God is like Jesus.
God has always been like Jesus.
There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus.
We have not always known what God is like—
But now we do.
Consider these two foundational truths of Christian theology:
1. God is immutable. i.e. God does not change and is not subject to change.
2. God is perfectly revealed in Jesus. i.e. Jesus does notchange God, Jesus reveals God.
(see John 1:1, 14-18; 5:19-21; 7:28-29; 8:19; 10:28-30; 12:44-46; 14:7-9)
Understanding that God is immutable and that God like Jesus is essential to our understanding of salvation. We must not think that salvation comes about because Jesus placates God (thus changing God) or that God is obligated to satisfy retributive justice in order to forgive sin (thus making God subordinate to a higher justice). Salvation comes about because Jesus reveals the Father and does the Father’s work. Jesus tells us that the great work of the Father is to give life to the dead (see John 5 and 11). Thus the primary problem the Gospel addresses is not personal guilt (though this is included), but human subjugation to death. If we think judicial guilt is the primary problem of sin, instead of death (and then falsely imagine that God killed Jesus instead of sinful humanity!), we greatly misrepresent the nature of salvation and concoct a distorted gospel where Jesus is saving us from God. No! Jesus reveals the Father, does the work of the Father, and saves us from the dominion of sin and death.
The Apostle Paul tells us that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself…not reconciling himself to the world. The cross doesn’t change God (God is immutable). The cross shames the principalities and powers (exposing their claim to wisdom and justice as a naked bid for power) and changes us!
To hear my full sermon on this topic, the podcast is available here.
BZ
Thanks Brian!
This was very powerful! The Western Church has been heretical (like the Pharisees in their entrenched false religious choices) for so many centuries, and so ubiquitously/iniquitously on this great-gulf-fixed divide of God the eternal Lover and Restorer of our souls versus God the Sentencing Judge, that Western Christendom with devastating consequences simply lost its way - as far back as Augustine.
Tragically, Augustine's Pharisaical false choice/false gospel teaching dominated Western Roman Catholicism and Protestantism/Evangelicalism ever since. To now sound the sweet biblical note by contrast to most Christian leaders in the West creates impossible dissonance and presents as "heretical". What a perversion/inversion of the Gospel that "amazing grace/how sweet the sound" has been transposed into "amazing retributive justice/how sour the cacophony!" One has "eyes to see/ears to hear" this travesty or one does not. This travesty that leads to the triple evil of the Western Church's embrace/endorsement of "just war", "just retribution", and "just hell" is the ultimate bane of Western Christendom's anti-Christ anti-Gospel.
I posted a link to your podcast onto our Restorative Justice website (http://m2w2.com/wp/ - see http://m2w2.com/wp/about-m2w2/restorative-justice/, "M2/W2 Promotional Materials") here: http://wolc.com/podcast/god-is-like-jesus/. I entitled it: "God is Like Jesus: The Spiritual Heart of Restorative Justice".
Thanks and blessings!
Wayne
Posted by: Wayne Northey | August 14, 2011 at 10:01 AM