

contextualize the hard parts of the Bible in such a way

as to make people comfortable, and at the same time,

deny the truth of the gospel.

The one man said, who wanted that lyric changed,

"This lyric comes close to saying that God killed Jesus.

The cross is not an instrument of God's wrath."

The title of my most recent book is

"Did God Kill Jesus?"

Which I used because

it was a quandary I had myself,

and it was something that I had heard from a lot of people,

and that is, they're struggling with their understandings

of the cross, and Jesus' death on the cross,

in which it seemed like God had to exact some kind of revenge

or payment from Jesus.

If God needs someone to "pay the price" for our sin,

the question is, "Does He ever really forgive anyone at all?"

So how can He do that? How can He forgive sins?

Does He just overlook them?

And the biblical answer is: "No!"

That's what the death of Christ is all about.

He paid the price of other people's sins.

Some people call it the "Penal Substitution Theory"

of the atonement.

I refer to it as "The Payment" model of the atonement.

So the big question underlying the book, and I think underlying

the cross in general-

when you think about it theologically at least-is:

"Is God the author of the crucifixion?"

Explain to me how the cross could originate in God.

Or, to put it more bluntly: "Did God kill Jesus?"

Well attacks on penal substitution have been around

for a long time, but

I think they made their way into the larger evangelical culture

through the book, "The Shack."

And because it was in novel style,

it wasn't completely clear-

the theology that was being taught in the book.

That's when your whole wrath thing comes in, right?

My what?

Your wrath.

You lost me there!

One thing that was made clear in the The Shack, though,

was that Jesus' death accomplished

the reconciliation of all human beings to God.

Everybody knows you punish the people who disappoint you.

Hmm...

No!

I don't need to punish people.

Sin is its own punishment.

Well a few years later, William Paul Young,

the author of The Shack, came out with a book called

"Lies We Believe About God."

And in "Lies We Believe About God," William Paul Young teaches

that it's a lie to think that God originated the cross-

that it was God's idea to send Jesus

to die on the cross for our sins.

And that if that's true,

that makes Him nothing more than a "cosmic abuser."

And this is a theme that's very big

in the progressive Christian church-is the idea

of "cosmic child abuse."

The problem with this way of thinking about the cross is that

it turns God into some kind of like divine child abuser!

And so this is largely rejected in the progressive church.

I don't think God killed Jesus!

I think God died on the cross.

Did God kill Jesus?

Yes!

Did Jesus go to the cross unwillingly?

No!

The idea that God

would say, "I'm going to punish somebody else for your sins."

- it doesn't make any sense anywhere!

Every version of the atonement has problems.

The problem with penal substitution

is that it puts God under, or beholden to,

some transcendent version of justice,

that even God has to live under that umbrella,

and say, "Well I can't just forgive these people,

someone needs to pay the debt!

Someone needs to pay the penalty!"

"And so I'd like to forgive you all,

but I've got to pay off 'Justice' first!"

It begs the question, "Who's in charge here?!"

God could say, "No I don't need these people to pay me back!

I'm just going to forgive their debt!

I'm going to declare a year of Jubilee-

all human sin is forgiven! Nobody has to die!"

When we say God is perfectly just,

and that He can't just wink at sin

and forgive sinners without satisfying that justice,

we're not putting an external standard above God

that controls His motivations or His actions.

This justice, just like His goodness, and His immutability,

and His love, are all a part of His nature and His character.

For the Lord is righteous,

He loves righteousness;

The upright will behold His face.

They're definitional of who God is!

And we know that-

not because that's how we like to think about God,

but because that's how God has revealed Himself in scripture.

I think that's such a huge theological prblem

to say, "These attributes are just a part of God

and God cannot change."

Or, "God is beholden to these attributes of God."

Who says?!

It's God!

God doesn't have to be beholden to any attributes!

It's like people say things like,

"You can't have love without justice!"

And everyone is in the pew is like, "Oh yeah...

Boy, that makes perfect sense!"

Who said you can't have love without justice?

There's nothing in the Bible that says you can't have

love without justice!

There are all sorts of attributes of God.

And one of the ones that the church used to talk a lot about

and has forgotten, is called the simplicity of God-

which doesn't mean that God is a simpleton.

But it means that whatever God has, God is.

So it's not that He has

50% of love, and 50% of justice,

or we can break it up into smaller percentages so that

He has a little of this, and a little of that in Him.

No, He actually has 100% of every attribute!

That's why He's perfect!

For example, when God demonstrates

righteousness or justice, He does it in the most loving way.

And when He demonstrates love, He does it righteously!

This too, I think is a really great misunderstanding-

people think that God has the ten commandments and

He has to submit to those ten commandments...

No, He doesn't!

The ten commandments are a reflection of who He is

and His nature!

They tell us what God is like,

and that this is what God expects us to be like!

I have heard evangelists say this sometimes-wrongly.

They say, "Instead of being just with you, God was merciful."

But that means that God's mercy or God's love was unjust!

So there's a sermon by Stephen Furtick

of Elevation Church, where he's basically saying

that in order for God to love us, He had to

ignore His justice, ignore His own holiness!

Let's say your child is in a horrible accident.

and on the way to the emergency room, every sign you see says,

"speed limit."

How much attention do you pay to the numbers

beneath the speed limit in that moment?

You would break that speed limit! You would break the law

for love!

Any parent will break the law for the sake of love!

And so he uses this illustration

and applies it to the gospel.

And this is why the gospel is still good news

in the world today, because God broke the law for love!

I definitely don't believe he recognizes the

implications behind what he's saying.

One thing with his saying that "God broke the law for love" is

he's calling God a sinner!

I said to every sinner! God broke the law for love!

He's also saying that

what Jesus said is irrelevant!

Jesus said, "I came to fulfill the law, and not one

jot or tittle will pass away."

You cannot say that God abandons justice in favor of love.

So to say that God broke the law for love

is absolutely absurd!

Love and justice are inextricably linked.

We could think of a judge-

he says he's a loving judge and yet

he's presented with a criminal who's destroyed property and

killed people, and abused others.

We would say that a judge who allowed that criminal to walk

because of his "love,"

was actually being profoundly unloving

to that criminal's victims.

To fail to punish evil, is an unloving act.

If you're unjust, you're also unloving.

Those two things are inextricably linked.

Well, I agree. In a human society

that's probably right.

But God transcends all those categories!

Now God may choose to say,

"I'm going to always pair my love with justice.

Always! These two things-

I'm not going to let them be separated!"

But if God decided to-

Surely it's within God's power to say, "It's just love!

We don't need justice anymore!

I'm going to wipe the slate clean-

I'm going to forgive the sin! Nobody has to die!"

That is surely within God's power!

How is God supposed to love the world,

and then simply shrug His shoulders at some of the

horrors and injustice that go on in this world?

How could a God of love not also be a God of justice?

I'm saying, God, if God chose to,

could have love without justice. If God chose to.

The God that would never judge anyone,

is not too loving- He's not loving enough!

That's a sappy, sentimental deity!

That is not the God of the Bible!

Well the first thing I'd say I saw in the movement

of the Emergent Church when I was in college was

not just a misunderstanding of doctrine or the misunderstanding

of the attributes of God-is was a run from it all together!

To try and actually say, "This is who God is,

and this is what He's like," was just out of bounds for them!

God gets to do whatever God wants!

That's one of my fundamental commitments to being a theist.

So one of the things that means is that God can be arbitrary!

Then we're left with just the- We don't really know who God is

because we can't actually define Him.

And we can't turn to scripture and say, "Okay-

this is what scripture says about who God is!"

I would never use the sentence,

"God cannot do..." (fill in the blank)

"God cannot be..." (fill in the blank)

This means we can't describe God's attributes

in any way!

So not only can't we make negative statements,

like, "God cannot lie." "God cannot sin."

"God cannot be unrighteous."

But we also wouldn't be able to make positive statements either-

so these are the opposites-

"God is truth." "God is holy." "God is righteous."

On like theological principle,

I refuse to talk about God in those ways.

Because I think that is me humanizing God,

anthropomorphizing God.

If we start to determine that God is predictable-

that God is always like this, or God always does that,

or God cannot do this.

God becomes a robot that we have programmed!

If God were to change, or if God were able to change,

why should we trust Him? Why should we believe the Bible?

Once you start to redefine God like that you have a different one.

We're no longer talking about the same God!

How are you going to stand before a holy,

righteous, and just judge?

Every one of us has broken His laws!

And the reality is, because He's just,

the debt must be paid for our sins!

They believe in a place called "hell"

which is not scriptural!

We constantly have people coming up to us to say,

"You know what? We love to see that you're out here,

but we think you're doing it all wrong!

You need to be just be preaching love to everybody!"

We hell is a lie! A place that doesn't exist.

That's the difference between what I preach and believe,

and what they preach.

There is a popular movement underfoot

to diminish the gravity of hell.

You know, the idea that God is wrathful against sin

and that He literally, really punishes evil doers.

One megachurch pastor has ignited a theological firestorm

by suggesting that our response to the Christian message

in this life,

will not necessarily determine our eternal destiny.

At the time, Rob Bell,

who was a megachurch pastor at a church in Michigan,

had come out with a book called "Love Wins."

And it was posing the question:

"What if our accepted views on hell-

what if there are alternate was of looking at-

at what hell might be like,

or what the afterlife even might look like?"

So when the book came out,

I think he had posted a video, a preview...

Will only a few select people make it to heaven?

And will billions and billions of people burn forever in hell?

Yeah, before I was a Christian, I would have

considered myself spiritual, but not religious.

I really saw God as two different people in the Bible.

And it was sort of like, "Old Testament God is the angry God,

and New Testament God is the nice God!"

And there were a lot of things in the Bible that I just felt

were wrong.

As I read my Bible I

struggled with the doctrine of hell.

That God, who is loving, could send sinners to hell

to suffer for eternity!

I wanted this God who

would never send someone to hell!

I wouldn't do it! So why would He?

Had friends who were of other faiths,

and knew really good people who died,

and my theology said that if you died without accepting

Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior,

you would burn in hell forever! Like eternally!

And millions of people were taught

that the primary message, the center of the gospel of Jesus,

is that God is going to send you to hell

unless you believe in Jesus.

And I was like...

"No!"

I couldn't stomach that!

You're amending the gospel, the Christian message,

so that it's palatable to contemporary people,

who find, for example, the idea of hell and heaven

very difficult to stomach!

So here comes Rob Bell! He's made a Christian gospel for you!

And it's perfectly palatable, it's much easier to swallow!

That's what you've done- haven't you?

I was really into this sort of mysticism.

So then if there were people who maybe were offering a softer God

-a God that said, "You know,

it's not just one way! It's not just Jesus!"

One of the mistakes that human beings make is believing that

there is only one way.

"Because all those roads are going to lead to heaven."

That's what I thought!

This creates a basis for what I'd call

a "natural religion," and a "universal religion."

Richard Rohr

is a Franciscan priest who has

a "Center for Action and Contemplation"

in Albuquerque.

He's one of the most influential

spiritual teachers of our time...

Richard Rohr is profoundly influential

among millennials and in the progressive Christian church.

In fact in an article that came out recently,

he said that one of his publishers told him that

his biggest demographic is younger Christians.

And these aren't necessarily Catholics,

but these are post-evangelicals- kids that grew up

in the evangelical church.

He's influenced some major people such as Rob Bell.

"I can't begin to tell you what it's like

to be here. I have been a Richard Rohr fan for so long."

He's had a big influence on progressive Christianity

with his ideas of universalism.

His latest book is "The Universal Christ."

And then like, you know, I became a universalist-

that everybody got saved whether or not they accepted

Jesus Christ as their "personal Lord and savior."

You see that's no competitive religion!

No!

That's an inclusive- all inclusive religion!

That's not the Jesus most people know!

Certainly, it's true

that there have been people in the history of the church

who have taught universalism- that is the doctrine that

all people, finally, will be saved.

That nobody will ultimately end up in eternal condemnation.

