A common objection that gets raised by those looking in at the Christian faith from the outside is with regards to the doctrines on Heaven and Hell. Why do we say Hitler could have been saved by just saying sorry before killing himself? Why do we say seemingly “good” people might go to hell? Isn’t an eternal existence in Hell unjust, no matter the severity of the crimes that was committed here on Earth? Surely God knows my heart, and will reward me because I am a good person! Before I can address these objections, let’s clarify what exactly we mean by Heaven, Hell, and repentance.

On Heaven and Hell

Unfortunately, popular conceptions of what Heaven and Hell are like have been overwhelmingly influenced by popular media, and especially by Dante’s Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso). I cannot stress enough how Dante’s writings, to my best estimation, are best described as 14th century Italian Catholic fan-fiction. So, let’s try to relearn what Heaven and Hell really are.

Let’s start with Heaven. First of all, Heaven is not the final destination for those who are saved. It could be described as a kind of holding place while the world waits for the final resurrection and judgment. The final destination is actually a new physical creation entirely, a perfect union of Heaven and Earth akin to something like a marriage at a cosmic level between God and humanity.

Isaiah 65:17 (ESV)

¹⁷ “For behold, I create new heavens
    and a new earth,
and the former things shall not be remembered
    or come into mind.“

Mark 13:31 (ESV)

³¹ Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

Romans 8:19-22 (ESV)

¹⁹ For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²² For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

2 Peter 3:13 (ESV)

¹³ But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Revelation 21:1-4 (ESV)

¹Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ² And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. ⁴ He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Now Heaven is rarely a sticking point for people who are inquiring about Christianity. You will seldom hear, if ever, any complaints along the lines of “Heaven doesn’t sound good enough for me!” We all I think intuitively understand that Heaven is minimally a place we all want to go to, hence the commonly negative reaction one has when they are told they might not make it there in the end.

Hell, however, is a separate beast of its own. Responsible for religious fear, distortions of God’s character, and outright rejection of the entire “Heaven and Hell system”, Hell can often be labeled as Christianity’s “most hated doctrine”.

I cannot do a proper treatment on the doctrines of Hell, with their varied forms, in this article. It deserves a dedicated article where I can get into the nuances of how different Christian thinkers have come to understand Hell, as well as where I currently land and why. For this article, I will simply establish a very modest claim: Hell is a place you do not want to go.

For a brief Biblical witness, I will simply point to the words of Jesus since we can agree he would know more about it than anyone else.

Matthew 10:28 (ESV)

²⁸ And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Mark 9:43-48 (ESV)

⁴³ And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. ⁴⁵ And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. ⁴⁷ And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ⁴⁸ ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’

Matthew 13:37-42 (ESV)¹

³⁷ He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man². ³⁸ The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, ³⁹ and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. ⁴⁰ Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. ⁴¹ The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, ⁴² and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

I know it is popular these days to joke along the lines of “I’ll happily go to hell! All of the fun people will be there and we can have our own party!” I don’t know about you, but a place that guarantees an experience of “weeping and gnashing of teeth” is not quite the party I want to be a part of.³

With a (very) simple visual of the two “destinations” that await all people now illustrated, let us dive into the specifics of what affects our individual destinations.

On Repentance

First, let’s establish that the Bible teaches that repentance is a necessary step in salvation. It is often juxtaposed with a lack of repentance leading to death.

2 Peter 3:9 (ESV)

⁹ The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

2 Thessalonians 2:10 (ESV)

¹⁰ and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.

So, what is repentance exactly? Is it just simply saying sorry? Certainly not! That would lead to the above passage in 2 Peter reading quite strangely:

…not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach [apologizing].

The original Greek sheds light on the weightier meaning of the word “repentance” that the New Testament authors intended, and that is metanoia⁴. Metanoia carries with it a deeper meaning of “changing one’s mind”. It can be validly understood as undergoing a complete reversal of one’s life and perspectives, genuinely denouncing their past sins, and a commitment to doing better in the future. Let’s reread 2 Peter 3:9 with that definition in mind and see if it fits better.

…not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach [a thorough change of the mind].

That seems to fit much better now. So we should move forward with this understanding that genuine repentance requires much more than a couple of words, but requires a changing of one’s own heart, a plead for mercy from God (see Luke 18:9-14), and a commitment to turn their life around from this point on. I hope this at minimum puts to bed any ideas that one can “trick” God into letting them into Heaven without having to actually change their behavior here on Earth as if getting into Heaven was a task of pressing the right buttons on a machine.

Who Needs to Repent?

Everyone, everywhere, from all time needs repentance and mercy. First, I’ll let the apostles Paul and John lay out the Biblical understanding of everyone’s position when it comes to sin:

Romans 3:11-20 (ESV)

¹¹ “None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands;
     no one seeks for God.
¹² All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
     no one does good,
     not even one.”
¹³ “Their throat is an open grave;
     they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
¹⁴ “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
¹⁵ “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
¹⁶  in their paths are ruin and misery,
¹⁷ and the way of peace they have not known.”
¹⁸ “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

¹⁹ Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. ²⁰ For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

1 John 1:5-10 (ESV)
⁵ This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. ⁶ If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. ⁷ But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. ⁸ If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰ If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

I could quote many more passages but this article is getting long already. Just know that the Biblical witness is abundantly clear: “…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” (Romans 3:23 ESV).

