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Hell, God’s Wrath, and the Gospel

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It’s amazing how upset some Christians get when you question God’s wrath.

I posted this on my social media the other day:

If the gospel is that Jesus died to appease God’s wrath against us because of our sin so that we can go to heaven and not to hell, why doesn’t any description of “gospel” in the NT say that? Why don’t any of the gospel proclamations in Acts say that?

Simple answer: because that’s not the gospel.

I thought it would be best not to leave people hanging, so I kindly gave my thoughts on what the New Testament gospel is:

The gospel according to the NT? More like this: God has acted through Jesus of Nazareth, Messiah and Lord—through his life, teachings, death, and resurrection, by the power of the Spirit—to begin to make right all that is wrong in the world because of human sin, to bring about God’s reign of justice and peace and life on earth.

A small ruckus developed over the first of those posts, as people missed the point to point out that Jesus’ death to save us from God’s wrath is indeed found in the New Testament.

I say they “missed the point” because I was being rather precise in my initial post. Let me parse this out by asking, and attempting to answer, two distinct questions.

First, was the idea that Jesus died to appease God’s wrath against us for our sin, or the idea that Jesus saves us from a post-mortem hell to a post-mortem heaven, part of the apostolic gospel proclamation?

The answer to this is, I would say, a pretty resounding “no.”

The language of “gospel” (εὐαγγέλιον, euangelion) or “preaching the gospel” (especially εὐαγγελίζω, euangelizō) occurs over 120 times in the New Testament. It’s used to describe everything from the whole story of Jesus’ public ministry from his baptism to his resurrection (e.g. Mark 1:1), to focusing in on one or more specific aspects of Jesus’ ministry, such as his death and resurrection (e.g. 1 Cor 15:1-5) or simply his death (e.g. 1 Cor 1:17). Other aspects that are highlighted in New Testament gospel descriptions? That Jesus is Messiah and Lord (e.g. Rom 1:1-4; 2 Tim 2:8), that Jesus’ death is “for our sins” (e.g. 1 Cor 15:3), that through Jesus God’s kingdom has come near (e.g. Mark 1:14-15), and that these things were foretold by and are explained by the Jewish Scriptures (e.g. 1 Cor 15:3-4).

Interestingly—and not surprisingly, when you think about it—the evangelistic speeches in Acts confirm these themes. According to Luke in Acts, when the apostles preached the gospel, they told the story of Jesus, Messiah and Lord, who, though his life, teachings, death, resurrection, and exaltation, and in accordance with the Scriptures, has brought about God’s kingdom and offers God’s forgiveness (e.g. Acts 2:14-36; 10:36-43; 13:16-41; see also summaries like 5:42; 8:12, 35; 11:20; 17:18).

Nothing is said in any of this about a post-mortem hell or of God’s wrath against sin, and certainly not in connection with Jesus’ death. Yes, the gospel proclamation could focus on Jesus’ death, and even that Jesus’ death was “for our sins” (again, 1 Cor 15:3). But this simply means that Jesus died “with respect to” our sins in some way—it leaves open to apostolic interpretation exactly how Jesus’ death is “for our sins.” One must make several behind-the-scenes leaps to get from “Jesus died for our sins” to “Jesus died to appease God’s wrath against us for our sins.”

In other words, my social media posts are correct. The gospel proclaimed by the apostles did not include ideas of Jesus’ death appeasing God’s wrath or delivering us from a post-mortem hell. Rather, the apostolic gospel told the story of Jesus, Messianic King and Lord, as God’s good news for the world.

This has immediate implications for how we proclaim the gospel today—which was the implicit point of my online posts.

Most popular understandings of the Christian gospel today focus on Jesus’ death to the exclusion of Jesus’ life, teachings, and often even resurrection. And they focus on Jesus’ death as penal substitutionary atonement: Jesus dying in our place to appease God’s wrath against us for our sins, and to deliver us from hell to heaven after we die. But this is not the gospel. The gospel is much bigger—and much better news—than that.

