BibleProject - Saved from God’s Wrath – Character of God E11

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

God demonstrates his wrath by handing his people over to the natural consequences of their own destructive decisions, which ultimately leads to death. In this episode, Tim, Jon, and Carissa discuss what it means to be saved from God’s wrath by embracing the life of Jesus and a whole new set of natural consequences: lives given over to love and righteousness.View full show notes from this episode →Timestamps Part one (0:00–13:15)Part two (13:15–28:30)Part three (28:30–35:00)Part four (35:00–45:00)Part five (45:00–end)Show Music “Defender Instrumental” by Tents“Beneath Your Waves” by Sleepy FishShow produced by Dan Gummel. Show notes by Lindsey Ponder.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

Hi, this is John a Bible project, and this is our last episode on the Anger of God. Today we're going to look at how the Apostle Paul talks about God's anger in the book of Romans. We've done these past six episodes on this one attribute of God because for many of us God's anger can be scary and confusing. For others, we've actually flattened out God's anger to be something simpler than what it actually is. This is kind of the basic summary of Christian belief when I was first introduced to it. I'm at early 20s, is, You're a human, you have a conscience between right and wrong, you've done wrong. SIND. God is holy, therefore he is angry at you for your sin, and he's going to kill you. This is justice and his holiness, he has to kill you.

Jesus died in your place instead, and so you can be forgiven and have wife instead of death. So what I'm saying is that abstraction doesn't really do justice to all of the elements in that summary, especially this idea of God's anger and death. God's anger is God's handing people over to a process that's self-chosen, that results in death, but it's very much what I want. And so the Apostle Paul opens his letter to the Romans saying, quote, the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven

against all the godlessness and wickedness of people. So then that raises the question, well, how is the wrath of God being revealed? What does it look like? And he repeats himself three times. He says, therefore, because they've exchanged their glory that God wants them to have for idolatry, therefore God gave them over in the passionate desires of their hearts. God's wrath is handing us over to ourselves, giving us what we want, which doesn't lead to a true life. What Paul will later say is that we are

rescued from this path by Jesus, and because of Jesus, we are now at peace with God. And so, to say that you're saved from God's wrath, it's like you're being taken off a set of train tracks, and you're put on a different set of train tracks that leads to life. This is what he means when he says to be saved from God's anger. It's not just a post-mortem event at the end of your life. God's wrath is something that begins now. And it's something that I need to be rescued from right now. I don't want to be given over to my basis desires.

That would be terrible for me and everybody around me, starting tomorrow, and not just after I die. Paul puts it this way in Romans 5, but God demonstrates His own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through Him? When Paul, when He talks about the cross, what he four grounds of God's character is not his anger, he four grounds God's love. The cross is the demonstration of God's love.

Thanks for joining us. Here we go. We are going to finish up a conversation on the anger of God. This conversation is part of a series where we're walking through five different attributes of God in Exodus 34. The middle attribute, the third attribute, is not so much an attribute of God, but it's a description of the way God handles anger, which is that he's slow to anger. We've been talking, this is our boy. Sixth episode, I think. An anger and we'll try to land the plane. And I'm here with with Kriissa, as usual, hi,

Kriissa. Hi. And Dr. Tim Mecky. I should say Dr. Kriissa Quinn as well. If I'm gonna say Dr. Tim. And I'm the one here without a doctorate and the most confused of us all. Speaking of which, man, I feel like I really have been doing such a bad job. I just feel like I'm just all over the place. What I would love is to hear Tim, you built these notes, we haven't had you yet do a recap. Could you try to do like a five-ish minute just like how would you recap the main beats of where we've been and then bring it to Jesus. So God's anger in the Bible, it's very common, right? Most people think that especially the God of the Old Testament, you know, isn't he mainly

just angry at humans and killing them for the stupid things they do. So the fact is, is that the portrait of God's anger is way more nuanced than that. And it's actually telling us some really powerful things that we stand to benefit and learn from about ourselves and about God. God's anger doesn't occur nearly as often as readers of the Old Testament might think. It occurs less often in the Bible and when it does occur, it's surprising.

