Bad News and Good News

BAD NEWS AND GOOD NEWS 
The world is mostly preoccupied with bad news more than good news in its media expression and general conversation. That is why we have been given a Gospel of good news and it would be unwise to allow the preaching emphasis of that Gospel to be more on the bad news than on the good news. Paul writes to the Corinthian church about this in his letter concerning the ministry of death and the ministry of life.

2Corinthians 3:6 God has equipped us to be ministers of the New Covenant; not of the letter, but of the Spirit: for the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life. The ministry of the law written on stone that brought condemnation and death and separation from God, came with a short-lived glory (reflecting the nature of God’s righteousness and wisdom).
The face of Moses shone, and Israel veiled their eyes and turned away… 
Will not the ministry of the Spirit have a much greater glory? So we can put our hope in this and speak clearly and confidently. For if the temporary order of things (the Law), had its glory much more will the eternal order have its glory (the Holy Spirit putting God on display in our lives). 
for even today when Israel reads the Old Covenant Law the same veil of turning away remains; But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there the heart is free. So we, with an unveiled face reflecting the glory of the Lord as a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory through the Spirit of the Lord.

The teaching of the law and Commandments had a measure of glory because it put the nature of God on display (in his righteousness and wisdom). It still does this, and if people do their best in their own strength to obey the Commandments, they will live a more ordered and godly life, but it will not be the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. When I did the podcast series on the Ten Commandments, I explained at the beginning of each session that the way I was presenting the teaching was to emphasise the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in the New Covenant application of each Commandment, and that this transformation of our lives was not just from bad to good but from natural to spiritual.

The teaching of the Law was for the purpose of showing people what sin was - sin towards God and sin towards one another (Galatians 3:19) and all the sins outlined in the Ten Commandments were sins against relationships. The first four were about not trusting God and not loving him and the last six were about not loving one another.
The Bible says that loving God and one another is the fulfilment of the Commandments (Romans 13:10).

I grew up as a Catholic and was taught the Ten Commandments and all about sin and punishment and about obedience to the church commandments also, with obligations of attending church, receiving communion, going to confession, and doing penance for sins, and fasting and giving, and other sacramental rites. This helped to form my conscience and to cultivate a tender heart towards God, but I always felt guilt and shame and wondered how I would become a better person. I felt loved and secure and did my best about some of the legalistic bad news – until at about nineteen years of age I took a break from it all and went my own way. Some years after that I married a committed Protestant girl and began to search anew for God, and we had many discussions over Christian doctrine. Some time later she bought me a Bible and by the grace of God while reading that Bible in the middle of the night I found Jesus and then I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Everything began to change and so did I. And I had a clear understanding of the difference between the works of faith and the dead works of doing religion in our own strength. I also realised that the works of faith and of dead works was everywhere, in every church of every denomination, and that the Bible had a lot to say about it. I still respect the Catholic Church and every other church that teaches the forgiveness of sins through Jesus and the love of the Father and the grace of the Holy Spirit. I pray that we will all receive even greater revelation of all these truths.

I find that the hardest thing to grapple with is the teaching of a God that is ‘more angry than loving’. There is a teaching that proclaims that Jesus died for our sins to appease an angry God who was angry with all of us because of our sins and that his anger had to be taken out on Jesus who faithfully took that anger and punishment for us and so changed the Father’s heart towards us. This is called the doctrine of penal substitution (penalty substitution).

No, I believe that the Father so loved the world that he sent his Son to die for us, not to change the Heart of the Father but to change the heart of humanity, by giving them a new heart and a new spirit through the New Covenant and the Holy Spirit. 
In fact, if Jesus died on the cross to change the heart of an angry God, then it didn’t work, because God is still angry. He is still angry about the destruction that sin does to the human soul of his beloved humanity that he made in his image, and he is still angry at Satan for his dark heart of malice that holds sway over the human heart.  

That anger is called the wrath of God (orge – intense feeling of indignation) which didn’t disappear when Jesus died for our sins on the cross. It is the loving unyielding defence he expresses for his human family in correcting the harmful acts of unlove (sin) that we commit towards one another. This act of his intense love is nested in justice and truth as well as in mercy and forgiveness. (Romans 1:18)  
Today God is allowing many areas of injustice and the suppression of truth to be uncovered (apocolypto) and to come under his hand of his discipline in a world of abounding suspicion and blame and resentment. God counters all of that negative activity with a Gospel of hope and an abundance of grace where God is always within reach and peace can flourish in our inner lives. 

God hates the bad news of what sin does to people so he has good news about what forgiveness and reconciliation does for people. That is why there has to be a Gospel of good news for those who do harm and for the poor people who get harmed. The good news is that there is forgiveness, and the further good news is that there is the gift of the life of Jesus within. He gives us a new spirit - he gives us his Spirit and he gives us a new heart.