You may be tempted at this point to start attempting to justify your own life. You are probably having thoughts along the lines of: “I give homeless people food when I see them!” or “I donate to charity” or “I’m really not that bad of a person!” Doing good is of course a good thing, no one is arguing against that. But any complaints you may have must ultimately stem from an unjustified assumption: God owes me Heaven as my just wages for the good works I perform/the bad works I refrain from performing. Where does such an assumption come from? Where is the contract for such an agreement, with yours and God’s signatures on it? It bears repeating that “going to Heaven” is not simply a reward of paradise to hard workers, but rather full communion with God. So it would be wise to pay attention when God himself clarifies the conditions for such communion, as opposed to leaning on made-up assumptions.

I stand firm with the Biblical witness, we all have done evil. And not just evil, but evil knowingly and willingly. If you think such a claim does not apply to you, try thinking of all of the bad things in your life. Such a thought experiment can be scary, because you will realize just how much you have suppressed.

As a final point, I want to ward against the opposite extreme of what be called “worm theology”. This thinking sets human nature as so evil that there are zero redeeming qualities remaining. Such a worldview I believe fails to account for the genuinely good things that non-Christians accomplish everyday. My contention is that Heaven is a place for perfection, and attempting to arrive there as anything less than perfect is an impossibility that no one can overcome… by their own strength. I tell you that our situation is not hopeless…

Romans 7:21-25 (ESV)

²¹ So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. ²² For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, ²³ but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴ Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Does Repentance “Earn” My Salvation

One final clarification that needs to be made at this point is this: our repentance does not mean we now “deserve” to go to Heaven. Repentance alone does not save us, but rather the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is what saves us. Full repentance entails cleaving oneself to a simple reality, Jesus died so that I may live. The exact mechanism of how that works out is not so simple a task to figure out. One might argue that there is no exact mechanism in such a profound act as God dying as a man⁵.

Now that we have our foundation set, we can finally walk through the typical boundary cases of “salvation/damnation” with some clearer principles to apply.

An Evil Person Repents On Their Deathbed

Let’s return to the Hitler deathbed confession scenario. Based on this definition of repentance, in theory yes even Hitler could have been saved. I am forced to look upon the famous thief on the cross.

Luke 23:39-43 (ESV)

39 One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43 And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

However, we don’t necessarily have to guess at what ultimately happened to Hitler. We know that in the end, he chose to take his own life rather than face human justice. I will claim that this is not the action of a repentant man, but rather of a man who fully recognized his evil in the end and thought he could escape from the just penalty of his actions. And I will support my claim by using a person from the Bible with a similar ending: Judas.

Matthew 27:5 (ESV)

3 Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, 4 saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” 5 And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself.

“But Gabriel, he sounds repentant here!” He certainly seemed sorry, but this was ultimately not repentance as far as we understand it. True repentance would not lead someone to suicide, but rather would lead someone to seek out restoration. It fails the final aspect of repentance: commitment to do better in the future. This point might make more sense by seeing Judas’ parallel: the betrayal of Jesus by Peter.⁶

Mark 14:66-72 (ESV)

66 And as Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came, 67 and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, “You also were with the Nazarene, Jesus.” 68 But he denied it, saying, “I neither know nor understand what you mean.” And he went out into the gateway and the rooster crowed. 69 And the servant girl saw him and began again to say to the bystanders, “This man is one of them.” 70 But again he denied it. And after a little while the bystanders again said to Peter, “Certainly you are one of them, for you are a Galilean.” 71 But he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know this man of whom you speak.” 72 And immediately the rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had said to him, “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” And he broke down and wept.

As of this point in the story of Jesus, Peter is actually in exactly the same position as Judas. Both ultimately betray the teacher they claimed to love, but the betrayals are different of course. Judas hands him over directly to the Jewish authorities. Peter simply denies association with him. But is that denial so simple? He does it 3 times in a row, after Jesus predicted he would do exactly that only a few hours earlier!⁷ Worse than that, he does it for free. At least Judas was paid. So then, why do Christians typically see Judas as evil and Peter as righteous? This is a great question, and it strikes at the heart of the topic of discussion today. It simply comes down to this: how these two men reacted when they realized what horrible acts they had committed differed dramatically. Where Judas succumbed to his despair and took his own life, Peter instead found mercy through repentance.

John 21:15-17 (ESV)

15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17 He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.”

Does the threefold questioning ring a bell? It should! Here, Jesus is directly bringing to mind Peter’s threefold betrayal. Does he do this to torture Peter with guilt? Does this show that we have to repent specifically for every sin we ever commit? The answer to both is no (though we strive to be continually repentant). Rather, Jesus is showing in a way that was clear to Peter (see v. 17) without openly declaring it (and therefore publicly shaming Peter) that he has forgiven those moments of betrayal.

To summarize this scenario: yes an incredibly evil person could repent on their deathbed and be saved. However, this is incredibly unlikely and you can trust that God’s justice does not allow for cheap loopholes.

A Good Person is Not a Christian

This case has already been somewhat addressed with the end of the On Repentance section. This objection hinges on an unspoken assumption, namely that God owes salvation to the one who does good works. I will simply repeat my two basic responses to such an objection. One, such an assumption is simply unjustified. Two, even “good” people have a skeleton or two in their closet. Heaven entails full communion with God, a perfect being by definition who would violate his nature if he brought imperfect creatures to him. No one is perfect, and therefore everyone falls short of the requirement of perfection. The difference between the “morally grey” position of the good Christian and the good non-Christian is this: the Christian through their repentance asks to be separated from their evil. The non-Christian through their lack of repentance chooses to hold onto their evil and therefore suffers the punishment that their evil deserved. God’s justice should ultimately serve as a source of reassurance. Evil will not ultimately escape justice, and that should be cause for celebration.