So God's anger appears first in the Bible with Moses in a conversation that he's having about how he wants Moses to represent him and Moses refuses five times over. That's the first time God gets angry. So that itself is beginning a pattern that God's anger in the Old Testament is most consistently expressed towards the people that he's calling to represent him. And the famous stories like the flood

or Sodom and Gomorrah, they are acts of God's justice against evil, but in neither one of those stories is God angry. And the flood God has overcome with grief and sorrow. So as the story line of the Bible develops, God invests in one particular group of people to be his representatives to the world, and they are the ones with whom God gets most angry most often in the storyline of the Bible. Just like how we tend to get the most angry and frustrated with the people that we are most invested in relationally. If you

search, get a concordance, and you search out all the times that God gets angry at Israel, you'll find a few dozen stories, and you'll find a pretty consistent response. How does God express this anger? And it's most consistently demonstrated with the phrase, and God handed them over or gave them over into the a pretty consistent response. How does God express his anger? And it's most consistently demonstrated with the phrase, and God handed them over or gave them over into the hands of their enemies. So God hands Israel over to the consequences that are destructive and ruinous, but it's the choices that they made that got them there. Moses says it's God hiding his face. And the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, they developed this in a big way. And the bad guys that Israel's handed over to, because of their faithlessness to the

covenant, is Assyria and Babylon. Oop, Assyria, we didn't talk about this, Isaiah calls Assyria the rod of God's anger. It says if Syria is the instrument of God's anger, which is to hand Israel over to their bad decisions. So when Jesus enters the scene, he sees himself in the role of another one of these prophets, but also as the covenant God of Israel himself pursuing his people again, warning them that if they don't accept his way of being Israel among the nations, that they are going to yet again be subject to God's anger, which will be to be handed over to the power of Rome. Jesus warned that this would happen, and when he wrote into Jerusalem for Passover, he intentionally provoked the rulers of Jerusalem,

challenging their authority, claiming that he was Israel's true authority. And when he began to talk about what he thought was gonna happen, it becomes clear that he knew that he was going to die. In fact, he went to Jerusalem specifically to poke the bear, to provoke the leaders to a showdown, knowing that they would kill him. But it's not a tragedy in Jesus' eyes. In Jesus'

eyes, he is and uses his phrase multiple times in that Passover week that he's going to drink the cup of God's anger, which is a key prophetic image, for being Israel being handed over to pagan oppressorsors to foreign foreign armies. Say that again to him. He's going to drink the cup of God's anger. Yes, which is a very particular Old Testament metaphor for Israel being overwhelmed and conquered by foreign armies and pagan oppressors.

So to put a fine point on it, when Jesus uses that phrase, you think he's specifically thinking about the fact that he's going to be killed by Roman pressors. Yeah, and the corrupt leaders of Israel that are in league with them. Yes, I think that if you just study the scriptural hyperlinks that Jesus is making there, I think it's unavoidably the conclusion. And that's precisely what he goes to Jerusalem to do. And that's why he stages his protest in the temple courts, in full view of the leaders of the temple, but also in view of the Roman governor, because the Roman governor had vested interest in keeping the peace in the temple courts. So Jesus' trial, the moment of these two Jesus' standing on trial, an innocent Jesus, son of God, and then a guilty Jesus, Barabas, who's a rebel against Rome,

and the innocent Jesus, who was trying to tell Israel to love their Roman enemies, and then the guilty Jesus who tried to kill the Roman enemies go free. And Jesus intentionally goes to his death on behalf of his guilty people. And this is what he met by drinking the cup of God's anger. The anger there is simultaneously the wrath of Rome and the wrath of his real leaders. Another important strand in here is Jesus' understanding of his death and confrontation as being a cosmic confrontation with demonic spiritual powers that have hijacked the kingdoms of this world to be instruments of injustice as opposed to justice.

And he believes that's where he's confronting the powers of darkness. So it's substitutionary atonement. It's Jesus dying in our place. It's Jesus conquering the powers of death and evil in our place. And it's Jesus as an act of love and surrender, giving his life in the place of faithless corrupt people.

It's all of those things rushing together. So anger is one sub-theme of them that took me a while, sorry. Yeah, no, that's good. It's really helpful. Anger being a sub-theme, meaning that the anger of God which results in experiencing the consequences of our evil and injustice that manifests itself very concretely in the biblical story of Babylon coming, that Jesus is experiencing that anger and that He is experiencing what it's like for the chaos of the oppression of Rome coming and taking his life, which is what he is saying is gonna happen to all of Israel. Yeah, that's right. Because of the way they're acting. Yeah, that's right.

And that's what Jesus Bar Abbas represents. A rebel Israelite who tries to confront Rome. And what would normally be coming his way, which is to get killed by the Romans for being a rebel, but instead the guilty Jesus Barabas goes free. And Jesus of Nazareth, who's innocent, takes this place and goes to his death. This recently struck me that that scene was barabas, is actually close to the heartbeat of the atonement theology in the Gospels.