People need to be told they are forgiven, and that they need no longer be separated from God because of the feelings of guilt and shame about their sinful behaviour, which makes them hide from God and cover up in front of each other. They can receive a new mindset – metanoia – which means repentance. The new mindset acknowledges that God is not at odds with them, and they no longer need to be at odds with him. They are reconciled and can acknowledge with relief their sinful nature and be forgiven and transformed. They cannot have everything that they want, but they can receive every good thing that God wants for them. They are now able to have God’s peace. They are now able to trust God. They can now know what it means to be saved. And they also need to know that God holds us to account to not neglect such a great salvation (the healing of the soul).

Jonathan Edwards was a profoundly spiritual man of puritan and reformed theology who preached powerfully and sincerely about the death and resurrection of Jesus as our saviour from sin. In 1733 -1735 there was revival in his church in Northampton Massachusetts USA where there were 30 people being saved each week and it is reported that in six months, nearly 300 of 1100 youths in Northampton were admitted to the church. It was credited as being the beginning of a spiritual awakening that led to becoming the Great Awakening under George Whitefield in 1740. His influence of puritanism and Calvinism shaped the character of American Protestantism for many years, and it still has sway in its expression in modern evangelicalism. 

The following is an excerpt of Jonathan Edward’s preaching from ‘Sinners in the hands of an Angry God’.

‘The bow of Gods wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart and strains the bow and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all that keeps the arrow for one moment from being made drunk with your blood.’
And why should God be obliged to express such wonderful love to you, who never exercised the least degree of love to him in all your life? You never have loved God, who is infinitely glorious and lovely; and why then is God under obligation to love you, who are all over deformed and loathsome as a filthy worm, or rather a hateful viper? You have no benevolence in your heart towards God; you never rejoiced in God's happiness; And why then should God be looked upon as obliged to take so much care for your happiness, as to do such great things for it, as he doth for those that are saved? You care not what becomes of God's glory; you are not distressed how much soever his honour seems to suffer in the world: and why should God care anymore for your welfare? Has it not been so, that if you could but promote your private interest, and gratify your own lusts, you cared not how much the glory of God suffered? And why may not God advance his own glory in the ruin of your welfare, not caring how much your interest suffers by it? And why then is it harsh that God doth not do such great things for you as the changing of your nature, raising you from spiritual death to life or conquering the powers of darkness for you…

The odd thing is that even if the Gospel is preached badly and tells more bad news than good news the Holy Spirit will honour the hearts of his children who call upon his name even out of guilt and shame and not out of the gratitude and joy of forgiveness, as long as the death and resurrection of Jesus as our saviour from sin is sincerely proclaimed. The work of the Gospel in the hearts of people is ultimately the work of the Holy Spirit of grace. 

This narrative has affected the mind and heart of the Western Church as well as people in Western Society who have stopped going to church and don’t want to hear about God. What and who we are told we are by God, (or someone speaking in his name) is what we take upon ourselves and has a profound effect on our souls, and if we can’t face that narrative, we escape from its punishing thought somehow. Today’s Western World might refer to God with the idea of ‘God at a distance’ but it is a world proud of its individualism and independence and is convinced that we can work life out by ourselves without God. The sad consequence is a crowded humanity swimming in a high tide of isolation and loneliness and with a suffering soul. Christians often incorrectly manage their own guilt and shame by declaring judgment upon the world for all its wickedness. 

In contrast is the spiritual understanding of Athanasius who wrote circa 350 AD. Athanasius was an Egyptian Coptic Christian Theologian and a Church Father and was the chief defender of Trinitarianism against Arianism (Jesus was not God and there was no Trinity). 

‘It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by him should be brought to nothing by the deceit wrought upon man by the devil, and it was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits. As then the creatures whom He had created reasonable like the Word were in fact perishing and such noble works were on their way to ruin, what then was God, being good, to do? Was he to let corruption and death have their way with them – and in that case what would be the use of having made them in the beginning? Surely it would have been better never to have been created at all than have been created to be neglected and perish. And besides that, such indifference to the ruin of his own work before his own eyes would argue not goodness in God, but limitation, and that far more than if he had never created man at all. It was impossible therefore that God should leave man to be carried off by corruption because it would be unfitting and unworthy of himself…’ He writes further,
Thus, taking a body like our own because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, he surrendered his body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This he did out of sheer love for us so that in his death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because having fulfilled in his body that for which he was appointed, death was thereafter voided of its power for men. This he did that he might turn men again to incorruption who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of his body and by the grace of his resurrection thus he would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.

That is why God’s wrath passionately says ‘No’ to the plunging of mankind forever into a mindset of separation from God and stuck with a heart and conscience of guilt and shame. Only his Son Jesus could sinlessly plunge himself into all that sinful humanity and bend back the separated mindset of Adam with its independence and guilt and shame. And by dying sinless for us as sinful humanity and rising again for us as glorified humanity he could join our lives to his in oneness of Spirit where we can live a life of knowing we are loved by him and able to love him back and be transformed. That is not penal substitution (punishment substitution) based on the so-called justice of an angry God but is the way for us to find new life in oneness with God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.