That's why what you call "universalism"

was much more of a common Christian opinion in the first

three or four centuries. You know?

And then it became marginalized...

But it is certainly not the case that it's the dominant view

in any epoch of the church until...

right now! Until the modern period.

It is an unavoidable conclusion

from reading scripture

that Jesus Christ is the only way that one can be saved-

that one can be made right with God.

And that's why that's been the consistent teaching

of the church for over 2000 years.

John 3:18 says,

"Whoever believes in him is not condemned,

but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he

has not believed in the name of the only Son of God."

You wrote, "Muslims do not simply have a

deficient theology,

they do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ

His Son, and they stand condemned."

And it's that state of condemnation-being

under the wrath of God-

that the unbelieving world hates to hear about.

Do you believe that that statement

is Islamophobic?

Absolutely not, Senator!

I'm a Christian...

Well Christianity is simultaneously

inclusive and exclusive. I mean it's

inclusive in the sense that we see here

in the throne room in heaven, people from every tribe,

and language, and tongue,

coming to Christ, embracing Christ!

And we see it's inclusive in the sense that it doesn't

require works. I am simply saved by faith in Christ!

It's not about performing, it's not just 'good people, '

it's just anyone who receives Jesus Christ!

But it's exclusive in that it's just Jesus.

It's just Jesus! But that's Christianity!

The modern sort of secular view of religious pluralism, that-

that is the ultimate blasphemy! That you can't say that,

because there are other people that believe differently.

Do you believe that people in the Muslim

religion stand condemned? Is that your view?

Again Senator, I'm a Christian...

We see a perfect example of this actually

in Bernie Sanders-was interviewing a nominee

for a political office,

and essentially put him through a religious test for that office.

Do you think that's respectful

of other religions?

Senator, I wrote a post

based on being a Christian and attending a Christian school,

that has a statement of faith,

that speaks clearly with regard

to the centrality of Jesus Christ in salvation.

And Bernie said that because there are Muslims who

don't believe this,

and based on Christian teaching are "condemned" by God-

under the wrath of God without Christ-

he equated that with this nominee

believing something inherently immoral!

I would simply say, Mr. Chairman that

this nominee... is really not someone

who is what this country is supposed to be about.

I will vote no!

As if this traditional Christian belief

was so wrong, that it would be-

he'd be unable to fulfill the duties

required of him in office.

And that's not something I'd thought I'd see in my lifetime!

As far the exclusivity of Christianity-

I have no idea because

I have seen so much beauty and truth in so many other places.

You know, if people want to call me "liberal," I-

I guess that's okay.

It's only from their perspective.

If they really knew the perennial tradition...

Richard Rohr also says he's a perennialist.

And perennialism is the belief that there is one divine reality

that unites all religions.

Externally, they appear different and they-

they're practiced differently,

and they may have different doctrines, but those are all

only externally factors.

There's actually a core, divine truth that unites all of them.

One word for it is "Christ."

One word for it, is "Christ."

This of course erases the distinction

of Christianity from any other religion and

makes it just one of many.

And there are such stark differences

between what certain religions teach about some very big things!

And the cross is what overshadows

all the other religions, and as scripture says that

is the stumbling block for many!

If we're worried about being right,

then no, they can't all be right!

But I'm not sure that that's necessarily the question

that we're supposed to be asking.

That's not an important question to me anyway right now.

I know that this is where I am-

I find myself in the Christian tradition.

I'm into Jesus!

And I think Christ is even bigger than Jesus!

Well how could anything be bigger than Jesus?

(At least for a Christian)

Well there is, and that's Christ!

Richard Rohr makes a distinction

between the historical Jesus,

and what He calls the "Cosmic" or "Universal Christ."

And you say, there are two different

realities- Jesus as the historical figure,

Christ as the cosmic figure- which we've been

talking about it...

He divides Jesus and Christ because he thinks

"Christ is bigger than Jesus."

I know people may start to tense up

when they hear someone trying to redefine Jesus for them.

You know?

One of Richard Rohr's favorite things

to say is,

"Christ is not Jesus' last name."

"Christ" is not Jesus' last name! Alright?

Jesus became the Christ!

Christ is not Jesus' last name.

And that's a surprise to most Christians!

I think that's a strawman because really

I don't know any Christian who thinks

Christ is Jesus' last name!

I think most Christians who know anything about the Bible

know that Christ is the Greek, for the Jewish word "Messiah,"

which means "the anointed one."

So of course Jesus is "Christ" because Jesus is the Messiah.

But what Richard Rohr says is that the

first incarnation of Christ

is creation.

The big bang is the birth of the "Christ"

14.5 billion years ago.

I have a background in the New Age.

I was in there very many years. I was involved in

Eastern belief systems-

first Hinduism, and then Tibetan Buddhism for a while.

I was very interested in astrology,

and eventually became a professional astrologer.

Until I encountered the true Christ,

and became a Christian at that point.

I have been very alarmed to see that in progressive Christianity

there are influences from the New Age.

"Panentheism" is one of them, which is one of

Richard Rohr's key teachings.

We're not "pantheists."

Authentic Christianity is "panentheism!"

Theism,

and what I would call "Christian Theism,"

is God as creator

who created the universe out of nothing,

and is distinct from His creation.

He's omnipresent,

because God can't be contained in any one location.

But He remains distinct from His creation.

Whereas pantheism is like the opposite of that.

Pantheism is God and creation are one and the same.

So the leaves are God, the rocks are God,

and it just becomes identical with creation.

"Panentheism"

is God is in creation, and creation is in God,

but God also transcends creation.

There's one God,

- who created all things! - Yes.

Then everything has to carry the divine DNA!

And so in Rohr's view, you look at someone else

and you see Christ.

That makes every single one of us have this inherent divinity-

this shared god-like nature.

So what Rohr is saying is that "Christ" is another name

for every thing.

Don't think of it first of all

as a religious concept.

think of it as a descriptor for everything-

everything at least that we can see.

Rob Bell has a very similar view.

Rob Bell says "everything is spiritual".

Welcome to Everything is Spiritual!

He even did a seminar, or a series of workshops with

Deepok Chopra,

who's probably one of the foremost,

and richest New Agers around!

Advertising their course as learning

how you're an expression of the divine

Whereas, the Bible teaches that we are

hopelessly lost until Christ saves us.

Not containing this part of God already inside of us-

this divine nature.

I think of Genesis 3:5 when the serpent says to Eve,

"you shall be like God..."

and so when that bleeds over into the gospel

it doesn't just distort the gospel,

it obliterates the gospel!

Because of Rohr's view on Panentheism,

and that creation is the first incarnation of Christ,

everybody and every thing, is in Christ.

He is the flesh and blood embodiment

of something far larger and more... cosmic.

And Rob Bell has talked about Christ as being "cosmic",

and being a- an energy, a divine energy

in the universe that people stumble over.

People may be stumbling upon this mystery hidden in every

inch of creation all the time, and not knowing,

or having a name for it.

His influence is just profound, recently Jen Hatmaker had

Richard Rohr on her podcast, and she

referred to him as "a spiritual father".

I along with just thousands and thousnads of

my listeners,

um, have learned from you for so many years.

We consider you a spiritual father.

He's also influenced I know-Brian McLaren.

And he's influenced the Nazarene Church-

he was a speaker at the 2017 Young Clergy Conference

of the Nazarene Church.

He's been a guest on the Liturgists podcast,

on The Deconstructionists Podcast and has influenced them.

For us to say that Christ doesn't continue to work,

or manifest in ways-

outside of our Christian community,

is not a position or an assumption I'm ready to make.

So there's no need for anybody

to have any kind of faith in Jesus,

because we're already "in Christ".

When people say like, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life,

or Jesus is the-you know- enter through the narrow gate,

they are assuming

their own interpretation

of what those statements are actually referring to.

It says, "Jesus said to him"

(to Thomas)

'I am the way, the truth, and the life;

no one comes to the Father but through Me.'"

Now this would be problematic for Richard Rohr,

normally, except that he says,

that Jesus is talking as the "Universal Christ" here.

And the reason we have so misused,

and misnterpreted John's gospel,

is this is the eternal, archetypal Christ talking.

He can say, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life..."

But He's not talking about Jesus-

he's talking about this mystery, this amalgam

of matter and spirit, which is the way for everybody!

His view of Jesus as "Savior" is non-existent.

Jesus is not a savior, because we don't need salvation.

We don't need to be reconciled.

Another word that-interstingly this gets

redefined not just in progressive Christianity

but also in the New Age movement, and that's the word

"atonement".

Richard Rohr has said "atonement" is really,

"at-one-ment"

and that it really means that we're "at one" with God.

We called it "at-one-ment"

instead of atonement-

there was no "bill to be paid"

there was simply "a union to be named".

An "at-one-ment" if you want to play with that word.

Again, Richard Rohr, other progressives and New Agers,

and even some conservative theologians will use

the English etymology of the word atonement,

which is "at-one-ment", so that's where we get the

English word, "atonement".

And they will build their theology of atonement based on

the English word.

Whereas the Hebrew word, which is "kaphar",

really means "to cover" or "to propitiate".

And so, the English word has more of a connotation of unity

and reconciliation- and certainly that idea of

reconciliation is present in the biblical idea of atonement.

But "to cover" and "to propitiate",

it has to do with the penal substitution of Jesus-

Him taking the wrath of God upon Himself.

And making that atonement for those who would put their

trust in Him.

So our atonement theory-

the Franciscan minority position

is basically saying, 'no atonement is necessary'.

I'm way more prone

to believe in a God that redeems everyone,

and a God that actually wins in the end,

not be destroying His enemies, but by redeeming them,

and by fixing them, and by healing them.

I don't know how God's going to work that out,

and I do know there's-

there's a lot of evidence to the contrary!

But I've got to believe that what it means to God

is to be victorious and win!

I think that we can all agree, God wins!

But trying to say that God "winning" means

everyone will be saved in the end, because

judgement is somehow God "losing",

it just completely is refuted by scripture;

constantly when God judges in the scripture, this is seen as

God's victory over the people He's judging.

And so in Christ we see one of two victories is going to happen-

the victory of me sharing in His victory,

and I get saved, and I get redeemed,

or I rebell against it, and the victory God has finally

over us all in the end with judgement.

If God is victorious, then God is victorious!

God doesn't lose!

That's what it means to be God!

So God's not losing when He judges-

that's part of His winning.

The greatest proponent, probably,

in the ancient church of universal salvation is Origen.

And he was deeply influenced by Middle Platonism, and

came to articulate

a doctrine-as far as we can tell-of universal salvation.

And Origen was, or course, condemned in the 6th century,

universalism was condemned in the church.

Scripture does not give us an escape hatch

that would allow us to believe that-

anyone who is a universalist is not a Bible believer!

Scripture is just too clear on that subject-

there will be people who perish.

There will be many people, Jesus said, who perish.

That was a big moment for me- I was like,

"Oh! So like Bart, you won't worship any god-

like you have standards for your god.

And actually, my friends who don't believe in God,

when we talk about the God that they don't believe in,

I don't believe in that God either!

And when Russell wanted to go to church-

that's what made me angry!

I didn't want to let go of all that I've created!

You know, this sort of Zen-Buddah-Jesus-

I don't know what religion!

Like I really don't understand

when people like pay all the price to believe in stuff

that they know, like it's a total leap of faith-

like they're just struggling- like, "Ah! I'm gonna do it!"

And then they leap to a God,

who doesn't even save Mahatma Gandhi!

Gandhi's in hell? He is?

And someone knows this for sure,

and felt the needs to let the rest of us know?

Like, why would you want to worship a god,

if you could imagine a better god?

That's what I don't understand like-if you could imagine a god

that's better than the one that you worship-trade up!

It was really just about me taking God

and making Him like myself.

And I had no idea what holiness meant.

It comes back to idolatry. Idolatry was the sin of Israel.

If you read The Old Testament, they continually went

back to idolatry! You say, what a dumb nation!

We're exactly the same!

We don't bow to a God made with our hands,

we bow to a God made with our mind.