There’s a second question, though, which many of my online commenters were really getting at. Were these ideas—Jesus’ death appeasing God’s wrath, or delivering us from hell to heaven—part of apostolic teaching? In other words, granted that these were not part of New Testament gospel preaching, they could still have been part of what the apostles believed and taught in explaining Jesus’ death and salvation.

This is less clear—and also wasn’t my point in my social media posts. But here’s where some of my current thinking is at on this question.

The clearest description of what is meant by God’s wrath—not in highly symbolic apocalyptic literature where figurative language abounds—is found in Romans 1. There Paul describes the “wrath of God” being revealed against human sin—and it’s not some future, post-mortem hell. Rather, the wrath of God is God giving humans over to their sin (1:24, 26, 28). In other words, we create our own hell on earth, and God lets us experience the hell we’ve created for ourselves. That’s “God’s wrath.”

This fits well with the language of divine wrath in the Old Testament—it’s individual humans or human societies experiencing the consequences of their own sinful ways, not in some future hell but here on earth, whether in the present or in the future. The most direct parallels to New Testament divine wrath language, for example, describe the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. as a day of God’s wrath (e.g. Lam 1:12). On a related note, see my musings on Jesus’ “hell” language here.

Then there’s the question of whether Jesus’ death appeases God’s wrath. The texts people most frequently point to related to this—whether “propitiation” texts like 1 John 2:2 or more general texts like Romans 5:8-9—aren’t as clear as those folks like to think. Examining those texts is beyond the scope of this already-long blog post; perhaps I’ll tackle that another time. I’m willing to concede that a very few of these texts could be legitimately read as pointing to penal substitution, but New Testament atonement scholars these days acknowledge that at most this is a minor theme among many others in the New Testament used to explain the meaning of Jesus’ death. I’ve given a few thoughts on a non-penal substitution understanding of Jesus’ death as atonement here.

In summary, then: the apostles didn’t proclaim as gospel the idea that Jesus died to appease God’s wrath against us for our sins, to bring us from a hell to heaven—and it’s at least possible they may not have even believed these ideas at all.

© Michael W. Pahl

What is Paul’s salvation story?

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What is Paul’s salvation story?

No, I don’t mean his personal story of meeting Jesus and being called by him—though for Paul that story is part of the larger story I’m referring to. I mean Paul’s cosmic salvation story, his big-picture narrative of salvation, what it is he believes salvation is all about.

This is important to discern, because for many Christians (especially evangelicals) the Apostle Paul is the go-to for understanding salvation, the GOAT for explaining the gospel. This is not an easy story to discern, however, because Paul never simply lays out a salvation narrative—he’s written a bunch of letters, each of which is dealing with specific situations faced by his first readers and himself. Scholars continue to debate whether we can even discern a larger salvation narrative from Paul’s writings, let alone what that story might be.

However, scholars are pretty well united on what that grand story of salvation for Paul is not—and this isn’t good news for the conservative evangelicals who typically narrate salvation in this way.

Paul’s story of salvation is not that the goal of human existence is to get to heaven when we die, avoiding an eternity of conscious torment in punishment for our sins. It’s not that Jesus came to earth solely to save us from this fate and bring us to heaven after death. It’s not that Jesus took our place on the cross, taking the punishment that was due us, as God poured out God’s wrath on Jesus on the cross. It’s not that this “penal substitutionary atonement” is what allows us to go to heaven after death, if we believe that Jesus did this for us.

That’s not Paul’s salvation story.

I mentioned earlier that Paul’s salvation story was a “cosmic” story. I said that Paul’s salvation story isn’t merely about his own salvation, but that his individual story was part of a larger, cosmic story. This is important to note. Paul wouldn’t recognize the common evangelical Christian salvation story I’ve just told, because it’s far too individualistic—about Jesus dying for my sins on the cross, taking my place, so I can be with Jesus in heaven when I die—and not nearly big enough, not cosmic enough.