Someone Dies Without Hearing About Jesus

Someone is born into a remote village somewhere where the Gospel has not been preached. They go their whole lives without hearing it and eventually die. What happens to them? This situation requires a few different angles of approach, but let us start with one agreement: their ultimate verdict will be just either way. God will not judge people for being ignorant beyond their control.

Luke 12:47-48 (ESV)

⁴⁷ And that servant who knew his master’s will but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating. ⁴⁸ But the one who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating.

Romans 3:23-25 (ESV)

²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ 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.

However, I will still claim that those who die without knowledge of Jesus are not necessarily getting a free pass. As Paul states:

Romans 2:14-16 (ESV)

¹⁴ For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. ¹⁵ They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them ¹⁶ on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

This is partly why there is such an importance of evangelism for Christians. We want to avoid anyone dying without the knowledge of Jesus! I recognize this situation is still not quite answered at this point. Ultimately, it is beyond my position to say what exactly happens to individuals in this position. What I can confidently say is that I know their final verdict will be just, and I will lean on the revealed character of God as one who loves humanity infinitely more than we can imagine for such a claim.

A Bad Person is a Christian

What about someone who claims to be a Christian but genuinely does horrible things? Unfortunately it is all too easy to think of examples here. A man goes to Church on Sunday, but then for the next 6 days he lives like a drunk, beats his wife and kids, etc. A priest, abusing his sacred role within the church, molests children. A slave owner cherry-picks Bible verses without proper context to justify their wicked practices. I need not go on.

Such blatant hypocrisy will not go unanswered. If there was a survey of Christians where they were asked what passage from the Bible scares them the most, I imagine these very words of Jesus Christ would be number one by a large margin.

Matthew 7:21-23 (ESV)⁸

²¹ “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ ²³ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

I believe this verse is sufficient answer to the current “salvation/damnation” scenario. However, I want to provide further clarification.

First off, do not take this to mean that only outwardly-righteous individuals will be saved. The thief on the cross would fail that test, but Jesus himself verbally guaranteed his salvation. Christianity proper does not suppose itself to be a community of morally perfect individuals. Rather, one of the most common images of the Church is that of a hospital full of sick people. The ultimate goal is to be healed, but if a hospital only had healthy individuals, one would wonder where exactly the hospital was!

Secondly, do not make the mistake of overcorrection by believing that you will be safer by avoiding church and organized religion altogether. If Christianity is simply all about “me and Jesus”, how will you be held accountable when you inevitably go astray? There is also of course the serious threat of Satan, who “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour”⁹. To think that one could resist such a threat on their own is foolish, and ultimately prideful. If the Church was superfluous, Jesus wouldn’t have established such a church.

Matthew 16:13-19 (ESV)

¹³ Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” ¹⁴ And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” ¹⁵ He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” ¹⁶ Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” ¹⁷ And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. ¹⁸ And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. ¹⁹ I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Therefore let us make sure we find ourselves within a church body, not only for our own benefit, and not only because we might be called to be a help to others, but ultimately because such an institution was created by Jesus Christ himself.

Concluding Thoughts

This article sought out to help clarify the Christian position on Heaven, Hell, and who receives justice/mercy from God. I have kept “cognitively functioning adults” as the primary subject of our varied cases. I recognize that there are a very large number of people who would not fall within this category, such as those who have severe mental disabilities, infants, and young children. In the interest of getting this article completed, I will cover that topic in a future (and hopefully shorter) post.

If I could summarize the right mentality when it comes to who we should anticipate to find in (and out) of Heaven in a single phrase, it would be this: expect quite a few surprises.

1. Read Matthew 13:24-36 for fuller context. ↩︎
2. This is Jesus’ most used label for himself. ↩︎
3. As a side note, Jesus speaks too much about Hell as something he personally will facilitate for him to be accurately seen as simply a “teacher of good morals”. Such a good teacher wouldn’t dare equate themselves as the ultimate judge at the end of time. ↩︎
4. https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g3341/esv/mgnt/0-1/ ↩︎
5. See this article for a “first attempt” treatment of how the death of Christ works for our salvation. ↩︎
6. For a fuller context of what is happening here, start at Mark 14:43. ↩︎
7. See Mark 14:29-31. ↩︎
8. Personally, I believe a goal of sorts is to live a life in such a way that this verse does not invoke fear for you are so assured of your right relation with God that you can be confident you are avoiding such a grievous error.  ↩︎
9. 1 Peter 5:8 ↩︎

The Problem of Evil is often known these days as a “knockout punch” used by skeptics to debunk Christians and their silly claims about God. I know I have certainly used it in the past, and on the surface it seems quite strong! The Christian God is claimed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. Evil appears to exist, so either he is powerless to stop it (so no longer omnipotent), doesn’t know it is going to happen until it is too late (so no longer omniscient), or doesn’t care to stop it (so no longer omnibenevolent). Boom, Christianity is debunked! We can have our Sunday mornings back…

The Problem with the Problem of Evil

Not so fast. Let’s take a closer look at the Problem of Evil and see if it needs some tweaking. For one, you need to start with quite a large assumption to even pose the question in the first place: we assume evil actually exists. The Problem of Evil would hardly be worth anything if we could look at the world and say: “Life is pretty great and painless! Boy I’m glad evil is simply a thought experiment and doesn’t actually exist in our reality.” So we come into the discussion with an assumption (an assumption that is nevertheless well-documented and justified) that evil exists and should be stopped. The issue arises when we assert that this apparent fact of reality proves God cannot exist, and thus throwing evil out with the bath water.