You know, I hang around with a lot of Christian people

and they're like, Who are you to tell God who to be?

And I'm like, I'm not telling God who to be!

I'm just telling you who I'll worship and who I won't!

"You don't want to burn, do ya?"

Which like if that's the best message you have,

that's just a crap message!

If Hell didn't exist, neither with this ministry. Seriously.

I would be surfing. I would have long hair.

Probably moved up to somewhere in Australia,

dangling my feet as shark bait, just living for myself-

but I can't!

If we love God, we would obey Him!

If we love people, we would warn them!

How much do you have to hate somebody

to not prosthelytize?

How much do you have to hate somebody to to believe that

everlasting life is possible, and not tell them that?

Scripture doesn't leave us any room whatsoever

to be universalists or annihilationists.

And if you're bad, what happens if there's no hell?

Do just get annihilated? Is that-

- Pretty much. - Yeah.

And that's what the Baptists have against the

- Seventh-day Adventists. - Yeah.

Jesus told that story about

the rich man and Lazarus.

So here's a man who died in unbelief

and in the afterlife, he is being punished.

He's conscious. He can talk.

He wants to send someone back to warn his brothers

not to come to this place!

That's how Jesus pictured the afterlife! And you can't

believe what Jesus said and then turn around and say, "Yeah, but

I believe that the wicked dead will perish.

If they're bad, they just getting annihilated,

so they don't ever have to suffer again.

- Right! - Yeah.

It is emotionally,

existentially difficult

to wrap your head and heart around the idea of

eternal conscious punishment.

If there's any other way to get around

a fiery, eternal pit...

why would we not be open to that idea?

It's not something I don't think I would wish

on my worst enemy!

It's really hard to think about! I don't know any Christian

who loves the idea of the people we know and love in this life

who don't put their trust in Jesus

experiencing some kind of eternal conscious torment.

I don't think anybody thinks that's great!

You know, if I were God, I would-

I don't know if I'd do it that way! But I'm not God!

God's wisdom is so much higher than ours!

His justice is perfect! Our justice is radically broken!

So, we have the Pope saying atheists

can go to heaven, and this mullah saying

you can go to hell for using Twitter!

We really need someone to clear this up! And fortunately

we were able to contact someone who is an authority on this

sort of thing, and he made this tape for us...

So, one time, I saw this video on Jimmy Kimmel,

where a guy was dressed up as Satan,

and started to talk about what hell was like

and why people would go to hell.

Additionally, you will not suffer

the bitter flames of eternal damnation for stuff like

swearing, telling little white lies,

havin inappropriate fantasies, homosexuality,

or consensual sex of any kind between adults!

And he's probably expressing a lot of the same

views that most Americans would express.

Do you honestly think God is gonna hand out

the same punishment for mass murder than he does for sexting?

He's saying basically that

the only way you're going to go to hell is if you kill someone.

If you meet me in the afterlife,

and you're confused as to why,

it's because of the guy you killed...

The thing that he's doing in that show

is he's actually taking the place of God.

This is why people go to hell.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Based on what?

Based on his own judgment, right?

Based on what he thinks is bad.

But our problem is that we don't understand that God

is morally perfect.

And He not only warns He's going to punish murderers,

and torturers, and rapists...

but also thieves and liars and fornicators and blasphemers!

Lying is so serious, scripture says all liars

will have their part in the lake of fire!

Twenty times in the New Testament alone,

the New Testament says that hell is identified by "fire".

Jesus describes Hell as a

furnace of fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth,

as unquenchable fire,

eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels,

where the worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.

Wow. Do I think me, personally, in my sin,

deserve eternal conscious torment?

Um, I would like to say no!

Nope!

I don't think that the crime

and the punishment are...

balanced.

You know, I see God as a very loving individual.

And why would He torment somebody forever,

who only had a life of sixty, or seventy, or eighty years?

Sinners punished in hell continue to sin!

It's not as if, you know, sinners in hell

have then come to their senses!

and have turned in saying, Oh God, please, now

would you forgive me? and, I love Christ

and I worship Him. No. No,

the description and the way the Bible understands it is

that there's a continuing sense of rebellion,

and thumbing your nose against God, and a further

hardening of their heart!

We're not understanding that our greatest problem

that needs to be addressed

isn't just a sin problem of the things that we have done,

but it's rather the person whom we have done those sins against!

The thing is that God is just a lot holier

than many of us think.

And if God really is holier, then that means sin is worse

than many of us actually think.

I think the way that the Bible tries to explain that is,

any sin against an infinite God carries infinite consequences.

If I pick up a rock, and I scratch a rock,

I'm guilty of scratching the rock, but I'm not going to face

any consequences.

If I go to a dump site, and I see a trashed car there,

and I take my key out and I scratch the car,

people are going to say, Hey, what are you doing?

If I go to a used car lot, and I scratch a car,

Now... now I'm a criminal offender. Right?

But if I go on a Ferrari lot...

I take the same key out and I scratch the car, right?

My punishment just got way bigger! Right?

It's intensified. Why?

Because of the value of the thing I sinned against,

the thing I scratched. Right?

So, if God is infinitely valuable,

if He is infinitely beautiful, and infinitely set apart,

He's holy. Right?

One little scratch, one little white lie...

It's like high treason against the king of all the universe!

God's justice demands the death of the sinner!

A jealous and avenging God is the Lord;

The Lord is avenging and wrathful.

The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries,

And He reserves wrath for His enemies.

So, His holiness demands that sin be dealt with.

Another way to say it is this:

every sin ever committed by every person who has ever lived,

will be punished.

That is required by divine holiness

and divine righteousness and divine justice.

The idea of justice, like "punish the wicked!"

No, I don't want to punish anybody.

I want to redeem everybody.

It will either be punished everlastingly

in the life of the sinner-

the impenitent unbelieving sinner-

or that punishment will be borne by Christ.

John MacArthur might be right about Him!

That's not a god worthy of my worship!

I'm just not interested.

But first of all, you need to understand something-

God's wrath is not like ours.

Our wrath is primarily self-centered.

It's... it's coercive. It's unrighteous.

But God's wrath is pure!

and it is the result of His love for that which is right!

God's love. How does God even define love?

Well, it says in Romans 12 that "Love must be sincere.

Hate what is evil."

If you love that which is right,

you will hate evil!

If you love life, you will hate death!

If you love African Americans, you will hate slavery!

If you love children, you will hate abortion!

If you love Jews, you will hate the Holocaust!

Why is it that we reserve the right, as fallible human beings,

to burn with indignation when we see an injustice?

And yet we say if God does the same thing,

that's somehow morally beneath Him!

His love is fierce!

and in the same degree, His wrath is fierce

against evil!

In my own life trying to understand this,

I was really encouraged by Revelation 19.

Revelation 19 gives us a glimpse of our future.

And there we are in the presence of God

and seeing Him judge, they're crying out Hallelujah!

to God's judgment, specifically praising Him for judging!

What this means is that from this future perspective-

now being in the very presence of God now, seeing the

justice of God, not just hearing about it,

seeing it for themselves, they say, "This is good!"

This judgment you're bringing is something I

can actually appreciate now!

Now, perhaps now, in your life, you're not in a place where you

can appreciate God's judgment, but you can choose to trust Him!

But we do have in scripture, reason to think that we're

going to be at a place in the future

where we see it clearly for ourselves, and we go, Oh...

I see how right and good Your judgment was all along.

To get a better idea of Richard Rohr's

view of God, we have to understand

his critique of something he calls "dualistic thinking".

You have to practice rewiring this.

The normal way you and I are wired is dualistically.

It's a way of thinking about things as

"either-or". So either something is one way,

or it's another.

The dualistic mind is making these distinctions

between good and evil: who's in, who's out,

who's a Christian, who's not a Christian.

For me or against me,

a part of our religion or not.

Everything was "either-or" thinking.

And he thinks we need to cultivate

a non-dual mind.

When you get to this level of maturity

and enlightenment, then we learn to think in terms of

"both-and".

Once you're fighting, you're dualistic!

Trust me on that, alright?

You've got to choose sides.

You've got to prove your opinion!

But he's being dualistic, of course,

because he's saying that it's better to be non-dual

than dualistic. But that's a dualistic statement!

Because you're making a distinction. As long as you're

making distinctions, you're being dualistic.

When you get to the contemplative

level of life,

you don't think dualistically: either-or.

You almost naturally learn to think both-and.

Richard Rohr teaches that we need

contemplative practices, like

what is called "contemplative prayer".

So the goal of... of life is the contemplative mind.

The contemplative practices,

which often involve certain methods where you

go into the silence, or where you

try to experience God rather than think about God.

He thinks that these methods will help you have a

new consciousness and understanding.

So this is why religions at the higher levels

try to get us disconnected from this control tower.

Kind of like in The Matrix when you

take a certain pill, and you wake up.

It's like taking the red pill.

And, everything you've believed about reality before that point

is false, but then you'll be open to this new paradigm.

Welcome to the real world.

Now, this method of contemplation,

which he may even call meditation,

is very different from what the Bible means about meditation.

In the case of biblical meditation,

you're actively using your mind.

You're not setting your thinking mind aside,

and you're not trying to have a mystical experience.

That's what begins to teach you non-dual thinking...

In a video clip, he says at this one point,

It's where you let the whole moment

come towards you as it is.

Where you let the whole moment come towards you as it is,

without dividing the uncomfortable part,

or separating from the mysterious part.

This is really ironic, because

when it comes to Rohr's understanding of

Christian doctrine, when it comes to his understanding

of the attributes of God and the atonement,

it really seems like that's exactly what he's doing!

He's... he's dividing the uncomfortable parts

and separating from the mysterious parts. So...

a dualistic way of looking at the nature of God would be

to say God is either righteous and wrathful,

or He's gracious and loving.

So, he actually is dualistic,

Because he's rejecting one attribute of God

and accepting the other attribute, when the truth is...

really, it's both!

Of course, the non-dualistic way would be

that He displays both His grace and His wrath

on the cross together!

The moment that we choose a side

is the moment that we end up in some theological error.

We don't want to live in those paradoxes,

that an incomprehensible being can be both-and.

I mean, we don't like tension in the modern world.

We like it to be this or this. We like it to be either-or.

We grew up with multiple choice- fill in one bubble!

It's not A and B!

If you're going to preach a biblical

definition of mercy,

then you must, at some point, point to the wrath of God,

for what are you receiving mercy from and for?

I don't love the idea of God's wrath.

I don't think it's central to the way the Bible portrays God,

particularly not in the New Testament.

Clearly, Israel had an experience with God's wrath.

So, it's also not something that I would find ways to, you know,

interpret my way out of or around.

It's part of Israel's experience,

so we need to take it seriously.

But it also leads me to believe that God changes.

He's denying God's immutability!

part of what makes God, God, is that he doesn't change.

God is not presented in the scriptures

as schizophrenic, a Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde.

You've got as much grace in the Old Testament as you do

in the New Testament!

He passed over the sins of Moses and Abraham and David.

He did not hold them to the degree that the law required.

That's grace!

"Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord."

Jesus talked more about hell than people, I think, want to

give Him credit for.

I think people forget things like Acts Chapter 5,

Ananias and Sapphira, in the New Testament.

They were immediately judged!

It was, to me, a sense of like, there's the Old Testament

God of wrath and judgment right there in the early church,

the start of the church. Ananias and Sapphira are

struck down dead immediately for their sin!

And so, what we see is we see that

that there's two ruts that we want to avoid.

We certainly don't want to fall into the rut

on one side of the road that says,

It's all the wrath of God. We see that in, in certain,

you know, unbalanced ministries as well.

We also see the other rut is that we...

All we want to do is talk about the grace of God,

and the love of God, and the mercy of God,

but we don't want to talk about the wrath of God.

So, we need to be balanced.

we have to affirm that both the Old Testament,

the New Testament, is both and altogether

God's breathed out word, fully authoritative.

Think of 2 Timothy 3, Paul's referring to Scripture:

All Scripture is God breathed.

He's primarily referring to the Old Testament!