It's amazing. So Jesus is experiencing God's anger here. He drinks the cup. But what that doesn't mean is God's angry at me, and so he just like takes out his anger on me and kills me. It's God's anger has already decided to give Israel over. And Jesus puts himself in the place of his people. And so he experienced that anger.

He experienced God's anger, which is being handed over to death. Yeah. But if you were to try to parse that down more and say, was God angry at Jesus in that moment? Yes. Then you've gone farther than where the biblical authors go. Yeah. Yeah. And I think from everything Paul, the Apostle, or John, says about the cross, I think they would say, no, that's the opposite conclusion.

Paul would say, the cross is an expression of God's love. And it's where God's love and God's anger meet together to rescue humans and to provide them life out the other side of death. But that's actually where we're going right now in the rest of this conversation. 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc

1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc 1 tbc sdmdc So I've excerpted here a selection from Romans chapter one. I'll just kind of read this through and be into play tour guide as we go through, but you'll just kind of just follow Paul's thought here.

He's just told them, Paul's writing a letter to a network of house churches in Rome that are divided along ethnic and culture lines and he's trying to help them see that they should be unified. Because he wants to go there and use their network as a home base to go be a missionary further on into Spain.

And he wants to announce the gospel, the good news. And so he unpacks what that is. He says in chapter 1 verse 16, I am not ashamed of the good news. It is God's power for rescuing everyone who believes to the Jew first, but also to the Greek. For in the good news, God's righteousness, the upstanding character of God that compels him to do right by his promises, that's what is revealed in the good news. That's my paraphrase. That's not actually what the translation says of my paraphrase. It's revealed from faith to faith. There's literally whole stacks of books written on

just what that phrase means. Just as it is written, and he quotes Hebacchic chapter two, the righteous one, the one who does right by God will live by his trust, his faith in God. So the righteousness of God is revealed in the good news, and then he flips it. He says, because the wrath of God, the anger of God, is being revealed from the skies against all ungodliness, all unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. He unpacks it. He says, truth in unrighteousness. He unpacks it. He says, because what is known about God is evident, even inside of people, God has made it evident to them. Since the creation of

the world, God's invisible attributes, his power, his nature, you can see them being understood by what's been made. And Tim, here he's talking about, he's talking about all humanity here, not just the Jewish people. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. That's going to be important. Yeah, his point is, even without having the special privilege of Israel watching the 10 plagues and the rescue of the Exodus and being at Mount Sinai, you can just do a Psalm 19, you know, the heavens declare your glory. You look up and you be like, someone's behind this whole elaborate cosmic system. Yep, that's his point.

So he says, even though humans can infer that there is some beautiful mind behind the whole thing, even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks. Rather, they became futile or pointless in their speculations and their foolish hearts were darkened. How does that work? Well, thinking that they were all wise, they became fools, and humans exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible humans, birds, for-footed animals and crawling creatures. So for modern readers, this doesn't land nearly the way it would for somebody who lives

in the first century realm, which is where these people lived, where you had idol shrines at every corner, and even in the corner of people's houses. Yeah, this seems like just probably because we've been talking so much about Exodus and the Golden Calf. It seems so similar to that story, but do you think it's meant to be much broader than that? Yes, though. Well, that little line there, they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the image of human's birds, four-footed animals, he highlights. He's actually quoting from Psalm 106 in that little statement, they exchanged their glory for an image. He's quoting from a Psalm 106, which is retelling the story of the Golden Calf in a poetic form. That's interesting.

So he's using the Golden Calf story to describe all humanity. He's using a story about Israel to describe the state of all humanity, which essentially he tells us a story of humans are made for so much more, and they are God's talking to us, revealing that there's something cosmic and transcendent going on, but what humans want to do is create. Instead of recognizing they are the image of God,

they give over their dignity and authority, and they don't honor the Creator, rather they exchange the glory of the incredible God for a self-made God. And for all of the values and ideas that these other God's man-made gods represent? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so that's what kind of we have to infer here. What do these idols mean to people?

But the names of these idols are Roma, which is the Roman Empire, you know, Deified as a goddess or Eustitya, justice. And then there's all of the classic kind of Greek gods or Zeus or Apollo, but they, um, they all embody war, justice, wine, the economy. They're what today we would call institutions. Actually, you know, um, when I lived in Wisconsin, Madison was Wisconsin, whereas going to graduate school. It's also the state capital, and the state capital building is like right next to the big university. So I went in there quite a bit, and I went to Oregon State Capital where I grew up like once on a field trip

for school or something, but I went into the Wisconsin State capital a lot. And if you look up, it's all of these elaborate decorative carvings. And there's all these great words like Liberty and Justice, but written in Roman capital letters, like Latin capital letters, and above them are statues of the Greek or Roman gods that these words represented. And I remember it hit me one day like, oh, I'm not as far from the first century as I thought. I think this is in all of our state capitals.