Here’s how I see Paul’s cosmic salvation story.

Humanity is under the sway of cosmic powers at work in the world, the greatest of which are sin and its inevitable partner-in-destruction, death. What we need is to be liberated from these powers and brought into a new age, an era where sin and death no longer hold sway, where instead we experience righteousness and life, along with the fruits of these: justice and peace and joy and more. For Paul, this is salvation; this is the kingdom of God.

As God’s Messiah, the Christ, Jesus has come from that new age into our world, to bring about God’s reign, God’s salvation. Though sinless—and thus not under the power of sin and death—he entered into our world of sin and death, and in faithfulness to God willingly suffered under sin and death on the cross. However, God raised Jesus from the dead, overturning death and opening the way for humanity to enter into his kingdom, the new age of righteousness and life, justice, peace, and joy. We become part of this new age as we align our faith with Jesus’ faithfulness, walking in his way of the cross through death into new life.

Our individual stories of salvation are thus part of this cosmic story of salvation. Paul’s come-to-Jesus moment was Paul being swept up into this cosmic story. My come-to-Jesus moment was me being swept up into this cosmic story. And that’s true for everyone who has ever aligned their faith with Jesus’ faithfulness, to walk in his way of the cross, his way of love.

And yes, this story does mean that when I die I can expect to be with Jesus, one day being raised from the dead like Jesus was. But it’s not about being saved from hell, but being liberated from sin and death. And the story of salvation is so much bigger than me being with Jesus someday. It’s cosmic in scope—with, one day, all creation even brought into harmony with Jesus’ way of cruciform love.

Something like this story better explains both the totality of Paul’s theology in his letters and the specific statements Paul makes along the way. It better explains the way Paul talks about the cross and Jesus’ death, as well as his statements on sin and death and Jesus’ resurrection. It also explains justification: we share in Jesus’ vindication (his “justification”) by God through his resurrection from the dead.

So don’t be ashamed of Paul’s gospel! It’s God’s saving power for all who believe, after all, liberation from the powers of sin and death coming for all who walk in Jesus’ faithful way of love. And, understood in this way, it complements well the other salvation stories told in the New Testament.

© Michael W. Pahl

Atonement and God’s Wrath

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Note: This post has been edited since its original version.

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Diego Velázquez, Cristo crucificado

I’ve been thinking a lot about Jesus’ death lately. There are many reasons for this, not least of which is the journey we’ve just been on through Lent, following Jesus to the cross.

As I’ve thought about Jesus’ death, both recently and over the years, I keep coming back to the “gospel tradition” the Apostle Paul received from others before him and passed on to others after him, a tradition that was probably formulated within two or three years of Jesus’ death:

that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,
that he was buried,
that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
and that he appeared to Cephas and the twelve. (1 Cor 15:3-5)

This tradition shows that very early on Jesus’ death was being interpreted as “for our sins.” But what exactly does this mean?

I’d guess that when most people hear that phrase, “Jesus died for our sins,” they immediately plug in a whole cluster of ideas: we sin by disobeying God’s moral law; God’s holiness therefore bars us from being in God’s presence and God’s justice demands a penalty be paid, the penalty of death; God is justly angry with us. To say, then, that “Jesus died for our sins” means that “Jesus died in our place, paying the penalty for our sins demanded by God’s justice, and thus turned away God’s righteous wrath, bringing us divine forgiveness and allowing us to be in God’s holy presence.” This idea is called “penal substitutionary atonement.”

However, the phrase, “Jesus died for our sins,” doesn’t necessarily mean all those things. For it to mean all those things requires many assumptions to be true about who God is, how God operates, what sin is, what forgiveness involves, how justice works, and so on. These assumptions are never actually stated in any one passage in Scripture, but must be inferred from various passages and then all brought together before being read into this phrase.