Think of it this way. If evil really existed, that would necessarily imply that real good existed. If I see the tails side of a coin, I can be justified in presuming that there is some other side to the coin and that tails does not tell me the whole story. This real good, in the Christian understanding, is ultimately God (James 1:17). Continuing on with the coin analogy, the Problem of Evil often times sounds like this to me: “We all know that tails (evil) exists, so therefore heads (God) cannot possibly exist!”

Now I will concede that there is a version of the Problem of Evil that is less foundationally shaky, and that is to treat it like an internal critique. If you can show that evil as understood in the Bible is definitionally contradictory to a Biblical understanding of God, then you win in proving the God of the Bible does not exist. I just don’t believe this is the case, and one can simply read the Bible to see why. It is littered with people suffering from real evil all the time (books like Job, Ecclesiastes, and Lamentations comes to mind). The Bible, aka one of God’s primary means by which we know about him, does not seem to shy away from sharing quite heinous evil. We will return to investigate this Biblical understanding of God’s relationship with evil later on.

So what are the valid stances provided by the current form of the Problem of Evil? I believe there are only two. One, God doesn’t exist and so therefore any conception of evil is no longer grounded. Anything we had been calling “evil” up to this point just simply is, any attempts to apply moral value to actions are simply a fools errand and we ultimately must fall back into moral relativism.

Let’s think of another analogy to drive this home further. Say I have been using a ruler to define the lengths of objects in my house. However, I (for whatever reason) take offense to the idea that this same ruler tells me how long a foot is. What if I really wanted my desk to be 3 feet wide instead of 2? One day I get it into my head that maybe I don’t have to listen to the judgements my ruler makes on the measurements of my everyday objects. My solution? I simply get rid of the ruler. My problem is now I no longer have the foundation that had previously made sense of my old measurements, and I can’t possibly hope to make any meaningful measurements in the future. Now this may seem like a benign analogy because there isn’t really a concerning result that comes out of it. So what I mistake 2 feet to be 3 feet? But when we translate this to our understanding of a “moral ruler”, it could mean the difference between a stranger helping you fix your flat tire and a different stranger killing you and stealing your car. Who are you to tell the second person he can’t do that, if his own moral ruler says it is just fine?

Likewise, in a desire to remove God (the ruler), we remove the very thing that made the evil we have seen throughout history (the previous measurements) mean anything at all. Even worse, we completely lose our ability to discern between good and evil in the present day (the future measurements). As far as I can understand it, by removing God from the discussions about morality, we lose any grounding for calling events like the Holocaust evil while essentially guaranteeing that we will stumble our way into our own horrific event while believing what we are doing is just fine.

You might object and say that as a collective society we can learn from the past, and follow the science, to make sure we behave “good” in the future (which I claim no longer means anything at this point). The problem here is constantly making the assumption that our current understanding of the world is as good is it has ever been. Nazi Germany certainly thought that when they started throwing Jews into gas chambers. Americans thought that as they purchased, abused, raped, and killed African slaves for centuries. Romans thought that as they regularly hung men from crosses to be eaten alive in public without so much as batting an eye. To believe that we really have it figured out this time is simply naive in my estimation. Just imagine trying to explain to someone 100 years ago that nearly 1 million unborn babies are killed every year in the U.S. alone. To think that they would judge us as becoming “more civilized” or some derivative of that is quite a stretch. I don’t wish to turn this into a post about abortion (perhaps for another time), but I hope my point is starting to become clearer.

In this God-less worldview, you are forced to say that any “pain, suffering, or evil” experienced by individuals is actually just a current inconvenience that is causing certain hormonal compounds to make us feel all sorts of negative emotions. Couldn’t we just resolve this by simply going into the brain and rewiring it so that at minimum, we no longer get upset over evil? We could call it a surgical procedure and fund it as another form of healthcare (“have you gotten your kid’s negative emotions cut yet?”).

What is ultimately the justification for not aiming to achieve for everyone what this wonderful meme depicts if suffering is simply something to minimize, and pleasure something to maximize? Forgive me, but this is where I believe the God-less system logically leads to, and it is simply not a stance I am willing to entertain. Funny enough, I saw this problem almost instantly while I was still an atheist taking a course on the Philosophy of Ethics during my first year of college (I had not yet softened in my posture towards religion). Something within me was so disgusted by the conclusions that naturally come from a subjective morality that I immediately wanted alternatives. Unfortunately for me, I still lacked the foresight at the time needed to realize that this was a problem that was actually stuck to my atheism, and not just my ethics.

So, our first valid conclusion from the Problem of Evil is that evil doesn’t actually exist at all. Likewise good doesn’t actually exist at all, and thus moral actions are ultimately useful made-up stories we tell ourselves. These useful stories are equally valid regardless of the time and culture that shapes them because who is to say your made-up story is better than my made-up story?

To me, the first conclusion is quite a horrifically bleak conclusion. Is there another option? Or is this the only valid conclusion to the drawn? I would like to propose that there is indeed a second valid conclusion to be made. That in the same way heads proves the existence of tails, so too evil proves the existence of God.