And we've like secularized all of this, but these institutional ideals hold the same place in our imagination that they did in the first century. I remember when we were talking about the Golden Calf story and I realized this detail that they weren't creating a new God. They were recreating Yahweh. Yes. They're like, here's Yahweh. Let's worship Yahweh in it's a Golden Calf and it's this domestication of let's turn God into something that we want, that we can understand and control.

And then the other thing I'm thinking about here is that, and you pointed out, I've pointed this out many times, is that the tragedy here is not merely the turning away from God and creating an idol to represent Him, it's that we're missing that we're supposed to be the image of God. So there's this calling of reflecting the true nature of this, and he's the word incorruptible, it'd be curious why that word. But you think of just this untamable God, we're supposed to be the image of to rule the world. And instead, we say, well, no actually, let's create things that we can obey and serve instead that are maybe a little more easier to figure out.

Totally. And yeah, we can even drill and even closer. When he says they exchange the glory of the incorruptible God, this is that interview. We did somewhere within the last year with a New Testament scholar, Haley, Gorence, and Jacob. And she traced the theme of glory through the letter to the Romans. Oh, that's a really cool conversation. But what she was pointing out is, if you, this is the first occurrence of the word, glory,

if you trace it through, what it most often refers to is the glorious status that God made humans for. So to exchange the glory of the incorruptible God is to exchange the glory that the incorruptible God wants us to have. That's what it means here. So we are the glorious image of God, but we exchange that, the glory that God wants to give us, and we give it to these corruptible human statues. It's this tragic inversion of our identity. It's interesting that that aligns so much with our view of anger, God's anger, at him being

angry when people betray him. Yeah, they betray him, but they don't have a proper maybe understanding of their representation of him or their harming themselves. Maybe that's what I'm getting at. There's like this humanitarian thing there where people are harming themselves or harming others and they're not representing him. It's, it makes sense why this is so connected with his anger or his handing them over. Yes, I'm just clueling into something you said, Chris, a few minutes ago. Here we are again at the story of the Golden Calf, even in the letter to the Romans. When Paul brings up God's anger,

the first story he starts thinking in terms of is the golden calf story. And in light of the Genesis 1 image of God story. So yeah, and here it's, yeah, you're right, it's not even betrayal, it's such. It's the thing that God so passionately invested in to share this world with human partners, ruling it together. And that's the thing that we forfeit when we take these transcendent ideals of beauty and goodness and justice and these wonderful gifts of sex and food and power. And then we treat them as gods that we're willing to give everything for. And that's the moment that God gets angry. That's Paul's argument in a nutshell here.

So then that raises the question, well, how is the wrath of God being revealed? What does it look like if you wanted to know where to look for it, if God's angry? What would you see? And he repeats himself three times what he thinks it means. It starts in verse 24. He says, therefore, because they've exchanged their glory that God wants them to have for idolatry, therefore God gave them over in the passionate desires of their hearts to impurity so that their bodies would be dishonored. And he goes on to talk about all these destructive sexual misbehaviors that hurt people, and through which people hurt others in themselves. Verse 26, he repeats it again. For this reason, God gave them over to dishonoring or degrading passions. Verse 28, skipping forward, again.

And just as they didn't see fit to even acknowledge God anymore, God gave them over to a senseless mind so that they would do things that are not right. He begins to go through this bucket list here that he uses to describe the culture that he sees around him, unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip. I just basically any human community anywhere in the history of the world. And verse 32, even though people know that these things are wrong, and if they believe in God, as he says, even though they know that God's commands, they know that people who practice such things are worthy of death, but yeah, we do them anyway. And we even approve of people who do these things. He's trying to give a portrait of a

realistic portrait of what happens to human communities when they exalt idolatrous ideals and self-made ideals and gods up to the place of God, he gives people over. He said it three times, and God's anger is giving people over to the consequences of their decisions. So there's a lot more going on in Romans 1. I just wanted to point that out that this is exactly how the Hebrew Bible talks about God's anger. Handing him over.