In fact, I’d suggest that the phrase from this early tradition, “Christ died for our sins,” simply means that “Christ died with respect to our sins”—Jesus’ death concerns our sins, even “deals with” our sins, somehow, in some way. Exactly how this works, however, is not spelled out in this phrase.

The New Testament uses many different metaphors to try to explain how this works, what it means to say that Jesus’ death “deals with” our sins. Images of animal sacrifice, scapegoating, redemption from slavery, covenant ratification, military victory, martyrdom, friendship, gift-giving and more are used by the New Testament authors to interpret Jesus’ death “for our sins.” None of these ideas, however, imply “penal substitution”—not even the animal sacrifice images, as Andrew Remington Rillera has amply demonstrated.

Is there a better way of making sense of the confession that “Jesus died for our sins”? How do I think about this?

Elsewhere I’ve done some reflection on what some of this kaleidoscope of meaning is related to Jesus’ death. Here I’d like to sketch out a few thoughts that specifically relate to some of the ideas found in the popular notion of “penal substitutionary atonement,” especially the appeasement of God’s wrath against our sin.

One of the common themes of many human religions through history is the idea that our circumstances are a reflection of divine favour or disfavour. If things are going well, our god is happy with us. If things are not going well, our god is not happy with us. In extreme circumstances—facing a severe drought, experiencing a horrible plague, being conquered in war, suffering exile or enslavement—our god is very angry with us for some terrible wrong that we have done.

What’s needed is “atonement.”* Usually this is some sort of sacrificial act, in many ancient religions even the violent, bloody death of some living thing. This blood sacrifice appeases our god’s wrath against us for the great wrong we have committed and returns us to our god’s favour. (Exactly how or why this works is rarely or variously explained. Does it satisfy some “life-for-life” sense of justice? Does it expend the god’s anger? Does it cover or remove the transgression that has been ritually transferred to the victim? Is there something special about “blood”? Does the god simply like the smell?)

This perspective was shared by at least some of the ancient Israelites, and it’s found in their Scriptures (the Christian Old Testament). When terrible things threatened individuals or God’s people as a whole, it was understood to be because God’s wrath had come upon them for their sin. What was needed to atone for their sin and turn aside God’s wrath was a violent, bloody death, a sacrifice of something or someone else, offered out of devotion to God.

The story of Phinehas son of Eleazar gives the most vivid example of this. The story is told in Numbers 25.

In the story a plague has come upon the people of Israel during their wilderness wanderings. This is viewed as God’s wrath against Israel because of their sin—Israelite men have been cozying up to Moabite women, one thing has led to another, and they have ended up bowing down to their gods. A terrible thing has happened, which means God must be very angry because of a great wrong that has been committed. And so God calls on the Israelites to kill those men who have married Moabite women, in order to “turn away” his “wrath,” his “fierce anger.”

But before this can happen, Phinehas hears of an Israelite man who has taken a Midianite wife, he tracks them down to their family tent, he impales them with a spear—and the plague stops. Phinehas is hailed by God as a hero, with these words:

Phinehas son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the Israelites by manifesting such zeal among them on my behalf that in my jealousy I did not consume the Israelites. Therefore say, ‘I hereby grant him my covenant of peace. It shall be for him and for his descendants after him a covenant of perpetual priesthood, because he was zealous for his God, and made atonement for the Israelites. (Num 25:11-13)

All this sounds like a few elements of “penal substitutionary atonement”: our sin puts us under God’s wrath, and what’s needed is a violent, bloody death offered in devotion to God in order to turn away God’s righteous anger, to make “atonement.” This same language, the same basic ideas, are found in at least one other biblical story.

But there are some problems with this whole way of thinking, problems which the Old Testament itself acknowledges. Not all bad circumstances are because God is angry with us because of our sin, just as not all good circumstances are because God is pleased with us. A blood sacrifice doesn’t actually change the heart, our inner disposition that prompts our outward actions. Even more, a blood sacrifice doesn’t actually change the world; it doesn’t bring true justice within society, or a real and lasting peace, or a full and flourishing life.