I imagine this is only truly convincing for those who are not willing to let go of the belief that real evil exists. Again, that is technically a valid position to hold. I just imagine it is rather easy to hold that position when we are simply observers in a thought experiment, as opposed to victims of said evil. Imagine trying to convince a rape victim, or a slave, or a torture victim, that what they went through wasn’t evil. Just think about that short trend of asking women whether they would prefer to be alone with a man or a bear in a forest. The answer was essentially unanimous, and not just among the women but from men as well! The man in the thought experiment is an overwhelmingly worse proposition, but why? If anyone’s ultimate concern is their own personal survival, what would be the qualitative difference between the two? Can’t they both kill you? There is something seemingly unique to humans that instills a more gut-wrenching fear than a creature that weighs several hundred pounds more than us, can run up to 30 mph, and has razor sharp teeth and claws that can completely dismember us beyond recognition. I am proposing that this qualitative difference between the man and the bear is the man’s genuine capacity for evil. Human evil is simply too well historically documented for me to go on in this present day and age and say “evil is just a useful delusion”.

Teaser: Investigating the Internal Critique

Earlier in this post, I mentioned that the Problem of Evil has a better form to it, and that is in the form of an internal critique. Now I am sorry to disappoint the reader, but I have decided to not yet expound on this internal critique. I feel as though I could do more reading of my own to give a more robust and interesting response because this is quickly going to become an investigation along the lines of “Is the God of the Old Testament evil”. I obviously am going to argue against that proposition, but I also know how pervasive a claim it is (I really believed it myself), so I imagine it will take genuinely good responses to disarm the accusation.

I hope that at this point for the reader, I have at least put the “external critique” form of the Problem of Evil to bed. I am NOT sidestepping the internal critique form of the objection. It is 100% a valid objection that deserves good answers (hence my desire to do some more reading first). That next post will address that issue along with the question of why God doesn’t end all the evil and suffering we see today immediately. I hope to accomplish this sooner rather than later, but until then, thanks for reading.

Christianity claims to be a monotheistic religion, but then we go ahead and complicate things by saying God is a trinity. Isn’t that three separate gods? Short answer, no. Thanks for reading, I’ll see you in the next post…

Ok jokes aside, this can be a very difficult subject to understand because it is attempting to describe the very nature of God. If it were easy to understand, we should be hesitant to believe we had arrived at an accurate understanding of God. As I build up the motivation behind the establishment of trinitarian doctrine, just know for now that the Trinity is a claim that God is one in essence/nature (what God is), but three in person (who God is).

The Old Testament Teaches the Trinity

Now Christians will be accused of “inventing” the Trinity. If one only takes 30 seconds to investigate the claim, then sure we invented it. The word “trinity” is nowhere to be found in the Bible in all its entirety in any translation. But this fails to address the complexity of the situation Christians found themselves in. The early Christians, with the Tanakh (Old Testament) and the burgeoning New Testament writings were given all of the building blocks necessary to enter into a deeper understanding of God. Let’s look at a few of these passages, and hopefully it will become clear that a unipersonal (only one who) identifier for God simply fails to account for the entire biblical corpus. I will put [YAHWEH] in place of any “the LORD” occurrences to make it more explicit, see this footnote for more¹.

Genesis 1:1-2 (ESV)

¹In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. ² The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Why the switch from God to “Spirit of God” (also validly translated as “breath of God”)? This appears to show the Holy Spirit participating in creation.

Genesis 1:26 (ESV)

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

Now there is certainly some debate over this passage, but what I don’t believe is debatable is that a plural is used here. Typically the debate goes something like “God is referring to his angels”, or perhaps a pantheon of gods akin to the likes of Greek mythology. The second objection, that God is referring to other gods, doesn’t work simply because it is not consistent with other passages where God is clear that he alone is God. See Isaiah 44:6-8 for an especially clear passage. Maybe the other objection is correct? But then you would have to conclude that either God’s angels are godlike, or God is angelic (our image, our likeness), which just ultimately falls back into the second objection either way.

Genesis 19:24 (ESV)

²⁴ Then [YAHWEH] rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from [YAHWEH] out of heaven.

If God is unipersonal, why imply that God on the Earth is calling sulfur and fire from God in heaven? It would have been more straight forward to say:

Then [YAHWEH] rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from heaven.

But of course that is not what the text says.

Deuteronomy 6:4 (ESV)

⁴ “Hear, O Israel: [YAHWEH] our God, [YAHWEH] is one.

Here, Yahweh is labeled as “one”. Doesn’t this serve to disprove the idea of a trinity? Well let’s look closer. The word used here in Hebrew is echad. Echad is typically used to invoke a complex unity and by no means necessarily means “singular”². Yachid, which more stronly invokes a singularity or “oneness”, would have been a more natural word choice to use for God if he was unipersonal. We don’t even have to go to a word dictionary however to at least get a clue that something more complex is going on, because echad is used earlier in Genesis.

Genesis 2:24 (ESV)

²⁴ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one [echad] flesh.

Now there is a danger to overstate the case, and then therefore imply that God is actually a pantheon of gods the same way Adam and Eve (two separate beings) makeup one flesh. This should simply raise to your attention that God using echad to describe both Adam and Eve’s relationship and his own nature certainly means that God’s true reality is likely more complicated than just a singular personhood.

2 Samuel 23:2-3 (ESV)

² “The Spirit of [YAHWEH] speaks by me;
    his word is on my tongue.
³ The God of Israel has spoken;
    the Rock of Israel has said to me:

Here we have King David referring to the “Spirit of [YAHWEH]”, and then continuing on as if this same subject is the God of Israel.