Once you start picking any one part of the Bible,

and saying like, I think it's wrong,

you go like, Wait a second! This is just a human book!

When the reliability of the Bible

was being questioned and brought under great scrutiny

in this class that I was in,

I kind of didn't know where to look, and so I thought you know,

"I'm a follower of Jesus.

So, Jesus is the one who claimed to be God,

was resurrected from the dead-

He gets to make the rules

about what I believe about everything.

And so when I was in college, I studied

the writings of Karl Barth, and I was like, Oh my gosh! like,

"I think this is just a human document."

Like, there are all sorts of inconsistencies...

I mean, when people talk to me about inerrancy...

Is the Bible inerrant?

When someone uses, like, "without error", or "inerrant",

or "infallible" to describe the Bible,

they're essentially saying they wish they had a different

kind of book!

For example, Rob Bell

has said that it degrades the Bible to put it in the category

of inerrant, or the word of God.

It actually degrades and devalues the Bible,

because it places categories on the Bible that

that nobody in the Bible would ever have thought to even

place on the Bible.

But to say that the Bible is "inerrant"

when it doesn't even refer to itself as "inerrant"

is really, really problematic! To say that it's authoritative,

I would say, "What do you mean by that?"

Just looking at what Jesus believed

about the Old Testament is stunning!

It's very clear that Jesus affirmed over and over

and over again,

that the Old Testament was the word of God.

Jesus is the word of God incarnate,

and yet he submitted to the scriptures.

Three times the devil comes and tempts Him,

And Jesus says each time, It is written." "It is written."

"It is written. The devil even quotes scripture back to Him!

So, in Matthew 15:4

He referenced several commands from Exodus,

and Leviticus, and Deuteronomy,

and how he described them was he said, For God said,

and then he quotes the Old Testament passage.

He told the Pharisees that they void the word of God

by adding their own traditions to it.

So, He's referring to scripture as the word of God there.

And so, when he says in his high priestly prayer

in John 17:17, "Sanctify them in truth; Your word is truth,"

it meant that it's revelation!

And, it's reliable revelation because it comes from God.

Scripture has come to us over time.

That's what we mean by "progressive", over time.

But it's not as if the earlier revelation is regressive,

or inferior, and somehow the New Testament is

better in the sense that it's

correcting the mistakes of the old.

But progressive Christianity

as a movement looks at the earliest Christians.

They look at Paul and Peter.

The first disciples, the first century church,

the second century church,

and they view that as: that's Christianity in its infancy.

Essentially, you read the Bible as an

evolving narrative.

So, the knowledge they had

of God at that time

wasn't quite as evolved as the knowledge that we have now.

Instead of, Well, God did this.

We don't know! All we have is human accounts of what-

how people understood it

in their evolving understandings of how the world works.

All throughout history,

human beings are growing, and maturing, and evolving

into what Brian McLaren would call,

A higher and wiser view of God.

So, the Bible becomes sort of like

an interesting book to see what people thought of God

at the time,

but it's not actually God breathed words.

In the evolution of human consciousness,

we were infantile,

and we pulled God down to our level, you know?

A fighting God, an angry God,

- a jealous God... - Yeah.

So Oprah, apparently, according to her,

was first alienated from Christianity

hearing a sermon about God as a jealous God.

I think I shared this with you before.

I was sitting in a church service,

listening to a really fine minister talk about

God being angry and jealous,

and in the same breath saying omnipotent,

all-caring, all-loving!

For you shall not worship any other god,

for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

And I was, you know,

caught up in the rapture of that moment until he said "jealous."

And she took the word jealous in the

wrong way, not understanding what that means,

that God is zealous for who He is, and won't share His glory.

She took it as meaning jealous of her.

And God's also jealous?

Jealous... God is jealous of me?

Jealous God? Like, but God is love! How is that possible? Um,

I don't think I have so much of a problem with Oprah

maybe recoiling in that moment.

Something about that didn't...

didn't feel right in my spirit.

But what I have a problem with is that instead of testing

the spirits, instead of going through the scriptures

to understand for herself,

she just totally tossed out any concept of what

the pastor was saying

and decided to just go with her feelings.

That's when the... the search

for something more than doctrine,

uh, started to stir within me.

I would love to talk to that person,

because that person is very intelligent, very hard-working,

they've... they've created an empire!

Now, this is what I would say to them:

If I walked into your central offices where you have

your main office as founder and president of your empire,

and I walked right in and said, "I'm taking over!"

and I started commanding people to do certain things,

I started taking money,

I started spending it a certain way.

Although I have nothing to do with what you built,

you would probably walk out of your office with disdain,

and rightfully so, and say to me, "Who do you think you are?"

"This is not yours!" And I say, "Well whose is it?"

"Well it's mine, I made it!"

And you would... you would be rightfully jealous

for the thing that you had created, that you had made.

Would you reserve the right for you to feel that way,

for you to burn with a righteous jealousy

over the things that you created?

And yet you say that God has no right

to be jealous over the things that He has made.

He has every right! This is His world!

But His jealousy goes beyond ours in that ours is oftentimes

selfish and self-centered.

His jealousy also benefits His creatures,

because He knows that for us to live

for anything other than Him

will just lead to us being ruined.

And so, His jealousy actually is motivated

not only by His glory, but by His love!

All of that Old Testament is God-given.

And you can't just simply say, "Well...

we're in the New Testament era now. We're going to

dismiss the Old Testament!"

That is a wrong view of Scripture,

that's a wrong view of divine revelation,

and it will never lead us to a proper understanding

of the cross.

In the New Testament, I see the greatest

display of wrath ever, ever displayed before mankind,

far greater than Sodom and Gomorrah,

far greater than the flood of Noah!

It was when God poured out His holy wrath on His son

there on that rugged cross for all of us who would believe.

Any idea of like a divine being who kills his son-

I just reject wholeheartedly.

I think it's important that when we read the Bible,

we realize that we're gonna read things

that offend our sensibilities!

That's a sick God and a sick story!

And so that's why we need to let the Bible,

we need to let the word of God, correct our sensibilities,

when they're wrong!

One of the worst things about the American gospel today

is that people are made to believe that God

loves the sinner, but he hates the sin.

So that, somehow, sin is divorced from the sinner.

I just have some verses that seriously

say the opposite!

that not only does God hate sin,

but He also hates the sinner, in his sin!

For You are not a God who takes pleasure

in wickedness; No evil dwells with you.

The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;

You hate all who do iniquity.

The next verse, The Lord abhors

the man of bloodshed. Not just that he abhors bloodshed,

He abhors the man of bloodshed!

Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."

I mean there is a hatred of God toward the sinner!

After all, it is not simply the sin that goes to hell,

but the sinner!

So there is this love-hate relationship

that God has with the sinner.

I just think that comes from a lack of

biblical literacy, that we have now. Right?

I mean, people don't open up their Bibles

and if you don't open up your Bible you're going to believe

what Tom & Jerry says.

And Tom & Jerry says that Satan is the one

that is going to torment you.

And it is not the devil who is inflicting

the wrath in hell.

The devil is the recipient of wrath,

he is not the dispenser of wrath.

So, who is exercising wrath in hell?

Let me give you another example:

Heaven is heaven because God is there.

Well that is most... that is true!

But then the counter is not true:

"Hell is hell because God's not there."

That's not what scripture teaches!

Hell is the wrath of Almighty God!

God is omnipresent.

God is everywhere present.

and not only is God present in the heights of heaven,

but God is also present in the depths of hell.

So, Matthew 10:28 says:

Do not fear those who kill the body

but are unable to kill the soul;

but rather fear Him who is able to destroy

both soul and body in hell.

The reality is

if you are a unbeliever, and if you are condemned to hell,

you're not separated from God!

You may be separated from God's love!

And Revelation 14:10 gives

some shocking insight-

that the wrath is being inflicted

by Jesus Christ Himself!

in the very presence of Christ in hell.

That's a terrifying thought-

that the sinner will never escape,

not only the wrath of Christ, but Christ Himself!

Now some of you will walk out of here tonight shocked!

You'll say, I've never heard anything like that.

You'll say, He was mean- spirited. All sorts of things,

but I can assure you if you would only read old books

you would find out this is what preachers have always said!

They don't say it anymore because they want big churches!

So as my eyes were opened to my own sin more and more,

and to the amazing holiness and perfection of God

and the incredible divide between myself and my creator,

I began not to see hell as this cosmic injustice,

but I began to see it as something that

every one of us deserved!

and how incredible God's mercy is,

that He's chosen to offer us a way to be saved.

But God, being rich in mercy,

because of His great love with which He loved us,

even when we were dead in our transgressions,

made us alive together with Christ

(by grace you have been saved).

But God's love is of such a character,

that He's even able to love

and show love and demonstrate love

towards the objects of His wrath.

It is though with one hand,

God is holding back His justice against this world,

and with another hand He is pleading for men to come!

but one day both hands will be dropped!

You know that, don't you?

Often, I think, there's a misunderstanding

among Atheists and even among progressive Christians,

who would say, Well, you're only believing the gospel

that you believe, because you're scared of hell.

When you tell me that I should follow Jesus,

so that I don't burn forever, it sounds like a threat!

As if like you scare people enough they will

all of a sudden, magically, decide to love God and

follow Jesus.

There are many motivations in scripture.

we can make mistakes about biblical motivation by

going a couple of directions. One mistake is to not say,

"There is a plurality of motivations."

That is reward, gain, fear of consequence, love for God-

these are all motivations that the scriptures use.

The other mistake is not to say,

"There is a priority of motivations."

We must be careful when we start

talking about fear

as a motivation to serve the Lord.

The Bible clearly says that we ought to fear the Lord.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom...

But there the Bible's talking about a holy fear.

To me, one of the best places in the Bible to discern

what biblical fear is,

that it's not simply terror,

is the prophecies of the coming Messiah, in Isaiah.

Where we're told in the second and third verses

that when Jesus comes,

He will come in the fear of the Lord.

Whatever we think to be the relationship between

the Father and the Son- we know it is perfect love!

And fear being described there, with a Son who

perfectly loves His Father,

cannot simply mean "terror of harm,"

rather it has the notion of I have full regard,

proper respect, reverence and awe

for all that my heavenly Father is.

It's faith working through love

because of a correct understanding of God. Now,

Now, I do believe that in the early stages of conviction

God often uses this motivation of fear,

but once God moves us from self-preservation

in that process of conviction,

and reveals who He is, through His son,

granting faith and repentance,

through the power of regeneration-love takes over.

and love casts out that fear.

So if their relationship of God can be described as,

Well, I'm afraid I'm going to die and go to hell

so I've got to accept Jesus.

That tells me they have not come to see God as He really is.

That person is still all about himself.

All men want to go to Heaven. All men want to avoid hell,

but it is primarily for self- idolatry and self-preservation.

We have to have a correct understanding

of the gospel call.

Today it is very common for someone to say,

Do you know you're a sinner?

And if someone says, Yes, I know, I'm a sinner.

Well then, they go right onto the next question.

But you see, whether we know we're a sinner or not

really is no indicator that God is working

or that we're being convicted of our sin.

The question is not, Do you know you're a sinner?

The question is, Has God, through the gospel,

so worked in your heart that you now hate the sin you once loved,

and you love the righteousness you once hated?"

If someone says, Yeah, I know I'm a sinner.

Then the question is, Would you like to go to heaven?

And I always make this statement:

Who doesn't want to go to heaven?

As a matter fact, our entire view

in sociology and in the realm of the political is-

is this-a utopia!

But Jesus' fundamental question was,

How do we bring heaven here?

Everyone wants to live in a perfect place!

So the question in the Gospel call is not,

Do you want to go to heaven?

The question in the gospel call is this: Do you want God?

You see, almost everyone wants to go to heaven-they just don't

want a righteous God to be there when they get there!

I'm not a Christian because I'm afraid of hell.

I'm a Christian because I love God, who loved me enough

to save me from hell!

And it's because we love Him!

I don't want to be apart from His love forever.

I don't want to be separated from Him in any way

because I love Him!