Paul's articulating it just like they do. It seems like a lot of times when we read that verse Romans 118 for the wrath of God is being revealed and then so he gave them over and then he gave them over and he gave them over. At least for me, I feel like I've tended to disconnect those ideas. Like the wrath of God, God's wrath is coming because of all these things that people do or have done. Instead of the wrath of God is revealed, and this is how it's revealed. You see evidence of it when people are turned away from him. That is actually his wrath, his handing over. Does that distinction make sense? Yeah, I hear that.

I guess my question in return would be, why does he say the wrath of God is revealed? Oh, you mean it's something that you can go see happening right now? I think that's what he means. God's wrath is happening right now. Yeah. How? What does it look like?

And the triple handing over. It's interesting because what you would typically say is, what's being revealed is human nature. Which is kind of the wrath of God. It's like the handing over to one's own desires. Yeah. And when human nature is left unchecked by God, where you just says, okay, give into it, then that is his wrath.

That's right. Which we're back to the prophets and the gospospels too, about being handed over to Babylon in a Syria. What happens when God just lets, when it's just Lord of the Flies, what happens? It might make right. And then people justify their, you know, grabs at power and dominance and usually attach some kind of divine will to it. Say it's in the name of some God to justify it, give it authority and idolatry, and there you go. I think it's pretty press repeat

and you've got human history. But just to identify what you're saying, John, we would separate that and we would say, well, God's angry and so he's going to do something about it. And then just humans are stupid and they do terrible things to each other. But in the Bible, those two are intertwined. God, letting humans destroy themselves, is the expression of his anger. That's what Paul is certainly trying to say here. 1 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 個 1.5% You can't quote Romans without quoting one of the great Romans commentators of our day and T. Right? He's got a great way of putting this.

He says, the great evils of the 20th century, so pick your world war, pick your genocide, just the 20th century. That's what he's talking about. The bloodiest century in human history. Bloodiest century in human history. These evils remind us that unless God remains implacably opposed to the evil that distorts and defaces creation, not least humanity, God is not good. If God isn't angry and unavoidably opposed to evil, like the 20th century showed us,

then God cannot be good if the 20th century isn't a total affront to God's goodness. He goes on. Paul's whole theology is grounded in the robust, scripturally rooted view that the creator is neither a tyrant nor in absentee landlord, but rather the creator and lover of the world. The result is God's wrath, not just in attitude of hostility towards idolatry and immorality, but also actions that follow from that attitude. The content of God's wrath involves the process of giving people over to the result of their own folly, but also more.

Those consequences are also in anticipation of a final judgment, the death that Paul mentions in verse 32 of chapter 1. In other words, what he's saying is, when God handing people over three times over, and it all leads up to the climax of the chapter when verse 32 there, which is death, it's all one organically connected whole. Those two, the handing over and the ending in death

are connected organically. The moral degradation in the present is an anticipation of the ultimate degrading of humaneness itself that is death. I just thought that's a good way to put that. We see them as separate things, and he's trying to say Paul sees this all as one connected thing. Like death is not a tacked on punishment.

It's the natural result or the natural end of people living their own way. Is that kind of like the flood? Like humans were creating destruction for themselves and others and their natural end was death. Like they're destroying themselves in the world. Is that what you're saying? Yes, that's what he's saying and I think he's got his thumb on what Paul's saying. Good memory. That was so many conversations ago when we talked about the flood. But it's the logic of the flood story. People are ruining the land. And so God says, their end has come up before me.

So I'm going to accelerate their ruin by means of the flood. That's right. So this matters because otherwise we think of death as just an unrelated punishment. Am I getting at that right? Yeah. This is kind of the basic summary of Christian belief when I was first introduced to it. In my early 20s, is, you're a human. You have a conscience between right and wrong.

You've done wrong. You've sinned. God is holy. Therefore, He is angry at you for your sin, and he's going to kill you. It's his justice and his holiness. He has to kill you. Jesus died in your place instead, and so you can be forgiven and have life instead of death. So what I'm saying is that abstraction doesn't really do justice to all of the elements in that summary, especially this idea of God's anger and death. God's anger is God's handing people over to a process that's self-chosen, that results

in death, but it's very much what I want. Well, to be fair, it's not what you want. Well, it's what we choose. It's what you choose. Not really realizing. Oh, well. I mean, what you want is you want pleasure. You want freedom.

You want all these other things. It's distorted desire. Yeah, distorted desire. Okay, yeah, that's fair. But yeah, the question is, when you're after an idolatrous version of pleasure, you can begin to see that it's destroying you, or destroying your relationships, you know? And then you're faced with a choice.