There is a prophetic critique throughout the Old Testament which highlights these problems. Here are a few samples; note that these are not critiques of the sacrificial system itself, but an acknowledgment of the limitations of that sacrificial system:

Sacrifice and offering you [God] do not desire,
but you have given me an open ear.
Burnt offering and sin offering
you have not required. (Psalm 40:6)

For I [God] desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. (Hosea 6:6)

“With what shall I come before the Lord [God],
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:6-8)

When we turn to Jesus in the Gospels, now, we see a few interesting things.

First, Jesus agrees with this prophetic critique. He severs the necessary link between sin and circumstances: while it is true that we generally reap what we sow, with harmful actions leading to harmful consequences, it is not true that all our experiences of harm are the direct result of our sin. Jesus also affirms that outward cleansing rituals don’t change the heart, and he even re-configures “holiness” in terms of acts of mercy and justice. Jesus also quotes some of those Old Testament texts that deny blood sacrifice as a means of full and final atonement for sins: what’s most important, Jesus says, is devoted love of God and self-giving love of neighbour; in other words, “to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Second, Jesus forgives sins apart from blood sacrifice. This is startling to the religious leaders in power primarily because, as they say, “only God can forgive sins.” However, Jesus’ action—like John’s “baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sins” before him—could also have raised concerns because there is no reference to Temple sacrifices. This was a live issue in Jesus’ day—the Essenes, for example, seem to have denied the efficacy of the Temple sacrifices and did not look to them for atonement. After another generation, with the destruction of the Temple and the inability to offer blood sacrifices, Judaism as a whole re-imagined atonement in the terms of the prophetic critique of their Scriptures: repentant prayer, bearing fruit in acts of justice and mercy, atones for sin.

Jesus’ forgiveness of sins anticipates this later Jewish development—and stands in line with that prophetic critique noted above through the Jewish Scriptures. Jesus’ forgiveness shows that God does not need blood sacrifice in order to forgive sins. Instead, what Jesus calls for, and thus what God requires, is “repentance”—an inner change of disposition involving a recognition of one’s sin and a commitment to live differently—and “faith”—a devoted trust or allegiance to God expressed in following the way of God in self-giving love.

This leads to the third thing that distinguishes Jesus’ approach to sin, atonement, and especially “sacrifice”: Jesus does not sacrifice something or someone else for his own good; rather, he gives himself for the good of others, even his enemies. Phinehas, a model of that ancient religious view on these things, you’ll recall, atoned for the sin of Israel by committing violence against another, spilling the blood of another, sacrificing another for the good of many. Jesus, by contrast, atones for or “deals with” sin by bearing the violence of others in himself without retaliation, allowing his own blood to be spilled with forgiveness on his lips, giving up his own life for the good of all.

In all this, in Jesus’ life and teachings culminating in his death, Jesus shows us a better way, God’s true way for atoning for sin: through nonviolent, self-giving love for others, even for one’s enemies. This alone is what will bring about true justice within society, a real and lasting peace, a full and flourishing life for all.

Jesus’ death, then, is really a kind of “anti-sacrifice”—in the full, dual meaning of the Greek prefix “anti.”

Jesus’ death is “anti-sacrifice” in that it is “against sacrifice”: it underscores the reality, found already in the Old Testament, that blood sacrifice is not needed for God to forgive, nor does it bring about either the personal change of heart or the wider justice, peace, and life that we need.

And Jesus’ death is “anti-sacrifice” in that it is “instead of sacrifice”: instead of the violent, bloody death of something or someone other than ourselves in order to bring justice and peace and life, what’s needed is the nonviolent giving of ourselves for the good of others, the good of all, including friends, neighbours, and even enemies.