Psalm 110 (ESV)

¹ [YAHWEH] says to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”
² [YAHWEH] sends forth from Zion
    your mighty scepter.
    Rule in the midst of your enemies!
³ Your people will offer themselves freely
    on the day of your power,
    in holy garments;
from the womb of the morning,
    the dew of your youth will be yours.
⁴ [YAHWEH] has sworn
    and will not change his mind,
“You are a priest forever
    after the order of Melchizedek.”
⁵ The Lord is at your right hand;
    he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.
⁶ He will execute judgment among the nations,
    filling them with corpses;
he will shatter chiefs^[d]
    over the wide earth.
⁷ He will drink from the brook by the way;
    therefore he will lift up his head.

This is a psalm aka prayer of King David. Here we see Yahweh talking to some other figure called “the Lord” (Hebrew adoni). This cannot be about David himself due to how this psalm begins. David is clearly recounting a conversation between God and some other adoni. Now adoni is typically used for human rulers (as opposed to adonai which is used for God for explicitly), and so people will say Christians misinterpret this psalm and mistakenly believe it teaches the trinity when it doesn’t. But keep reading. This supposedly “mere human” will be a priest forever and will judge the nations “on the day of his [adoni’s] wrath”. These are quite lofty prerogatives for someone who is ultimately just a human.

Malachi 3:1-2 (ESV)

¹ “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says [YAHWEH] of hosts. ² But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.

Malachi 3 is very interesting. First Yahweh says he is sending a messenger to prepare the way for him (Yahweh), but then switches to talking about some other person (the Lord or adoni). This Lord will come to his temple (not Yahweh’s temple apparently), and is also labeled the messenger of the covenant. But I thought Yahweh gave the covenant? Who is this messenger figure³?

The New Testament (and Jesus) Teaches the Trinity

What I have shown so far is by no means exhaustive (this post is already much longer than I had anticipated), but hopefully you are seeing this mysterious interplay going on with Yahweh, Yahweh’s spirit, and this adoni/messenger figure. Let’s see how the New Testament brings further clarity to the subject, but one last note before we enter the New Testament. Understand that the New Testament authors regularly use “God” to refer to the person of the Father. They will also often interchangeably use different senses of the word “God”. The context will typically draw out what sense of the word is most appropriate.

John 1:1-3; 14 (ESV)

¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Here the Word (aka Jesus) was God in the beginning, but was also with God (the Father) in the beginning. A clear unity in “what-ness” (both are God) but a distinction in “who-ness” (the Son and the Father).

Matthew 28:19 (ESV)

¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

Here Jesus teaches us the Trinity by showing that the persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all deserve equal representation in the making of new disciples under God.

Philippians 2:5-11 (ESV)

⁵ Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ⁹ Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹ and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Here Paul describes both Jesus willing to give up his authoritative role as God for the sake of embracing humility, but then through this humility re-earning his right to receive praise and worship all at the behest of God the Father. This is quite a strange thing for the Father to do for he also says:

Isaiah 42:8 (ESV)

⁸ I am [YAHWEH]; that is my name;
    my glory I give to no other,
    nor my praise to carved idols.

Unless of course this is another type of occurrence we found in Genesis 19:24, and here Yahweh shares his glory with Yahweh. The book of Hebrews actually reinforces this idea:

Hebrews 1:8-12 (ESV)

⁸ But of the Son he says,
“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,
    the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.
⁹ You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;
therefore God, your God, has anointed you
    with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”
¹⁰ And,
“You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning,
    and the heavens are the work of your hands;
¹¹ they will perish, but you remain;
    they will all wear out like a garment,
¹² like a robe you will roll them up,
    like a garment they will be changed.^[a]
But you are the same,
    and your years will have no end.”

Here we have God the Father stating in no unclear terms that the Son is also God, that he made all of creation, and that he is the same and has no end of days.

Get On With It Already!

Ok, I hope at this point I have sufficiently motivated the problem. The Bible, both New and Old Testament alike, have this “clear mystery” about the nature and personhood of God. There is too much to simply ignore, so how do we explain it all? Through the doctrine of the Trinity.

So the Trinity can essentially be described the way I have already introduced it: God is one “what” but three “who’s”. The image below is helpful.

Is this a possible definition of God, or is it self-contradictory? Let’s investigate drawing out a distinction between being and person. Start with a rock. We would both agree that rock is a being (a “rock being” so to speak), but it definitely doesn’t have a person or personal identity attached to it. If we progress upwards to a human, a human is a “human being” but also has a personal identity attached to it. For example I am a human being but my personhood acts through this being called Gabriel. So therefore Gabriel can act upon the world, whereas a rock is simply passive. This hopefully showcases how being and person are not forced to have a one-to-one correspondence.

Well then, if we are talking about God, should we expect him to be easily found reflected by creation, or should he be categorically above his creation? Some people really argue the former⁴, but I hope you will agree that the latter is a fair assumption. I actually love how strange the Trinity really is (it should be strange, and if it doesn’t seem strange you probably haven’t thought about it deeply enough), because it kind of shows how it is probably not something that a bunch of old grey men came up with.

I actually intentionally titled this blog post the way I did, because the conclusion should be that God is not like any thing in the world. In fact, the opening image of this post is misleading. The Father is not embodied in any sense at all, so to depict him like an older man is wrong. The same goes for the Holy Spirit, so while the dove is a nice callback to the baptism of Jesus it should not be taken as a literal depiction. Only through Jesus, who is “… the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature…” (Hebrews 1:3), do we get a proper visual representation of God. And only Jesus and the Holy Spirit, by nature of both being God, have properly beheld the Father. So God, as the Trinity, is spirit (and therefore not physical). Only the Son has taken on an “imagistic” physical form to bring a visual representation, while the Father and the Holy Spirit remain in a spiritual form.