And so the grace of God, much more than

the fires of hell, became the focus of my attention.

Grace is really one of the attributes of God!

Grace is God's undeserved activity of kindness-

doing for me what I cannot do for myself.

I think we all benefit from God's benevolence,

in a general way.

The Bible says He causes the rain and the sun

to fall on the just and the unjust.

Even Hitler was allowed to enjoy a beautiful sunset.

But it's only through repentance and faith

in Jesus Christ,

that a person goes from being at enmity with God,

under God's curse, under God's wrath,

to a place of safety and blessing and peace!

The Bible calls that "reconciliation."

That we have been reconciled to God, while we were His enemies!

For while we were still helpless

at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

For one will hardly die for a righteous man;

though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us

in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

How can God pardon a wicked man and still be a righteous God?

Paul answers that question- he answers this problem,

in Romans chapter three.

For all have sinned and fall short

of the glory of God,

being justified as a gift by His grace

through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.

Redemption is the payment of a ransom of a price,

So that a slave, a criminal, a prisoner might go free.

Well, Christ paid that ransom!

And some people have believed, wrongly, that somehow

Christ paid a ransom to the devil.

And that's not at all the case!

The ransom was paid to the justice of God.

...whom God displayed publicly

as a propitiation in His blood through faith.

Propitiation turns back God's wrath.

It meets God's righteous, holy demand.

This was to demonstrate His righteousness.

Now why would God have to do that?

Well when we look through human history and see

God's dealing with men, especially in the Old Testament,

we see God forgiving and saving unrighteous men,

who deserved death!

...because in the forbearance of God

He passed over the sins previously committed.

In the flood of Noah, Noah should have died!

He was a sinner.

God, you called Abraham and called him your friend

and yet he was a sinner!

He did not believe you, at times.

He lied about his wife.

When David committed the sin of adultery

and murder, the law said he was to be stoned.

That's why David didn't offer any sacrifice.

There was no sacrifice he could offer!

and yet when he prays that most beautiful,

repentative prayer of Psalm 51-

What does he appeal to,

but the mercy and the lovingkindness of God?

And when God exposes David for his sin by the prophet Nathan,

Nathan tells him, You'll not die, God forgives you.

In that moment, the God of the Bible appeared

to be unrighteous.

Well, how could God save Noah, Abraham and David?

because God's Son died for all of them on Calvary!

For the demonstration, I say,

of His righteousness at the present time,

so that He would be just and the justifier of the one

who has faith in Jesus.

Those men in the Old Testament were saved

by faith. They were saved by faith,

but faith in the saving work of God!

The most troubling thing is when conservative exegetes

say, with certainty, "That's what this means.

That solves the problem! That solves the crisis!"

I would just challenge you to look at the consistent witness

of the entire Bible, from the very beginning of the Bible

it's clear that somebody has to pay a price for sin.

Something has to die. In the Old Testament

we have the sacrificial system. The spotless Lamb

had to give its life for the sins of Israel.

So God called for blood to be shed.

And when the people trusted in the shedding of that blood-

the promise of God for the forgiveness of their sins,

they were forgiven. Not because there was anything about that

animal's blood that saved them,

but they were trusting in the sacrifice

that God had provided for them,

which was a shadow of the ultimate sacrifice to come!

There must be an atonement for us to believe in,

and that atonement is the person of Jesus Christ.

And so what gets subtly, sort of,

caught and taught is that

Jesus rescues you from God.

There's a God who loves some people enough

that He'll save them, while He burns everybody else.

That's not really that good of news!

Like I could do better!

But what kind of God is that,

that we would need to be rescued from this God?

You say that God has saved you. From what has God saved you?

We are saved from God Himself!

And there's only one who can save from God

and that is God, Himself!

That is, Jesus

who rescues us from the wrath to come.

Salvation is deliverance

from the wrath of God, against sin!

Much more then,

having now been justified by His blood,

we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.

I like to say it this way:

God has saved us from Himself.

God has saved us by Himself.

And God has saved us for Himself.

How could that God ever be good?

How could that God ever be trusted?

And how could that ever be good news?

I'll never forget I got a text from my friend,

Did you see John Piper's tweet?

And so I looked it up, myself...

There was a famous tweet,

from John Piper, that said, Farewell Rob Bell.

And he came under a lot of criticism for this tweet.

John Piper is dismissing another pastor,

from Christian community? We're like what does this mean?

He's asking questions! Like...

are we not supposed to do that?

People like Rachel Held Evans and

other progressives said, you know,

He didn't even read the book, and yet he's

condemning Rob Bell.

A lot of the people who seemed

to have the harshest criticism, in regards to Rob's book,

- had not in fact read the book! - Hmm.

He never takes a position in the book.

He merely poses the question.

But one thing that often gets left out of that

conversation is that there was a trailer for the book

in which Rob Bell, basically, denied the wrath of God.

He denied core things of the gospel in asking questions.

So to say, Well, he was just asking questions.

One thing I've seen over and over again

in the progressive church

is that sometimes there's an answer embedded in the question.

This is why lots of people want nothing to do

with the Christian faith! They see it as an endless list

of absurdities and inconsistencies and they say,

Why would I ever want to be a part of that?

And so that's when questions actually become statements,

masquerading as questions.

and I think that's what John Piper was responding to.

Penal substitutionary atonement

is something that I used to be

so unbelievably committed to,

That I thought it was the only way to view God.

The problem is when I started to actually learn the history...

The payment model of Jesus' death on the cross,

traditionally called penal substitution,

is a recent development.

You can find little hints of it in the early church,

but it really came to the fore a thousand years ago,

halfway in the history of Christianity.

and then it became amped up, even more,

500 years ago at the Reformation.

And so that sent me on a bit of a search through church history

because I wanted to know if what they were saying was true.

Is this something that really wasn't a part of

the earliest form of Christianity?

The doctrine of penal substitution

really came to its own in the Reformation

and post-Reformation era, but that does not mean

that it was not there in seed form, in embryonic form,

and even in somewhat developed form earlier in the

history of the church. Historical theology does

does properly develop over time,

but we have to understand what we mean by that.

Everything is given to us in the scripture,

Yet, as the church confronts various challenges

and false teaching, it has to learn to become precise.

This happened in the doctrine of the Trinity.

The same thing is true in the atonement.

The atonement wasn't attacked early on,

but as time went on, there had to become more

clarification and precision given to

the nature of the cross.

And so when we get to

the discussion of the church fathers,

we want to ask the question, not

"Do they have a full developed penal substitutionary

theory of the atonement?" We want to ask,

Do they talk about the atonement having a

penal and substitutionary aspect to it?

And there the answer's actually really easy!

In the early church there were a couple other theories,

versions, understandings, interpretations,

of Jesus' death on the cross.

that were really popular. The most popular one,

in first thousand years, was what I call

"the victory theory."

There is a dominant theme in a lot of the

church fathers about the cross of Christ

and His resurrection, and that is what we sometimes call

"Christus Victor." Or at least,

that's what modern scholars call it.

And this is the view, a classic view,

that Jesus had victory over sin,

over death and over the devil, on the cross.

And we find this emphasis in scripture, as well,

about this victory that conquered Satan,

not just our sin. Hebrews speaks about it:

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood,

he himself also partook of the same things,

that through death he might destroy the one who has

power over death, that is the devil,

and deliver all those who through fear of death

were subject to lifelong slavery."

This is a biblical view, this concept of Jesus as

the victorious one.

But to suggest that they held this view

as some sort of contradiction of penal substitution

is simply not true!

See, this is why this penal substitutionary atonement theory

begins with Calvin. That's where it comes from!

It's 500 years old. It's a product of modernity.

To demonstrate this, let me share a quote from

Eusebius of Caesarea. And this guy

lived 1000 years before Calvin.

and you just want to listen to this quote for "penal" and

"substitutionary" language. Here it is:

Thus, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world

became a curse on our behalf.

He then stated, 'And the Lamb of God not only did this,

but was chastised on our behalf and suffered

a penalty He did not owe, but which we owed because of

the multitude of our sins;

and so He became the cause of the forgiveness of our sins,

because He received death for us,

and transferred to Himself

the scourging, the insults, and the dishonor,

which were due to us, and drew down upon Himself

the appointed curse, being made a curse for us.'"

And so the idea that that theme of substitution

is absent from early Christianity

is demonstrably false!

One of the biblical words used to talk about the atonement

is "ransom." So it shouldn't surprise us that we have the

"ransom theory" of the atonement.

And in the early church the ransom theory is very prominent.

Jesus, in His own words, said,

For the Son of Man has come not to be served, but to serve,

and to give His life a ransom for many.

Where the ransom theory started to go wrong

was this idea crept into the conversation

that the ransom was paid to Satan! And that just

doesn't make sense! And it almost puts

God at the mercy of Satan.

But if we understand "ransom" as a satisfaction

of God's justice,

well we're very close to the substitutionary theory!

But what they don't want to do, is they don't

want to say, "At the center, at the hub, at the very core

of the death of Jesus Christ is substitution,

penalty substitution."

There are substitutionary themes in

various versions of the atonement. No question about it!

It doesn't mean, however, that God is demanding a payment!

The book and movie The Chronicles of Narnia:

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,

the C. S. Lewis classic, we have a picture

of what may be that ransom to the devil view.

Where Aslan makes a deal with the White Witch.

You know, Aslan representing Jesus.

The White Witch representing Satan.

He has to buy Edmund, from the devil,

so that he gives his own life.

The White Witch thinking she's conquered Aslan,

is like, "Now I'm going to just dominate. I've killed him.

I can take over." But it's a big trick!

And so after Aslan is slain

he uses the "older law" to overcome the devil

and to claim victory.

So now he has Edmund and the victory.

Today this view that Jesus paid a debt to Satan

is taught by many in the Word of Faith,

New Apostolic Reformation movement.

They believe in what's called the "spiritual death of Jesus."

They believe that Jesus died two deaths-

one physical, on the cross, and one spiritual.

Now Jesus went to hell,

suffered the depth of hell, that no man has ever suffered!

That when Jesus died on the cross, then He went to hell!

Jesus goes to hell. I believe He went to Hades.

He went down and descended into the depths of the earth,

for three days, and He pays for the sin of mankind.

And He suffered, was tortured by the demons...

The demons attacked Him in hell and trying to annihilate Him,

and he was in that pit, just emaciated!

What they are teaching

is that Jesus' death on the cross didn't save us.

What happened was He went into hell

and that's where He won our salvation!

but that is not what the scripture says,

and that's not what Jesus meant when He said, It is... What?

Finished.

When you carry this doctrine out to its

logical conclusion, it's a very heretical doctrine

because if Jesus died spiritually

then He never was God, to begin with!

because God cannot cease to be God!

One of the early figures who speaks into this greatly

is Anselm.

Anselm was a theologian

and he later became Archbishop of Canterbury.

And particularly, most wonderfully,

he wrote on the atonement

in a book called Why the God Man?

One of the things that Anselm wanted to do

is to reassert that, no the debt

was owed to God, not to Satan.

The one who destroys both soul and body

in hell is not Satan. The one who destroys soul and body

in hell is God! The judge is God.

There's another version that came along

about the same time as the "payment theory,"

and it was developed by a theologian

named Peter Abelard,

who said everything about God is love,

and so everything in the crucifixion of Jesus

must be love!

It has to be, ultimately, about love.

And so I call it the "magnet theory."

Others have called it the "moral influence theory."

And what Abelard argued is that when Jesus hangs on the cross,

He's like a massive magnet. It's an act of such overwhelming

sacrificial love, that He draws people into Himself by that act.

Then it ties right back into Jesus' Last Supper,

where He washes the disciples' feet and says,

I've set an example for you. Now go do this for others.

There was an earlier theologian,

in the early 20th century, James Denny, who used the example of

of a man sitting on the end of a pier

and falling into the water, and not being able to swim.

Somebody runs and jumps off the pier and saves him,

and brings him out! And in that, risks his own life and-

and finally, actually, himself ends up drowning,

but saving the other man's life!

