The Great Day of Wrath

Revelation 6:17 for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?"

17 ὅτι ἦλθεν ἡ ἡμέρα ἡ μεγάλη τῆς ὀργῆς αὐτῶν, καὶ τίς δύναται σταθῆναι;

Many folks like to paint an image of God as a cosmic Santa Claus.  Or maybe he is like your grandfather who managed to overlook all your faults and love you anyway.  He still gives you treats even when you're naughty, unlike your parents who try to keep rules in place.  Death is a massive campfire with us all singing Kum-Ba-Ah in the sky.

Revelation paints a different picture and that is something we will get into as we go through this book.  Here we get a glimpse of what God's final judgment on the world will look like. It won't be pretty.  There is a rhetorical question at the end of this verse.  τίς δύναται σταθῆναι;  The answer is simple -- nobody.

Christ is going to come back as a righteous judge.  Of course, we naturally think of ourselves as basically good people.  We're certainly not as bad as that person over there.  However, ultimately every sin is going to be judged.  There are two possible outcomes for this.  The first is that you will get what you deserve and you will be judged for your sins for eternity.  God is perfectly holy and cannot abide sin.

The second is that we do not get what we deserve because Christ bore God's wrath for our sins.  However, you need to repent and believe before that can be true for you.  He will wipe your record clean if you acknowledge Him for who He is.  

Salvation is much more than escaping judgment, but it is also that.  When every knee bows at Christ's coming will yours bow to Him as your Lord or as your judge?

Ultimate Justice

2 Thessalonians 1:9 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, 10 when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.

9 οἵτινες δίκην τίσουσιν ὄλεθρον αἰώνιον ἀπὸ προσώπου τοῦ κυρίου καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς δόξης τῆς ἰσχύος αὐτοῦ, 10  ὅταν ἔλθῃ ἐνδοξασθῆναι ἐν τοῖς ἁγίοις αὐτοῦ καὶ θαυμασθῆναι ἐν πᾶσιν τοῖς πιστεύσασιν, ὅτι ἐπιστεύθη τὸ μαρτύριον ἡμῶν ἐφ᾽ ὑμᾶς, ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐκείνῃ.

Here Paul is explaining what will happen to those who were persecuting the Thessalonians.  God would eventually repay them for their persecution and sin.  He would not necessarily do it immediately, but it was coming.  He contrasts their future with that of the saints.  When Christ returns He will be glorified in the saints while those who did not believe will be punished forever.

I have heard complaints about the nature of God because of the so-called problem of evil.  How can God allow such awful things to happen in the world?  Why doesn't he stop evil men from doing evil things?  I would submit three responses to this.

One is that you are talking about a world of absurdities.  Should God turn every bullet into butter?  He certainly could, but does it make any kind of sense for God to operate that way?  We don't know the eventual implications of such modifications to His created order.  He certainly could make these miraculous changes all over the place, but I would submit that would be an absurd world.

Two is that these folks will ultimately be punished in a way more horrifying than anything we can imagine.  It seems that we all have a sense of justice.  I have two small children and I see this in action every day.  It doesn't take a child long to determine what is "fair" relative to his or her world.  It takes a long view to see the justice that God will eventually dole out, but it satisfies my sense of justice knowing that evil will eventually be punished accordingly.

Third, this really speaks to how we perceive God.  If He truly is God and He is truly good, then we can trust what He allows to happen.  When we don't then we are telling God that we don't like the way He runs the world.  That's kind of arrogant, isn't it?

Now this intellectual response may seem a bit cold to someone who just lost a spouse to cancer or to someone who had a storm ravage their house.  I like to think that this is what I would fall back on though.  Nothing in my life belongs to me, including my life.  Christ bought my life with His.  I am not my own.  Therefore, nothing is mine and nothing is owed to me.  An airplane could crash into my house (we are right by the airport, so this is not that ridiculous an idea) and kill the three people sleeping upstairs.  That would be a terrible thing, but I don't think it would change my view of God.  He owes me nothing, but He has given me the greatest gift possible in my salvation.  Were that to happen I would know that there is a reason behind it, even if I could never hope to understand it while on earth.

I am not begging to be tested on this.  But what I do know is that how folks react to pain demonstrates their view of who God is.  Is God really God or are you going to be god and tell Him how to run His world because you don't like it?

Seeking and Saving

Luke 19:9-10
(9)  And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham.
(10)  For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost."

(9)  εἶπεν δὲ πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ὅτι Σήμερον σωτηρία τῷ οἴκῳ τούτῳ ἐγένετο, καθότι καὶ αὐτὸς υἱὸς Ἀβραάμ ἐστιν· 

(10)  ἦλθεν γὰρ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ζητῆσαι καὶ σῶσαι τὸ ἀπολωλός.

This comes at the end of the narrative about Zaccheus.  Incidentally, it is ambiguous from the text as to who was the short man.  I don't think it necessarily matters, but I think it's interesting that we let tradition define this and even turn into a song about how Zaccheus was a wee little man.  It probably makes a little more sense to take the "he" and apply it to Zaccheus because that was the antecedent of the "he" in the previous clause.

At any rate, this is one of my favorite passages in the New Testament.  The Son of Man came ζητῆσαι καὶ σῶσαι τὸ ἀπολωλός.  I didn't really notice this until just now, but τὸ ἀπολωλός is the name given to the destroyer in Revelation.  The word means "to destroy."  In other words, Jesus came to to seek (ζητῆσα) and to save (σῶσαι) those who are going to be destroyed.  

This is no small thing.  Think back to 9/11 and the heroism of the men and women who ran up those burning buildings to save those who were going to be destroyed.  We remember those folks with reverence, and I believe rightly so.  Jesus did more than that.  He humbled Himself by coming down to earth and taking on a human nature along with His divine nature.  He did that not just to make the lost able to be saved, but to save the lost.  He came to rescue dying sinners.

Incidentally, this is just one more piece of evidence regarding the reality of eternal punishment for those who do not know Jesus.  If you are lost please realize that Jesus came to save you.  Won't you let Him save you from destruction?

OT Perspicuity

Luke 16:31
(31)  He said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'"

(31)  εἶπεν δὲ αὐτῷ, Εἰ Μωϋσέως καὶ τῶν προφητῶν οὐκ ἀκούουσιν, οὐδ' ἐάν τις ἐκ νεκρῶν ἀναστῇ πεισθήσονται.

This is quite a condemning statement.  It's also rather prophetic and helps to build our theology a little bit.  We see that the Jews had all they needed to know the Messiah.  We call it the Old Testament, but they called it the Tanak.  The point is that one can see Christ in the Old Testament.  You don't even have to resort to crazy allegories like making every reference to wood into a reference to the cross.  He's right there in passages like Isaiah 6:1-7, for example.

I find it interesting that this also comes at the end of a parable where he uses the name Lazarus as the righteous, but poor man who ended up in paradise with Abraham.  Of course, that is also the name of a man that Jesus did raise from the dead.  I don't think that is a coincidence.  Lazarus is someone who was raised from the dead.  As Jesus told this parable He was also someone who would rise from the dead, thereby fulfilling the subjunctive mood used with ἀναστῇ.  As we can see today, that did not convince many of the Jews, but if they had read their Tanak correctly they would not have missed Him.

On a side note, this parable also seems to give credence to the idea of hell as a place of perpetual torment.  It doesn't provide an ironclad argument since it is a parable, but it is just one more brick in the foundation of our theology of eternal punishment for the unrighteous.  It is something to consider at any rate.