One Possible Variant

What I shared above is what would be defined as a “Western Christian” understanding of the Trinity. Now I would be remiss to lead you to believe this is the only way to think of the Trinity. The Orthodox Christian tradition (which is another branch akin to Catholicism or Protestantism) has a slightly varied take on the Trinity (there is a LOT of overlap, thus why I don’t see the two views in any major disagreement). I don’t claim to understand it in its entirety but I will share what I understand about it. The following image is a helpful visual.

The Orthodox Trinity I believe is probably a more accurate take on the Trinity (again, I am not an expert and could definitely do more research here). The Western churches at least claim a distinction in the persons of the Trinity, but don’t quite flesh out what that looks like exactly. In Orthodoxy, the persons are distinct, and that is shown through their unique relations to each other. The Father serves as the fonte or the source. The Son is just that because he is begotten by the Father from all eternity (not to be confused with a biological birthing or a spiritual creation). The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father from all eternity and is sent by the Son from all eternity. There has never been a time where God consisted of just the Father, but the three have had their relations with each other from all eternity. Their connection to each other is at an intimate level nowhere near comparable to God’s overall relation to his creatures (the Western Trinity can claim this statement as well). Now the Orthodox have an even deeper teaching on the “essence/energy distinction” that I believe is meant to explain how God can so closely interact with creation (this is a problem eastern religions struggle with too, to the best of my knowledge), but that is beyond the scope of what I want to do here, and I also have no idea how to appropriately represent it so I won’t bother risking misrepresentation of that doctrine.

A Potentially Helpful (and Potentially Heretical) Analogy

Trying to do analogies for the Trinity is always dangerous, because analogies almost by definition try pointing to something in the world to help explain a concept. To do that for God, who is by definition not of this world, is to likely do God a disservice. Church history is littered with heresies born out of potentially well-intentioned but ultimately mistaken analogies.

That being said, here is an analogy I like. I want to make extra clear that this analogy is simply to try to relate the different roles the persons of the Trinity take in relation to creation. This analogy is not to help understand the actual nature of the Trinity. This analogy is also probably closer to the Orthodox Trinity than it is to the Western Trinity.

Let’s think of God like the Sun. The Father is the nuclear processes that go on in the core. This is not immediately accessible to us and would likely destroy us to see this process up close. But how do we know the Sun is there? Through two primary means: light and warmth. The light gives us the most direct means of obtaining intellectual understanding of what the Sun is, and is a direct consequence of the “nuclear processes of the Father”. And so the Son (Jesus) is the light that shows us the radiance of the Father. But the Sun also provides warmth. This Holy Spirit warmth originates from the same nuclear processes of the Father, but is carried to the Earth by means of the light (aka the Holy Spirit sent by the Son but proceeding from the Father). This warmth is how we come to feel the Sun. Together, they provide us with the fullest possible understanding of the Sun.

Try explaining the Sun to someone who lived in a pitch-black cave their whole life. If you stop at just the nuclear reactions, the person has no idea what the sun is like. It would essentially just be math at this point. If you add just the light, the person can easily mistake it for a big flashlight. Add just the warmth, and you have an oversized heater. Only together can you give the clearest picture, and only then can this cave-person understand the clarity of day that the Sun provides, and the comfort of warmth it grants to everyone who basks in the light. Now the cave-person can understand more clearly what it is like to live on the surface.

Love Demands a Trinity

A fascinating conclusion that comes out of the Trinity is the realization that only the Trinity can account for a God who is not just loving, but is in his very nature love itself. With one person, you can demonstrate self-love, easy enough. With two persons, you can demonstrate love for another. With three persons, you can demonstrate shared love for another (akin to two parents who together share in loving their child). Any more people beyond three is redundant and provides no further concepts of unique and intimate love. And so all of these versions of love are possible through the Trinity and can be assumed to be part of God’s very nature. The Trinity is loving with or without us.

How can a unipersonal God claim to be inherently loving of anything other than himself while also claiming that this God is not dependent on creation? I suppose I understand why other religions throughout history (both monotheistic and polytheistic) posit that God or the gods don’t love their creation nor are they interested in it. Because why should they? Nothing in their nature demands it of them.

If we believe that love is real, then naturally we should seek to know an account of whence it came. I believe only something like the Trinity provides a satisfactory answer, and only the Bible teaches the Trinity.

1 John 4:15-17 (ESV)

¹⁵ Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. ¹⁶ So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. ¹⁷ By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.

1. In the Old Testament, you will see occurrences of “the LORD” (the “ORD” will be in small capital letters). This is in place of the original Hebrew name for God “Yahweh”, which literally is derived from the Hebrew verb “to be”. Thus “Yahweh” (or the consonant only version “YHWH”) is often translated as “I am”. This is why it is such a big deal when Jesus says “before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). He is clearly taking possession of the one true name of God. ↩︎
2. Read this article from chabad.org for more on a Jewish understanding of God’s “oneness”. ↩︎
3. This would detract from the main point of this post, but I will more fully address the idea that Jesus (before he took on human flesh) was active in the Old Testament in a different post. ↩︎
4. I ran into a cult at UC Riverside (called World Mission Society, Church of God or “WMSCOG” for short) and they believe that because there are male and female creatures, there must be two gods, one male and one female. ↩︎

As people come into knowledge of Christian doctrine, a common objection will arise in one’s mind: if Jesus is God, and the Father is God, was the crucifixion just some big theatrical stunt pull by God? Why not just forgive us? Why the need for the apparent human sacrifice?