Well he's accomplished something,

even though it was at the cost of his own life.

He's accomplished saving that man who was in danger.

What if, on the other hand, somebody's sitting

on the end of the pier, perfectly fine,

not falling into the water,

and some guy comes running along down the pier saying,

I'm going to show you how much I love you by dying for you!"

And jumping in the water and just drowning!

Well that death doesn't show anything,

because it doesn't accomplish anything!

In the first example it accomplished

the saving of that man's life, and therefore it showed

a self-sacrificial love.

In the second example it doesn't accomplish anything

and therefore doesn't show anything at all!

Well I think that's the problem with a lot of these other ideas

of the atonement when they try to stand without substitution.

So none of the other images work, if that one isn't true!

It's the most fundamental of them all.

It's the most central of them. You take that out-

it's like "Jenga" - everything else falls down!

The fallacy is to claim

that one version of the atonement is s dominant!

That's the fallacy!

His substitution, in our place,

is essential for all those other

beautiful images in the New Testament

to have any meaning or coherence at all.

There is a constant stream

of misrepresentations, strawman arguments,

against penal substitution.

Hey! God is less grumpy 'cause of Jesus!

Atonement theory in 17 seconds! And much more...

Others say that penal substitution requires

we view God like a pagan deity,

who is mollified by throwing a virgin into a volcano.

The God who is mollified by

throwing the virgin in the volcano,

or the God who is mollified by His Son being nailed to a tree,

is not the "Abba" of Jesus!

Brian Zahnd is a pastor in Missouri, who wrote a book

called, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God

and what's clear from his book is that he hates

penal substitution-He thinks it's a terrible evil,

evil doctrine!

But what's also clear from his book, is that he never

actually interacts with penal substitution!

He handles strawman and misrepresentations on every page

and never engages with the biblical doctrine!

Some years ago, I wrote a book

called, The Lost Message of Jesus.

In it I said, "The cross is not a form of 'cosmic child abuse.'

Vengeful father punishing his son for an offence

he didn't commit!"

So, there's a story about a father, a son, and a train, that-

this is often used in youth groups to illustrate the gospel.

It goes like this:

there's a dad who's a switch operator on a railroad tracks,

and his switch house is way up on a hill,

overlooking the bridge.

And so he brings his son to work one day,

and his son is fishing near the tracks

while he is operating the drawbridge, and,

you know, this drawbridge allows the ships to...

to go back and forth underneath it.

And so, while the father is away for a moment,

the son notices that there's a train approaching.

And so, he tries to warn his father, but he can't find him.

And so, the son attempts to lower the bridge himself,

but he falls into the gears of the drawbridge.

And so, this leaves the father with this horrible decision.

He's... if he lowers the drawbridge,

then the passengers of the train will be saved,

but it will kill his son.

But if he chooses to save his son,

then the train will actually derail, and then

all the passengers on the train will die.

And so, the father ends up choosing to lower the bridge,

which saves the passengers on the train, but

but kills his son. His son is crushed in the gears.

And then, if the story's being told by a

youth pastor who really wants to... really wants to

twist the knife, he'll say,

And as he looked in the windows of the train,

there were people gambling, and drinking, and fornicating."

And like, "They didn't even know

the sacrifice that had just been made to cause them to, you know,

survive-to allow them to live!"

It's a very powerful, emotional image,

and when it's used, some people have said,

"Now that's a perfect example of what I mean by the

abusive nature of this teaching of penal substitution

in the death of Christ."

To which I go, well, that shows the limitation

of our illustrations!

But particularly abhorrent

is the penal substitutionary atonement theory

that turns the Father of Jesus into a pagan deity

who can only be placated by the barbarism of child sacrifice-

and this will not do!

But what it completely misses, is Christ's own

voluntary laying down of His life!

He was not like the little child, trapped there unwittingly,

you know, having his life sacrificed by his father

for the good of strangers.

But what they're forgetting is that

God is triune...

that the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit-

they're all of one essence.

And because they're all of one essence,

they all agree

in terms of motivation for the cross.

It would be wrong to suggest that, um,

the Lord Jesus is being subjected to a punishment

for which He was unwilling.

Jesus says in the Gospel of John,

Nobody takes my life,

I lay it down willfully. And He says,

If I have the power to lay it down,

and he says, I also have the power, the authority,

to take it up again.

Or, that He in turn was seeking to coerce the Father

to display His love in a way that would be-if you like-

breaking new territory.

It makes God a vindictive monster!

Does God really love me, or has He simply been paid off?

The Bible is so helpful to us if we just read it, you know?

That, uh, the most famous verse in the Bible

explains the magnificence of a love of God, you know,

John 3:16: "...that He so loved that He gave..."

Jesus did not die on the cross

so that the Father would love us.

Jesus died on the cross because the Father loves us!

The scripture is very clear that to understand Jesus correctly,

we have to understand that He is the Son of God

from all eternity!

We have a Trinitarian God:

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, equal in rank, and authority,

and power, and equally God.

And our plan of salvation flowed out of their love

or one another, so we should not at all picture a-

a flailing Son who's turning from a vengeful Father.

He's fully God with the Father and Spirit,

and at a point in time, as John's gospel tells us,

that the Son of God, "the Word became flesh."

And what this means is that the Son of God added to

His divine nature, a second nature, a human nature.

so that we can really say that in the Son of God,

God Himself is taking His own righteous requirements

upon Himself in our place!

God's justice was satisfied by God!

He absorbed, as God, the punishment that we deserved.

So, when someone calls the doctrine of penal

substitutionary atonement "divine child abuse,"

they're failing to make that distinction that

Jesus Christ was God in the flesh, laying down His life

intentionally!

That's not child abuse! That is a hero of the story

taking the cross on as a means of saving His people!

And, what they're really criticizing is just a

weak caricature of the doctrine itself.

It is a perfect design

that is Trinitarian in nature,

where each member of the Trinity voluntarily and freely

does their part.

I love how Jesus, in John chapter 17,

repeatedly refers to those whom the Father gave to Him.

And the glory that He had with the Father in eternity,

this glory that is now going to be revealed.

This is referred to in theology as the "covenant of redemption."

This is a manifestation

of the love of the Father, the love of the Son,

and the love of the Spirit.

The idea is the Father loved the Son,

and He expressed His love for the Son

by bequeathing a people to the Son in eternity past.

And when the Father sends,

He knows in that sending what He's giving up!

The Son responds in love to the Father

by dying to redeem the people whom the Father gave to Him.

And the Son voluntarily comes

out of love for the Father, out of love for this people!

And the Spirit, the personification of the love

between the Father and the Son, actually applies redemption

to all those for whom Christ died.

And so, my salvation really is part of a bigger expression

of the love that God has for God!

All this construct creating contradiction between

the persons of the Trinity is just the work of the devil.

This is the doctrine of Christianity!

This is the doctrine that separates Christianity

from every other religion in the world!

At the end of the Reformation era,

there arose a whole viewpoint known as Socinianism.

Socinianism is really going back to earlier heresies.

It denied the doctrine of the Trinity, and of course

denied the deity of the Son. It denied penal substitution.

It ultimately argued that God is a Unitarian God,

not Trinitarian,

that God is simply able to forgive sins without any kind

of atonement or payment for sin.

But this was their argument:

"If God demands a payment, then He isn't really forgiving.

If He forgives, He shouldn't demand a payment!

You can either have sins forgiven or paid for,

but not both!"

I do not deny that there is a substitutionary component

in Jesus' death on the cross.

Paul writes about it, and I'm not denying it!

I'm just saying God did not say,

I need a pound of flesh from those people,

but their pounds of flesh aren't good enough, holy enough,

heavy enough, or whatever.

I need Jesus! I need a divine pound of flesh!

I mean, I had this image of God going like, Okay, listen.

This guy's worthy of death.

I don't... I don't care if I kill him, I just...

I m gonna kill somebody!

I just gotta kill somebody out there! And Jesus goes,

You can kill me! And he goes, Oh, okay!

As long as I get to kill somebody!

And the obvious question is, like,

"Why does God need to kill anybody in order to forgive?"

That's the Socinian argument, and

on the face of it, it seems to appeal to human reason.

And you might say, "Well, so what's wrong with that argument?"

And scripture answers it clearly:

"without shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness."

Forgiveness always requires some sort of sacrifice.

Why can't God do what He asks us to be able to do,

to freely forgive without demanding retribution first?

Jesus doesn't say, Punch him in the mouth,

and then you can forgive him.

Or, Kill their baby, and then you can forgive him.

He just goes like, Just forgive 'em!

If Jesus says we're supposed to forgive each other,

why can't God just forgive us?

So often the parable of the prodigal son

is used as a rebuttal to penal substitutionary atonement.

Again, I go back to the parable of the prodigal son-

There was no payment! The Father is not paid!

He isn't saying, Okay, I'm- I'm gonna forgive that kid

for taking the inheritance and squandering it and all of that,

but somebody's gonna... somebody's gonna pay me back!

No, there's no payment!

So the whole concept of thinking that forgiveness

can be offered without an actual sacrifice on God's part

doesn't even jive with the way we think about forgiveness

in human circumstances in everyday life.

In Matthew chapter 5, Jesus says,

"You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye,

and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you,

do not resist an evil person;

but whoever slaps you on your right cheek,

turn the other to him also."

So, Jesus is saying that if someone sins against you

by slapping you on the right cheek,

the justice would mean "an eye for an eye."

So, justice would be return a slap for a slap.

As all theologians should know, the very concept of forgiveness

is based on the ancient practice of releasing a debt

rather than collecting it from someone else.

But Jesus is commanding us to forgive those

who have sinned against us, and doing this requires us to...

to turn the other cheek. And turning the other cheek

is to absorb the justice owed to that person.

so the justice that that person actually deserves,

we're absorbing back upon ourselves.

And so, in the story of the prodigal son,

there is a debt that is owed.

And remember, the son had asked for his share of the estate,

and of course squandered his whole inheritance-

he spent everything!

And so, in order for the father to forgive his son,

he had to absorb the loss of that money himself.

He's either replacing it, or he's taking the loss,

but the point is he's not making the son pay it back.

And what God does in the gospel

is He decides not to pay them back what they deserve,

but rather bear the brunt of that sin on Himself.

In the gospel, God's justice

demands the death of the sinner! We know this from Romans 6:23,

which says that "the wages of sin is death."

But instead of giving us the death that we deserve,

God chose to forgive us by

essentially turning the other cheek.

And so, what He was doing was absorbing that justice,

which is our death, into Himself,

in the person of Jesus Christ.

So, instead of us dying for our sins, which is what we deserve,

Christ dies for our sins.

We're sinners redeemed by a gracious God-

a gracious God who is - You're a liar!

- saving souls! - And the truth is

- not in you! - What a graceful God-

- What a merciful God!

What a loving God, that He would send His Son

- to die on a cross - Lie!

- that we might have life!

One of the most important passages

in the entire Bible, and one of my favorite verses in the Bible

is found in 2 Corinthians 5:21, where Paul writes,

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf,

so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

First of all I'd like to point out it says "He," that is God,

made "Him," that is the Son, Jesus,

"who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf..." Now,

Now the first thing that we need to understand is

how magnificent Jesus truly is! He was without sin!

That is an amazing thing!

One time I was dealing with a person,

I was witnessing to them, and they were a part of a religion

that claimed to be Christian, but he believed that

he hadn't sinned in 11 years.

One of the most popular teachers today that

preaches that Christians can attain sinless perfection,

in this lifetime, is Todd White, of Lifestyle Christianity.

You can actually have the Word so strong inside of your heart

that you never have to slip!

People are like, Well, that's false! That's not true!

Well you're wrong! I live with me!

I have lived for 12 years without looking lustfully

at a woman, ever! In 12 years!

And people are like, Well, that's not possible!

You're wrong! I live with me!

This is the heresy of sinless perfectionism

and it is a part of what's known as the Pelagian heresy.