This is destroying me, but it's giving me the thing that I want. And lots of people will just choose to destroy themselves. Or, you know, or find a way to slowly destroy themselves so they can get as much enjoyment out of it as they want. Is that true though? Like, we celebrate vices that destroy you slowly. Or the ones that destroy you quickly were like, yeah, those are bad. Yeah, some culturally acceptable vices. Yeah.

So my main point in bringing this up is to say, here's the Apostle Paul. This is the most elaborate description of God's anger that we have in the letters of the Apostles. And once again, it's really nuanced and I think it's profound. And it's not quite what you might first think when you think of God's anger in the Bible. 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh

1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh 1 tbh So, Paul's creating a problem here in chapter one and he goes on to talk in great detail and through long, complex lines of argument about what God is doing about all this.

I just want to hit his kind of recap of this in chapter five. And we'll just start in verse six. You know, reading Paul anymore is impossible when you can't sit down and just read the whole thing, the whole letter because this is hopelessly out of context, but it's like we don't have time to talk about the whole thing. But starting in verse 6 where he says there's one on lines he says you know at just the right time when we all were still weak or powerless, the Messiah died for those who are ungodly. Then he steps back to reflect and he says, you know, it's interesting, it's very rare that anyone would go die in the place of a righteous person. Though maybe for a really good person, someone might dare to die. There's a New Testament scholar Simon Gatherkoel,

who's written on this little line. He thinks Paul is alluding to some of the famous Greek epic stories of the noble death, of the soldier who will die for his army general or this kind of thing. And he's playing into that category of like, you know, we have this category of the noble death, but somebody who would die for their enemies,

die for weak, powerless, sinful people, that's crazy. And that's what the Messiah did. So then for say, but God demonstrates His own love for us in this. While we were the ones in the wrong, that's when the Messiah died for us. So he's inverting the noble death theme here. You might die for your leader or for your friend, but to die for someone who can benefit you in no way. And who's betrayed you. And who's betrayed you. Yes. So this passage is important. Well, I'll just keep reading it.

And then we'll come back and talk about it. It's important. Next statement is, therefore, since we have been justified, and NIV translation, you could kind of infer what he means by that, since we have been declared to be right in right relationship with God by His blood, that is by Jesus' sacrificial death, how much more will we be saved from God's wrath through Him? For if, while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more? After we've been reconciled, will we be saved through his life? And not only this, but we can actually boast, we can speak publicly about how God has

given us honor through Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received reconciliation. In other words, to be someone for whom the Messiah died isn't to stay cowering in the dust and be like, oh, that God would put up with me, terrible me. He says it's something you can boast about. You can go out and public and say, yeah, like that guy built a coliseum. She built a library and that's a testament to her honor. You know what I boasted? The Messiah of Israel gave his life for me and that's what gives me honor. Dude Paul did so good. He's working all these things. This is a great passage. My point to bring it up here is when Paul, in verse 8, of chapter 5 of Romans, when he talks about the cross, what he foregrounds of God's character is not his anger.

He foregrounds God's love. The cross is the demonstration of God's love. In the next sentence, he does say that it's bi-JS' death that we are delivered, rescued from God's wrath through him. So what many people take that to mean is that, oh yes, God was going to kill me, but instead he killed Jesus and he wants to forgive me. And so what we have to do is upload what Paul means by God's anger and wrath from chapter 1. And read this statement in light of what he's already said about God's anger. And when you do that, I think this passage becomes even more beautiful than maybe it already

was in the first place. Yeah, I just noticed that. And I hadn't ever noticed up for it since we just read Romans 1 talking about God's wrath. And then also seeing here, you've got the past tense, God, or well, I guess it's present tense. He demonstrates his love for us while we were sinners, he died for us. That's past tense. Yeah. Now being justified, I mean, in this right relationship by the sacrifice,

how much more shall we be saved? That's future tense, right? Mm-hmm. It's like speaking towards, now how am I going to live? And how is this going to shape me? How is this rescuing me? And if I upload Romans 1, which is a way of living in a scrub state where my mind is handed over, my heart is handed over,

