AT THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

One Facebooker challenged: “Where in the Bible does it say that God’s wrath was poured out on Jesus?” This challenge is too important to not post. It strikes right at the foundation of the Christian faith. Therefore, I responded:

“First of all, God’s requirement of justice had to be satisfied. He had to be “propitiated”:

·       Romans 3:25 (ESV) whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

·       1 John 2:2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

He actually died in place of us, for our sins. He took the penalty that we deserved:

·       2 Corinthians 5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

·       Romans 8:3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,

·       Galatians 3:13  Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—

·       Revelation 5:9 And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation,

·       Isaiah 53:5-6 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

When we deny this foundational Biblical truth, we bring condemnation upon ourselves:

·       2 Peter 2:1 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.”

Was it the Christian thing to do to scare him with this final verse? We instinctively shy away from threatening, and this includes me. This is because we are regularly castigated for warning about the eternal consequences. However, there is a place for this. Certainly, Jesus thought so!