In the epistle of 1 John chapter 1, it says,

If we say we have no sin,

we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

And so I asked him, I said,

What do you suppose is the greatest sin?

And he said, Well, I don't know. And I said, "Well,

could it be breaking the greatest command?

And he said, Well I never thought about it that way.

And I said, What is the greatest command?

It's to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul,

mind and strength.

The first commandment is to love God

with all your heart, with all your soul,

with all your strength, with all your mind.

If ou wake up in love with Jesus. If you go to sleep

in love with Jesus-

If you wake up in the middle of the night in love with Jesus,

you will fulfill the first command!

Of all the billions of people who have walked this earth-

there has never been- of all that mass-

not one person, who for one fraction of a second,

loved the Lord, their God, with all their heart, soul,

mind and strength!

And yet here we have Jesus of Nazareth-

There was never one moment when He did not love the Lord,

His God, with all His heart, soul, mind and strength.

He is truly the magnificent individual of history!

Now this righteous man, according to the plan of God,

He bears the sins of His people.

It says He, that is God, made Him who knew no sin

to be sin on our behalf.

What does it mean that He was made sin on our behalf?

I believe that this question is answered

in the latter part of the text:

So that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Now, the moment a person believes in Jesus,

they are not transformed into a perfectly righteous being

that never sins again.

He came and gave me this blank canvas.

He came and gave me this pure heart

and I've never violated it with anything!

They're nt infused with some special grace

so as to be sinless, and through their sinlessness,

earn their salvation.

It's a legal term.

The moment a person believes in Christ,

God legally, or forensically declares them to be

right with Him!

And He treats them as right with Him!

On the cross our sin was imputed to Christ.

He did not, on the cross, become corrupt or defiled

or twisted or sinful.

He was always the spotless Lamb of God!

but on the cross our sin was imputed to Him.

God legally, or forensically declared His Son to be guilty

in our place and treated Him as guilty!

"All of us, like sheep, have gone astray,

each of us has turned to his own way,

but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all

to fall on Him."

If you go back to Isaiah 53, 700 years before Christ...

But He was pierced through

for our transgressions,

He was crushed for our iniquities;

The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,

And by His scourging we are healed."

All of that is substitutionary language.

All of that is penal substitution.

What does Paul say when it comes to, "I deliver to you

as of first importance..."?

"that Christ died for our sins..."

That's the language of substitution.

Peter says, The just dies for the unjust."

That's penalty substitution!

After the death of Christ, starting with

the first century and on through several centuries,

countless Christians were crucified!

Some of them set on fire, as they hung there on that tree!

And yet the history of martyrdom tells us that many of them

went to the cross, praising God with joy,

that they had the opportunity to die in a similar manner

to their Lord! Now are you going to tell me

that the followers of Jesus Christ

bravely and boldly embraced the cross without complaint,

while the captain of their salvation cries out three times,

Let this cup pass from me?

What was in the cup?

Then He said to them,

'My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death;

remain here and keep watch with Me.'

And He went a little beyond them,

and fell on His face and prayed, saying, 'My Father,

if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me;

yet not as I will, but as You will.'"

And some people have said, "Well that's

a moment of weakness! No!

Not a moment of weakness! Let this cup pass from me

is the only, possible, appropriate comment

for someone who's never known sin!

This is the eternal second member of the Trinity.

This is the eternal, holy, undefiled Son of God,

who is looking at the moment

when He is going to be punished

for all the sins of all the people who would ever be saved

in all of human history!

We don't have a perfect hatred for sin-He did!

everything in His being was repulsed by the thought

of iniquity!

That is deity being anticipatory

of something that the divine nature never had experienced!

You see the difference is this-

those martyrs, they had upon them the pleasure of God!

The delight of God!

The Holy Spirit giving them strength,

granting them assurance,

even bringing them joy!

Yet on Calvary it was completely different!

You have statements, in the Prophets

and in the Psalms, of the cup of God's wrath.

For thus the Lord,

the God of Israel says to me,

'Take this cup of the wine of wrath from my hand

and cause all the nations to whom I send you to drink it.'"

Jesus was volunteering to drink the cup

of God's wrath, the cup that we deserve to drink!

And God plunges the world into darkness,

while Christ is being crucified,

indicating the turning off of the light of His countenance.

About the ninth hour Jesus cried out,

with a loud voice, saying,

My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?

It was if there was a cry from heaven-

excuse my language, but I can be no more accurate than to say,

it was as if Jesus heard the words,

God damn you!

because that's what it meant to be cursed!

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law

having become a curse for us.

for it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.

The Father has withdrawn His favorable presence,

and now the Father is pouring out His active wrath,

upon his Son!

But the Lord was pleased to crush Him,

putting Him to grief."

You know, Isaiah 53:10 is so important!

It pleased the Lord to crush Him.

That doesn't mean that God got some delight

out of seeing His Son suffer,

but it meant that the will of God was accomplished

in the redemption of God's people,

through the suffering of His Son, under the wrath of God.

All forgiveness does is take away the negative.

There has to be the acquisition of the positive.

We need a positive righteousness

if we are to be accepted by God, the Father.

It is by the death of Christ that our sins are washed away.

It is by the life of Christ, that we receive

the perfect righteousness that He has secured for us!

I mean, you cannot read the gospels and think that!

If you read just the gospels,

you would not come out of it thinking,

Oh, Christ's life was to fulfill the righteousness,

so that God could kill Him,

and we could have a perfect sacrifice.

He came "to fulfill all righteousness."

(Matthew 3:15)

And Christ by His obedience to the law

is able to give to us

the righteousness that we so desperately need!

Remember Job chapter 9?

Job says, I need an intercessor,

Someone to stand between God and me-

He could put his hand on God and put his hand on me.

Who could do that? And we know it's Jesus Christ,

the God-man-

He's fully God so He can be our intercessor,

and He's fully man, so He can be our representative.

Just as hell is a separation from the

favorable presence and blessing of God.

Jesus, our substitute,

had to be forsaken by God, separated from his divine favor,

becoming a curse for us.

I did kind of have a problem with the fact that

there was this incongruency- if we're Trinitarian,

and there is this, kind of, problem

where Jesus, who is the second member of the Trinity,

needs to be cut off from divine communion...

You think that somehow we were able to get inside that space

and rip the Trinity to shreds?!

...because He took on our sin, and God is holy

and God can't bear sin, so if Jesus beared sin,

He must've been cut off!

That's a... that's a problem!

Well I think that one of the things that we couldn't say

is that somehow or another it was a sham!

That Christ was not experiencing

the wrath of the Father upon Himself.

We have to have a proper view of the incarnation:

The Son of God in His humanity is... is dying.

The divine nature is not dying.

The Son is dying in that human nature.

Yet at the same time we have to say that it's

the Son of God, who is doing all of this.

The Son of God who is in inseparable relation

with the Father and Spirit.

It would be wrong for us

to diminish the reality of that dereliction in any way.

Still, the unity of the Blessed Trinity was not actually broken!

It takes me into a realm that is almost unfathomable!

And then right before He died, He cried out,

It is finished!" Which means, "paid in full."

The wrath of God was poured forth until justice-

divine justice- was completely satisfied.

"He said, 'It is finished!'

and He bowed his head and give up His spirit."

You say, Well, how in the world

could He bear, in three hours, all the punishment

from God for all the sins of all who would ever believe,

when all those people- if they didn't believe-

couldn't bear the weight of their own punishment

throughout all eternity?"

You see... it is the value of God!

Yes, Jesus of Nazareth was a man,

but Jesus of Nazareth was God- God in the flesh!

and with that came the infinite value of His person!

and that's how He could die in our place

and save us from a multitude of sins.

If we say that the crucifixion is what God is doing to Jesus,

we do violence to the Trinity!

So did God kill Jesus or did man kill Jesus?

And the answer is "both!"

In Peter's sermon, in Acts chapter 2,

Peter says that This man, referring to Christ Jesus,

was delivered over by the predetermined plan

and foreknowledge of God;

and yet you nailed Him to the cross

by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.

And so we see right there that both God killed Christ,

and man killed Christ.

And here we see the tension between the sovereignty of God,

and the responsibility and accountability of man.

And our finite minds can't fully grasp that,

but this is true, and we believe it to be true

because God's Word said that it is.

And I'm telling you that sets up a system...

It makes God the author of a terribly unjust system!

God set it all up, created it this way,

knowing He would have to kill His Son,

as the only way to pay for this.

Now you can do like "theological gymnastics"

and try to say, Well, God's really loving and merciful..."

or whatever. But that's not at the heart of that theory-

at the heart of that theory is justice!

not love, not mercy, not grace... justice!

Why can't it be both?

The storyline of the Bible brings all of us to our knees!

An incomprehensible sovereign, and mighty king,

Who can be "both/and" unto His own glory.

If they really dug down deep

and saw the version of God that is at the root

of the "payment model" of the atonement,

they would say, That's not the God I worship.

That's not the God of the Bible.

If you reject the doctrine

of penal substitution, can you still be a Christian?

Um, I would say this- if you don't fully understand

the doctrine of penal substitution, but you at least

understand that Christ died,

and paid the penalty for your sins, and you accept Him

as your Savior- you can be a Christian.

You might not be able to articulate the full doctrine.

But to deny that doctrine,

to say that Christ did not die in your place, for your sins,

is to flatly deny the atonement itself.

And it is to deny the validation of the Father,

who raised Him from the dead.

"He was raised for our justification"

because the penalty satisfied the justice of God.

See, the resurrection

was the affirmation that Jesus was who He said He was,

and that what He did, worked!

The devil has no claim on Him!

Sin has no claim on Him!

Death has no claim on Him!

Therefore, the good news for the Christian,

is that when we belong to Christ, all of those things

can be said of us as well!

Then in the end I stopped believing that Jesus

physically rose from the dead. You know, you end up,

sort of believing, "It's a metaphor!" You know?

Like- and all the way through this as I would talk to people

they would go like, You are trying to mess with my faith!

And I was like, No, no!

I'm just trying to hold onto mine!

Just trying to stay in the game!"

There is no metaphor here! Christianity wouldn't exist

had it been a metaphor.

If the resurrection of Jesus

wasn't a real event, in real history,

then Christianity is false, and the questions mean nothing!

Paul said, If Christ has not been raised,

then your faith is in vain and you're still in your sins.

You can't deny Christ, and you can't deny His work,

and be saved!

There came a point, five or six years ago,

where I had a bike crash, and I almost died!

and I had a head injury, and for a month

I couldn't think straight. And when I came out of that-

when... when I recovered my senses,

I realized like, I'm going to die!

I almost died, and I'm going to die!

and when I die this brain of mine will break down,

and my personality is right here, in my brain.

I know that because like if you smash my brain against a tree

at 40 miles an hour- I change!

I remember saying to my wife, I think this life

is all we get!

And she said, Yeah, I think so too.

And she said, I think you better stop being

a professional Christian,

'cause you don't believe any of it anymore!"

So I'm a secular humanist,

because I don't believe in supernaturalism,

but I'm really committed to these values

of love and justice

and wonder and gratitude.

♪ Oh that old rugged cross ♪

♪ so despised by the world ♪

♪ has a wondrous attraction for me. ♪

There's a myth in our culture that

Christianity in the West is dying.

But if you look closely at the denominations that are

hemorrhaging members, it's all the same denominations

who have stopped teaching fundamental Christian truths,

like the inerrancy of Scripture,

like the exclusivity of Jesus in salvation,

and the reality of hell.

They've given up on teaching these Christian truths,

and in the process they have been emptied

of the power that is the gospel!

♪ Stained with blood so divine. ♪

♪ A wondrous beauty I see. ♪

I tried the gospel!

I loved the idea of a loving Jesus

and I kept changing- I kept ignoring Bible verses,

and underlining different Bible verses,

and I kept like, bending things around

so that I could end up with a god...

who I could truly love!

The problem is-

is that once you're done making all those adjustments,

I realized that the god I believed in

was a god of my own invention!

Believe me, the last god I believed in was awesome!

I loved that guy! He was just like me!