I don't have to experience that. I can have a heart and a mind that is uncorrupted as I move forward in my life. But also, the present being handed over to my destructive decisions leads me on a course that organically is connected to a whole life trajectory that leads to death. That's Romans 1. And so to say that your save from God's wrath is to be... it's like you're being put taken off a set of train tracks and you're put on a different set of train tracks that leads to life. This is what he means when he says to be saved from God's anger. It's not just a post-mortem event at the end of your life. This is what he means when he says to be saved from God's anger. It's not just a post-mortem

event at the end of your life. God's wrath is something that begins now, and it's something that I need to be rescued from right now. I don't want to be given over to my basis desires. That would be terrible for me and everybody around me starting tomorrow and not just after I die. So when he's talking about being saved from God's wrath here, I mean that whole line is so important. We've been justified by his blood. Now how much more shall be saved from God's wrath through him? So is he talking about this new life in Jesus that now, what does it mean that how much more now shall be saved from God's wrath is it, because now we're connected to God's own life,

we're reconciled to Him. Also, maybe because we're compelled by the example of Jesus, both this reconciliation, justification, and then being compelled by God's love, Christ died for us, that now we have new life. Is that kind of where the argument is? Mm-hmm, yeah, I think so. And this is also embedded right in the middle,

or in the middle moment, of there's something that comes before this and after this in Romans 5. But his whole point is gonna be the through what Jesus has done for us. We are invited into a new and different kind of humanity that actually participates in the very love and life of God Himself.

And he begins our cure that's going to culminate in Romans chapter 8, which is going to be all about the very spirit of this God dwelling within us to give new life to our dying bodies that will bear fruit in the resurrection. Is that what he means in verse 10, shall be saved through his life? Yes, I think so.

Yeah, that's right. The life of the resurrection and the life of the spirit. Yeah, so in a way, we've been saved both through his death and we've been saved through his life. Yep, that's right. We've been reconciled through his death, which is a type of rescue. But then there's this trajectory that humanity

is on of this, being given over and debased, and we're also rescued from that through his life, his spirit, his resurrection power. Yeah. So again, just to put the point on it, when Paul wants to articulate the character trait of God that's most clearly on display in the death of Jesus, he highlights God's love first and foremost.

God's anger functions in the background of what the cross means, but it's not the foreground character trait. What he says is that through the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus, we are rescued from God's anger. What is God's anger? And then we're back to chapter one. It's God being angry that his human, royal human images hand over their destiny and glory to created things rather than the creator.

And so he gives them over on a path that leads to death. And that's that whole trajectory is what we are rescued from through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as an act of God's love. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. It's coherent. This actually is coherent as a thought as a whole set of thoughts. It's not just a bunch of little one-liners.

Paul doesn't just tie a bunch of one-liners together. He's really, he's thinking through the same sets of themes and ideas that unify the story of the Hebrew Bible and of the New Testament as well. to The idea of being saved from God's wrath and Romans, or I guess the idea of God's wrath and Romans just from these couple of passages we've looked at, seems like, you know, if we think about the category we had for that before, the idea of being handed over to the power that rules, here it seems like God's wrath is referring to maybe being handed over to the power of sin and death more than some other power, but is that idea still there?

The handing over idea in Romans? It's like being handed over to your own desires, but how does that relate to being handed over to like the rulers and authorities? Or has it changed a little bit? That's not so much as emphasis in Romans. He's gonna bring up the powers and authorities in chapter 8, and they play a big role more in Ephesians and Colossians. And there are some other places where he talks about God's wrath or anger in the letter to the Romans. But the significant thing is that it's God handing people over on a trajectory that leads them towards death. And that death is the just outcome of a trajectory of a human life or a human community that chooses corrupt sub-human kinds of

behavior, and that whole line is called God's wrath, and that that's what he's saying we're rescued from. I mean, we already tried to summarize at the beginning of this conversation where we've been, I don't know, maybe I don't know, maybe it'd be good to just offer some final, final reflections. Well, yeah, so bringing this back to where this all came from, Exodus 34, there's five attributes of God, or maybe arguably four attributes of God, and then this one. So he's gracious, compassionate,

overflowing with loyal love and faithfulness, and he's slow to anger, right in the center. He's slow to anger. Why does God highlight his slown slow to anger, right in the center. He's slow to anger. Why does God highlight His slowness to anger? And I've really appreciated this really deep dive nuance just exploration of God's anger. And, but what is it about God's relationship with us as humans and specifically, I guess an Exodus But what is it about God's relationship with us as humans?

And specifically, I guess an Exodus is relationship with Israel that he slowed it anger. You also talked about, you brought out that proverb, something about someone's wisdom is seen in their slowness to anger. Proverbs. 1911. Yeah. As a reflection, and maybe they're just saying

the same thing again, which is a good God has to get angry at injustice. That makes sense. It would be weird if God was good and he didn't get angry at evil and injustice. But what is highlighted in Exodus 34 is not that he gets angry at injustice. It's that he's slow to do it. And depending on where you're at, that can either be really frustrating because you're like, God, just come and just make new creation. Like, let's get rid of injustice, make it happen.