In other words, Jesus’ self-sacrificial death brings an end to blood sacrifice of any kind—animal sacrifice, capital punishment, war death, and more—once and for all.

As I said earlier, there’s much more that can be said about the meaning of Jesus’ death than this. For example, Jesus’ death is a subversion of the evil powers of this age, the unjust powers-that-be in the world that oppress and enslave. Jesus’ death is also a revelation of who God is and the way God works in the world, showing God’s true power and wisdom, showing God’s love. For some thoughts on these things, you can check out my post on “The Foolishness of the Cross.”

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*Andrew Remington Rillera adroitly argues that “atonement” in the Hebrew Scriptures dealt with religious purification. While generally true, this argument doesn’t as easily explain the language of atonement in Numbers 25, for example (I note that Remington Rillera doesn’t address this story in his book). I see my thoughts here not as negating Remington Rillera’s argument, but as supplementing it.

© Michael W. Pahl

The Foolishness of the Cross

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A meditation on the cross which I shared at the Morden Good Friday Community Service, April 18, 2014, slightly revised since. It is based on 1 Corinthians 1:18-25.

A few years ago I was fortunate to be able to go to Israel-Palestine with a study group. It was an amazing experience: hiking in the wadis west of the Dead Sea, climbing in the hills around the Sea of Galilee, baptizing a former student of mine in the Jordan River, listening to stories around a community oven in a Palestinian village, getting violently sick in my first days there. Well, that wasn’t so amazing, but it certainly was memorable!

Olive Wood CrossOf course, I brought back mementos of my trip. Stones from different parts of Israel-Palestine, beverage containers with Hebrew and Arabic on them, a ram’s horn. And some plain wooden crosses like this one, simple, carved out of olive wood.

It’s the universal symbol of Christianity, the cross. We set them outside our churches and everyone can see at a glance that we’re Christians. We have them at the front of our churches, focusing our attention in worship. Many churches in Europe are built in the shape of the cross. We place crosses over our graves. We cast crosses in silver and gold—or carve them in wood—and wear them around our necks.

The cross is pervasive among us Christians as a visual symbol for our faith. But you might be surprised to know that the cross wasn’t widely used as a visual, public symbol by the early Christians, probably for at least two hundred years after Jesus. The reason is a simple one—and it makes you think.

The Scandal of the Cross

You see, the cross was not in any way a positive thing for Jews or Christians in those early centuries of the Church. Even sophisticated, respectable Roman citizens thought crucifixion too distasteful for polite conversation. Cicero, a Roman philosopher and politician who lived just before the time of Jesus, said that “the very word ‘cross’ should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen but from his thoughts, his eyes and his ears…the very mention of [crucifixion]…is unworthy of a Roman citizen and a free man” (Pro Rabirio 16).

A real cross, the kind that people were crucified on, was normally just a rough-hewn beam of wood that the condemned criminal would carry outside the city, right on the busiest road where everyone could see. There it would be attached to something vertical—a post set up for such executions, or even just a tree. The person would be hung from it, arms outstretched, sometimes for days, until they died an excruciating death, usually of asphyxiation. Crosses were not your ordinary punishment; they were reserved for the worst of criminals, for treasonous rebels, for conquered peoples.

A real cross, then, the kind that Jesus died on, was an instrument of death, a horrific thing, an image of deep shame. It was like a giant billboard displaying Rome’s power and highlighting the subjugation of all other peoples. Cicero might not have wanted even to speak of crucifixion, but his Rome was built on the backs of crucified men.

Christians using the cross as a symbol, then, would be like African Americans in the Deep South of the early twentieth century placing a beautifully woven noose at the front of their churches, or like Jews of 1940s Poland casting a miniature golden gas chamber to wear as jewelry.

It’s disturbing to think about, isn’t it?