So what we are seeing is not

the failing of Christianity in the West.

What we are seeing is, nominal Christians,

who were never Christian to begin with,

are shedding that skin, they're setting aside that garb,

and they're being honest about who they really are!

If my whole life and my whole identity,

and all my relationships

depend upon me believing in Jesus in a certain way,

I'd be crazy to entertain any other idea!

♪ And exchange it one day ♪

The wonder isn't that I stayed a Christian for 30 years-

it's that I got out at all!

The only difference between me

and the Atheist, is the grace of God!

And so I was driving in my car, one day,

and was listening to the radio, just kind of scanning,

and I heard this man's voice,

actually answering a lot of the claims that

this pastor had brought up in class.

He was just very calm and intelligent in how

he was answering these claims.

And it turns out that it was a Christian apologetics event,

and the man answering the questions was Ravi Zacharias.

And so I discovered this whole wide world of apologetics.

So I began to follow him, and got hooked up with a seminary

and began to take classes in seminary. I began to study

and study, and study!

And I'm so thankful to God that what was reconstructed

through the help of the Holy Spirit,

was historic Christianity.

That looks a little bit different

than what I was raised with. There've been some things

I've corrected along the way. There've been

some doctrines I've rethought,

but the core, the gospel, stands!

And the historic claims that Christianity has made for

2,000 years, stands!

The Bible is reliable!

And I've come to affirm in an even stronger way, than before,

that it is authoritative for my life,

that it is-as Jesus said it was-the Word of God.

Liberal Christianity shares a foundation

with Atheism, with unbelief.

I think Atheism is actually the most healthy

spiritual response to that view of God!

That's why you can have an Atheist like

Richard Dawkins, who shares the same

moral indignation and disgust

over a doctrine like penal substitutionary atonement

as the liberal theologian.

Why didn't He just forgive them?

Why was it necessary to have a human sacrifice?

To have His Son tortured and executed,

in order that the sins of mankind should be absolved!

Is that not the most disgusting idea you ever heard?

And the question is, "Do I know people

whose belief in the supernatural has died the same way mine did,

who are still preaching in pulpits,

and who are still working as missionaries?"

I do! I know lots of them! They write to me secretly!

And they say the same thing to me-they say, "Listen,

at this stage in the game what else am I gonna do?

Who else... Where am I gonna go?

What is there for me outside of this?

These are essentials to the gospel!

This is what Christianity is! and if we deny those things,

it might be something else, but it's not Christianity!

Probably the biggest single heresy of fundamentalism

is that it turned around the biblical notion of faith,

180 degrees!

Faith clearly means, the very word means,

"walking in darkness," not certitude!

He's actually saying maybe that

faith is blind, which, of course, Christians

don't understand faith to be a blind leap in the dark!

And we also don't understand it to be 100% certitude,

which is what Richard Rohr is pitting faith against.

He's basically saying the opposite of faith

is complete and 100% absolute certainty.

Neither one of those are biblical definitions of faith.

Faith, biblically, is "trust." and often throughout scripture

we see that trust being based on good evidence

to believe that something is true. This is why we refer to

the Christian faith, as being a reasonable faith.

And so for me... I-I sometimes look at Tony and

Rob Bell, and all my, kind of, progressive Christian friends,

and I think to myself...

There are so many people trying to reform the church,

and there are so few people trying to create

loving communities for people

who don't believe in any of the stuff-

I wish some of you would just give up the language

and come over and help me!

I'd rather them be honest about their unbelief

then staying within the church and corrupting it from within!

It's actually a purifying effect on the church,

and it's a good thing!

When I do evangelism...

You say, "Evangelism?" I think evangelism, like,

technically means "sharing the good news."

It's just that my good news is that you can pursue goodness

for its own sake!

I mean, it's funny like, Jesus at one point said,

You know, if you really want to understand the Gospel...

Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,

and all your soul, and all your strength, and all your mind.

And then He said, And the second commandment, is like

unto it: love your neighbor as you love yourself."

"Love God, love people."

and the great irony is, that this is actually a summary

of the law!

And so on some level Jesus was saying,

like, "Look! You want to know the ultimate expression

of Christianity? Love people!

And I go like, I don't think He was far off!

And so, you know, people say like, Wow,

you haven't really changed that much,

since you left Christianity behind.

And I go, like, No, I haven't!

Essentially, what you're saying is,

"Our goal is to actually keep the law!"

and that's something that the gospel is here to remind us

that we cannot do!

And that's not good news! That's why the gospel

is good news to those who recognize that they're sinners,

to those who recognize that they...

there is a flaw deep in humanity,

that isn't going to be fixed by doing all the good works

that you can think of in the world.

Both in the prosperity gospel

and in the emergent movement,

the message still is about you and what you do,

either to "achieve a better you," or to "achieve a better world."

It's all about "law." It's all about what you can do.

instead of about God and what He has accomplished

in history for us and for our salvation.

No, the good news is that He saves me

from trying to make myself a better me, when I can't,

and He saves me from the guilt and bondage of a world

that is full of oppression and injustice!

"In your humanist worldview, how does...

How do all the sins of the world get reconciled and fixed?

They don't!

They don't! That's why you have to try to stop

people from hurting people! That's why you have to work

to make a better world! Because there's some

brokenness you can't fix!

There are some wounds you can't heal!

There are some losses you can't make right,

you can't make whole!

In response to that gospel

I do want to love and serve my neighbor!

But it's not because that's the gospel!

Yes, we should do good works- that should be a fruit

of our salvation,

but that isn't what saves us! It can't save us!

God is jealous for His own glory,

and He will not share it with anybody else!

Contemporary worship so often begins with

with man and his need, rather than God and His glory-

that we've essentially placed ourselves

at the center of the universe!

See, the cross, to me, isn't the revelation of my sin.

The cross is actually the revealing of my value!

We put man in the middle of it.

Man is this great prize, and this great reason.

Something underneath of that sin must've been of great value

for heaven to go bankrupt to get me back!

As though the world just existed,

God happened upon us, and He saw man and was just

so taken with us,

that He decided to do something about it!

If the blood of Jesus determines your worth,

and heaven went bankrupt to get you back,

that makes you pretty worth it!

People say the cross is a sign of how much man is worth-

That's not true! The cross is a sign of

how depraved we really are, that it took the death

of God's own Son!

So, there's a song called "Worth"-

It was written by the associate pastor of my former church,

and part of the lyrics go:

You thought I was worth saving.

♪ You thought I was worth saving! ♪

"You thought I was to die for."

♪ "You thought I was to die for!" ♪

When you really think about the lyrics of that song,

it's suggesting that we were owed something by God.

When we flip this, and when it becomes man-centered,

and when there becomes this inherent worth in me that

drew out this work of Christ...

Heaven went bankrupt to get you back,

because God thought that you were worth the price

that He paid to redeem you!

All of a sudden,

the idea of grace is gone-

because it is merited!

I did Jesus a favor by being so wonderful!

instead of Christ, and His finished work,

being an act of God's grace to me.

Now, this is very, very important.

God's motive for saving people is not found in that people!

So, why did God love and save Israel?

Well, in Deuteronomy Chapter 7, verses 7-8, it explicitly says:

"The Lord did not set His love on you, Israel, or choose you

because you were more in number than any of the other peoples,

for you were the fewest of all peoples,

but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath

which He swore to your forefathers."

In other words, God saving Israel was not because of

anything great within Israel, but because of His love,

because of His faithfulness, because He keeps His word!

So, the term "glorify" often means "to magnify"

in a positive way-

to really zoom in with a magnifying glass

on what that thing is,

and expose it for how beautiful it is.

Glorifying God is recognizing who He is

as He's been revealed in the scriptures.

So, the more we get to understand who God is,

we get blown away!

And when we come to the message of the gospel,

especially in Ephesians,

the motivation of God in redemption,

is that we might be "to the praise of His glory."

So it's actually... it's the opposite of the song that

that has that line:

Like a rose trampled on the ground..."

♪ Like a rose ♪

♪ trampled on the ground ♪

And it says, and He...

He "thought of me above all."

♪ And thought of me above all ♪

Which, of course, makes perfect sense to a person.

They say, Well, of course, everybody would think about me.

But in actual fact, no!

His focus was on Himself! His focus was on His glory!

Yes, He loves humanity!

But that's not the primary motivation.

The primary motivation is His love for Himself,

and a desire to show off Himself.

And He wants us to see, not just the power and creativity

we can see in nature. He wants us to see His grace,

and His mercy, and He even wants us to see His wrath!

"For the sake of My name I delay My wrath,

and for My praise I restrain it for you,

in order not to cut you off."

And you might think, "Well, that's kind of egotistical.

God is all about Himself? Like, that's

really annoying, you know?"

But who else could God be about?

For God to not be God-centered

would be actually to say something untrue about

the universe, because God truly is

at the center of the universe. He's the creator of all things.

We all are in the orbit around Him.

But there is a beauty in the fact that God

can be focused on Himself and His own glory,

because God is a Trinity!

And so, there is a paradoxical others-centeredness

even there in the God-centeredness of God.

And the Father, in an expression of love to the Son,

determined that He would create a world,

that He would allow that world to fall into sin,

hat He would recover from that world a redeemed humanity,

that they would give that redeemed humanity as a

bride to His Son, so that that redeemed humanity

forever and ever, and ever, could glorify His Son!

You are, in some sense, an incidental part of a great

act of love that is within the Trinity!

Everything is to the glory of God!

God is righteous!

He is the highest good, the most beautiful thing,

the only perfect being!

And therefore, He is the only thing in the universe

that actually deserves praise and honor and glory.

God would be unrighteous

if He let us glorify anything else other than Him!

Something underneath of sin

was so important for heaven to pay such a high price

to redeem your life!

You see, if God saved me because of

my value, then my focus is on myself and how amazing I am!

Because God thought so highly of you,

that He sent His Son and thought that you were worth it...

In other words, I'm worshipping myself!

But if God saved me because of His love-

who He is, not who I am-

then God's glory, His value, His worth, is magnified!

Heaven thought that much of you

that God sent His only Son for you!

If God started pointing at us,

we'd be missing out on the greatest gift, which is Himself!

And so, for God to glorify Himself

and point the world to Himself-

He's actually doing the most loving thing possible,

because there is nothing else more satisfying than God,

there is nothing more lovely than God!

there is nothing more loving than God!

The love of God is greatly

and exponentially amplified

when God loves those who are unlovely!

Jesus didn't come into the world 'cause you were such a

grotesque sinner!

Now, the teaching of William Paul Young

and Todd White-they're similar in that they

both are denying the doctrine of original sin.

I think the lie is... that all we are

is a "piece of crap." And it's just because God is merciful...

- Well that's a lie some religions tell people

that you are "born of sin, you are sin..."

- "You're depraved. You're worthless."

Now, scripture is clear on ths:

"None is righteous, no not one. No one understands,

no one seeks for God. And all have turned aside,

together they have become worthless."

See, we've said that we're "worthless," and we're

and we're "worms in the dirt," not realizing that

that's what Satan is!

Christ and His work

doesn't find its value because of who I am as the one

whom He redeemed!

We're saying that my worth is not in what I own!

My worth is not in my achievements!

But I, instead, find my value

in the fact that the one of ultimate worth

died to redeem me, in spite of the fact

that I was inherently not worthy of that!

The therapeutic gospel says:

"God loves me because I'm valuable."

The biblical gospel says:

"I am valuable because God loves me."

Anyone can love someone who's- who's lovely!

there's nothing supernatural about that, or nothing even

divine about that!

You see, we love things that are attractive to us,

the things that are the most beautiful, the most expensive!

But see, God is different than us!

God loves sinners who are the opposite of attractive to Him!

In fact, He dies for His enemies!

That is amazing love,

unparalleled love, matchless love,

that can only come from God!

What was God doing at Calvary?

There was a simultaneous display

of all of God's attributes!

Not just His love and forgiveness,

but by no means letting the guilty party go!

Love and wrath on display,

goodness and kindness on display,

justice and mercy on display,

simultaneously!

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