But there's this, this forbearance to use very religious word. And so word Paul uses in Romans chapter 2 actually. In his four merits. Yeah, I wonder if the being patient or slow to anger also allows humans to step back into their role of being true partners and doing what's right. You know, we want we want God to do and to make something happen, but it's also an opportunity for humans to fulfill their God-given role of his partners.

Yeah, for God to appoint human images to be the instruments of His justice in the world. In theory, if His human images were really doing their job well, there would be less for God to be angry at in the first place. Yeah. Yeah. You know? But his purpose in being slow is often that people would turn to him and realize what

they're doing and turn to him. Yeah. Isn't there a verse to that effect? I feel like. Yeah, and Romans 2. Is that Romans 2? What's the verse? Yeah, it starts in Romans 2 2, where he says,

we know that God's judgment is coming justly on those who practice such things. And he's talking about the end of chapter 1. And he says, but, and I think here he's getting the hypocritical Israelite in the crosshairs here. But you who would pass judgment on pagans, I think, non-Israelites who do these things, but you do them yourself. Do you think you will escape God's justice? Or do you think lightly of the riches of His

kindness and tolerance and patience? Don't you know that God's kindness is what leads you to repentance? Is that the line you're thinking of, John? That's the one I was thinking of, you? Yeah, that's right. God puts up with the nations and with Israel far longer than you would think Yatov. And that's what Paul's reflecting on here. Yeah, that's interesting.

So it's like when we see injustice in the world around us, and then systems around us, one response here is to recognize that God has been patient and praying that people would be led to repentance by that patient. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, God is offering it as an opportunity. Yeah. Or whether or not he's been patient, I don't know. I mean, how do we know what God is doing in a present moment?

But that kind or that moment would be an opportunity for repentance. I think that's a true reality. I think for me, the enduring takeaway from spending so much time thinking about this is seeing God's what feel like more unpleasant. I think for me, the enduring takeaway from spending so much time thinking about this is seeing gods what feel like more unpleasant sides of his character, anger, judgment. But I think I am more, I'm a step closer to seeing how those are expressions of his deep agonizing love for creation. And how often the discomfort I have with God's anger is really some way that I'm

shielding myself from hypocrisy because if I'm impatient or uncomfortable with God getting angry or bringing justice on somebody else. The thing is I'm quite happy when God agrees with who I think ought to be judged, but when I participate in or in complicit in personal ways or corporate ways that hurt other people, I'm really hoping that he'll be patient. And so I anger with me and show me love. I don't know, man, the Bible has a much more profound and powerful way of reflecting on God's character,

his anger, and his love. Then normally we tend to think, and it makes more sense to me than ever why the Bible is a book that requires a lifetime of meditation to really experience the character of God. Little addendum. Since we're in Romans 2, if I could just ask you, starting in verse 5, he says, your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, your storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath. Yeah, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. So we were talking about God's wrath and the present tense of being handed over this degrading, this spiraling out of control.

But Paul also looks like he talks, thinks about it as a future thing too. That's right. The day of God's wrath. Yeah, that's right. And that, again, that was what, that was the whole point of our discussion in chapter one, was it's a trajectory that begins in the present

and leads forward to, and then he just uses the word death. So that's right. And he uses the word wrath to talk about either end the whole spectrum from the present and leading up forward to it. Thanks for listening to this episode of Bible Project Podcast. We're collecting questions on the topic of the character of God for this entire series. Our deadline for submitting questions is November 9th 10 a.m. Pacific. So get your question in before then so we can consider it for our final question

response episode. Record yourself asking the question, keep it to about 20 or 30 seconds. Email us your question, audio file, plus a transcription of it to info at Bioproject.com. Again, it's info at Bioproject.com. We'd love to hear from you and we'd love to engage with your question. Next week, we're back and we're moving on from God's anger. We're gonna consider the fourth attribute of God in Exodus 34, and that is his loyal love.

There's no word in any language that quite does all of the things that Chesa is doing. And so it's a challenge to render Chesa into any language. It's a covenant partner. You're motivated by love and affection. You do concrete acts. And as you do so, you are fulfilling a promise that you made.

That's Chesa. Today's show was produced by Dan Gumball. Our show notes by Lindsay Ponder are theme music from the band Tense. If you've been enjoying this show, we would love it if you could give us a review on whatever platform you use that helps other people find the podcast and know that it's something that's good. If you have some constructive feedback, we'd love to hear that too. We read every review and we love to hear from you.

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