But once you get this then you can start to appreciate the Apostle Paul’s words in our passage from 1 Corinthians: “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing…but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”

Christ, of course, is Jesus: Jesus of Nazareth, who walked those dry and dusty roads of Galilee, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching love of God and neighbour, healing the sick and raising the dead. But “Christ” is a title, not a name: it means “Messiah,” or “anointed one,” and refers to the ancient practice of initiating priests and prophets and kings by anointing their head with oil. When Paul calls Jesus “Christ” he is essentially calling him “King,” the promised Messiah in the family line of King David who was to bring about God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

Of course, for Paul, there’s more going on in Jesus’ story. For Paul, Jesus the Christ was “sent” from God the Father: he perfectly represented God, God’s person and purposes. For Paul, Jesus embodied God in the world: as Colossians puts it, “in [Jesus] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col 1:19).

So this is Paul’s claim, then: the man Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the promised King come to bring about God’s kingdom, perfectly representing God to us, even embodying God for us—and this God-King has died on a Roman cross, executed in torturous pain and shame and oppression, in utter weakness.

If you were a Jew in Paul’s day, like Paul himself and all the first Christians, what would you think of this? The Messiah, the Son of David, was supposed to liberate God’s people from their oppressors, not succumb to those oppressors! The Messiah was supposed to come with mighty signs and wonders in triumph over God’s enemies, not be crucified by them! There was little room for a suffering and dying Messiah in Jewish thinking of the day.

There was also a persistent view among at least some Jews that those who were crucified were cursed by God; it comes from Deuteronomy 21:23, “Anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse.” How could the Messiah be under God’s curse? The Messiah is blessed by God, not cursed!

No, a crucified Christ just could not be—and this was an enormous stumbling block for Jews in Paul’s day to believe in Jesus.

Alexamenos GraffitoWhat if you were a Roman? The Romans had their own stories of divine kings. Caesar Augustus and all “good emperors” after him were deified after their death, viewed by many in the Empire as divine kings. Some emperors along the way couldn’t wait until after they died to be deified, and insisted on being considered divine while they were still alive. So the Romans could understand a god-king. But a divine king being crucified at the hands of his enemies? Impossible! Such a king is not worthy of divinity!

And how about the Greeks? In Paul’s day, some at least thought of God as static, unchangeable, immune to shifting human passions and outside the fluctuating tides of human events. For these Greek thinkers, it was impossible that the divine being should experience suffering, let alone suffering on a cross.

But even for Greek thinkers who didn’t view God this way, they still had no room for this. They all liked their tidy system of thought, their sophisticated reason, their seamless, undisturbed way of understanding the world and our place in it. Stories of a crucified god-king? Too messy, too disturbing, too irrational.

No, a crucified Christ just could not be—and this was seen as complete and utter foolishness for many of the Gentiles in Paul’s day.

“We proclaim Christ crucified,” Paul says. Really, it’s hard to imagine any message in his world that could have been more foolish than that.

The Power of the Cross

But here’s the astounding thing: Paul insists that this foolishness is really wisdom, this weakness is really power. God is foolish in our eyes, God is weak—yet it is only through this foolishness that we find true wisdom, and it is only through this weakness that we find true power.

It is one of the most mysterious—and shocking—truths of Christianity: God brings about salvation for the world through a crucified Christ. God rescues humanity and all creation from sin and death through a Jewish king executed on a Roman cross. God overcomes our greatest enemies—our insatiable greed, our arrogant pride, our overpowering selfishness, these deep-rooted distorted desires that push us to hurt others and harm creation—God overcomes this sin and death by bearing the brunt of our sin and giving himself up to death.

It’s as if Jesus on the cross absorbs into himself all the hatred and violence and guilt and shame and pain and suffering that humans can inflict—he absorbs it all. Instead of fighting violence with violence, instead of fighting power with power, like everyone expected a king to do, or even a god to do—Jesus absorbs it all. Jesus takes all these things—all our sin, and this all-encompassing death that results from our sinful attitudes and actions—Jesus takes all this and absorbs it into himself, as if sucking the poison from a snake bite.

Rembrandt Christ on the CrossThrough this Jesus shows us who God really is: God is the God who would rather die than kill, the God who comes in suffering and weakness rather than brazen displays of power, the God who would rather work silently through our distorted wills than enforce his own will on us. God is the God who loves us, who gives himself for us, the God who forgives us, the God who is not against us but for us, on our side, right by our side in our own suffering.

And in the process, Jesus also lays out a path for us to walk: we are to follow in the footsteps of our crucified Messiah, not in power but in weakness, not in glory but in suffering, not in hatred and violence but in love and peace.

The Good News of the Cross

I think we’re more like the Jews and Greeks and Romans of Paul’s day than we care to admit.

We think God comes to deal with our enemies—those other people, flesh and blood people who aren’t like us, who don’t like us. But the cross shows that God comes to deal with the deeper enemies we all face—our own selfishness and greed, our own arrogance and pride, our own sin and the wider evil and injustice that grows out of it.

We think God comes in power and strength, and so we revere strong and powerful people. We think God comes in wise words and clever arguments, and so we admire intelligent people. We think God comes in glittering glory, and so we idolize beautiful people. But the cross shows that God comes in foolishness and weakness, with nothing in his appearance to attract us to him. God comes in a helpless baby and a crucified king, God comes in the poor, the weak, the suffering, the least of these, Jesus’ brothers and sisters.

We think God makes the world a better place through his sheer will, his mighty power, and so we try to do good in the world by force, coercing others to do our will. But the cross shows that God changes the world through his weak power, through self-giving love and radical forgiveness—and so should we.

We think God only works in “God moments,” those times when something spectacular happens, something miraculous, something extraordinary. But the cross shows that God also works when tragedy strikes, when the worst thing you can imagine happens, when pain and suffering and despair and even death hits us. These too can be “God moments,” sometimes even the most powerful “God moments”—as God comes alongside you and walks with you through darkness and disaster.

We think God is unchangeable, unmoved by the ebb and flow of human circumstances and human experiences. But the cross shows that God knows the very depths of human suffering and sin. If there’s a solution to the problem of evil, it is this: God suffers with us.

One scholar has commented on our passage from 1 Corinthians this way: “The ultimate idolatry is that of insisting that God conform to our own prior views as to how ‘the God who makes sense’ ought to do things” (Gordon Fee, First Corinthians). But the cross shatters all our notions of “what God must be like.”

And in that there is genuine good news, for all of us.

If you are wracked by guilt, or overcome by shame for something you’ve done, God is not standing over you, to condemn you. God is standing before you, arms open wide, ready to forgive you, to welcome you home. Receive God’s forgiveness, and in that you can find the strength to seek the forgiveness of others.

If you are walking through pain and suffering—physical sickness, emotional wounds, mental illness, whatever it may be—God is not outside of all that, oblivious to your hurt. God is right there in the midst of it, ready to walk with you through it, to give you just what you need day by day to make it through. Open yourself to God’s love, trust in God to take care of you.

Road-to-the-CrossAnd if you have any kind of relationship to another human being—I think that pretty much covers all of us—remember this: God calls us to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, the crucified Christ. God calls us to love, not to hate. God calls us to peace, not violence. God calls us to be humble with others, not proud. God calls us to forgive, not to harbor resentment or anger. God calls us to the cross, the weak and foolish cross, because it is only through the cross—Jesus’ kind of selfless, self-giving love, that we can find God’s true wisdom and power.

This is why the cross endures as such a powerful symbol of the Christian faith: not because the cross was an instrument of such horrific brutality and terrorizing oppression, but because the cross shows us so clearly who God truly is. The cross shows us God’s deep and abiding love—for me, for you, for all of us.

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For some reflections on the cross and nonviolent atonement, check out my later post “Atonement and God’s Wrath.”

© Michael W. Pahl