This answer would greatly benefit from a better understanding of orthodox Christian understandings of the Trinity (see this post for more on the Trinity), but I will continue on to respond regardless. As an extra credit assignment for the reader, try looking up the time at which each Old Testament passage I cite was written. This is to help drive home the idea that these Old Testament passages are not simply “Christian” writings.

Divine Suicide?

Now, let’s address several objections one at a time. First, did God commit suicide? Simple answer, no. Jesus was well aware of his mission, and makes it clear that he willingly lays down his life for the sheep.

“But John is the latest gospel! This is clearly legendary development!” Don’t worry, the Gospel of Mark has you covered.

Mark 10:32-34

³² And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. And they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, ³³ saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. ³⁴ And they will mock him and spit on him, and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.“

I will trust everyone’s good faith understanding that willingly giving up your life to save others is nothing like committing suicide.

Human Sacrifice?

Did God the Father need a human sacrifice in the form of God the Son in order to appease his wrath? I have often heard the phrase “cosmic child abuse” in relation to this topic, but is this a reasonable treatment of the Christian claim about what Jesus accomplished?

God is not like the other gods of old that regularly demanded human sacrifice, and I will show this through the Old Testament. Let’s first look at a common episode skeptics will point to: Abraham attempting to sacrifice Isaac at God’s behest.

Genesis 22:9-12 (ESV)

⁹ When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. ¹⁰ Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. ¹¹ But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” ¹² He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”

This chapter as a whole is admittedly a difficult chapter for a lot of Christians. God commands Abraham to kill his one and only son, Abraham agrees apparently without a second thought, and then God seemingly changes his mind last second? What gives? I think to start we need to at least admit what the text says, and concede that in the end God did not want Isaac killed at all. We see that this was ultimately a test of Abraham’s faith.

Genesis 22:15-18 (ESV)

¹⁵ And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven ¹⁶ and said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, ¹⁷ I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, ¹⁸ and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”

Abraham had been promised that through his son Isaac, the whole world would be blessed. We even get to see God’s commitment to his promise when Abraham and Sarah try to produce the son in a fashion that God did not intend, producing Ishmael (see Genesis 15-17). When Ishmael is born, God is sure to provide blessings for him, but is still clear with Abraham and Sarah that it is Isaac who will provide the lineage for the world-wide blessings.

Abraham learned that doubting God’s promises is foolishness, and so we can now understand his lack resistance to the command of chapter 22. The book of Hebrews in the New Testament provides a great commentary on this episode.

Hebrews 11:1-2; 17-19 (ESV)

¹ Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. ² For by it the people of old received their commendation.

¹⁷ By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, ¹⁸ of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” ¹⁹ He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.

Abraham did not know exactly what was to come when he heard God command him to sacrifice Isaac, but he certainly knew that God keeps his promises.

If there is still doubt over God’s posture towards human sacrifice, consider his absolute disgust with the people of Israel when they began to burn their new born infants alive as sacrifices to their false gods.

Jeremiah 7:30-32 (ESV)

³⁰ “For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares the Lord. They have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. ³¹ And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. ³² Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere. ³³ And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away. ³⁴ And I will silence in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, for the land shall become a waste.”

Notice how angry these abominable acts make God. If human sacrifice were something he were truly ok with, why does he promise to lay waste to his chosen people when they do it? If God needed to say more, he explicitly details the judicial punishment for such a crime in Leviticus.

Leviticus 20:1-5 (ESV)

¹ The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ² “Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. ³ I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. ⁴ And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, ⁵ then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech.

God is quite explicit in his disdain for human sacrifice to the point where he will even cut off those who do not actively put such criminals to death. I hope this shows more clearly how God views the sanctity of human life.

The Soul That Sins Shall Die

And yet, sin is a serious offense. Sin is more than just a religious word for “offending God” (though it certainly is that). Sin is the root of all things that cause us pain and suffering in this world. There are some more obvious examples like murder where it is easy to see how refraining from that sin can immediately benefit those around us. But what about things like white-lies? Eating pork? Tattoos? Are left-handed people doomed? (These are all “sins” I have heard from believers and non-believers alike).

First, I think it would help to know how the New Testament authors describe sin. The Greek word typically translated as sin is hamartia. This word is best defined as “missing the mark” or “falling short”¹. So we see that the earliest Christians understood sin to be much more than just disobeying orders. Sin included every and any thing that led to us being less than the perfect image bearers God always intended us to be. So refraining to do a good deed is just as bad as giving into a bad deed. All of the small details matter. 99% perfect is anything but. Unfortunately for all of us, the standard couldn’t be set any higher.

Now typically it is believed that God punishes us for sinning, but what if the “punishment” was more accurately described as a consequence? If one was to drink poison willingly, would their resulting death be a punishment for drinking the poison or simply a natural consequence of their action? Now I am not trying to pull the rug out from under you; God certainly judges and punishes/rewards accordingly. However, I think that simply stopping there falls well short of the full picture. Let’s see how the consequences of sin are often described.

Genesis 2:16-17 (ESV)

¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.“

Notice the seeming neutrality in God’s part in the death. He doesn’t say “I will kill you if you eat of the tree”, but rather at least implies that death will be a natural consequence of eating from the tree. God certainly punishes them, but the punishments are not death (read the whole of Genesis 3). Man is cursed to toil endlessly and women receive painful childbirths, and yet God still cares for them at this point.

Genesis 3:21

²¹ And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

Seems a strangely kind thing to do if God is just in a fit of rage looking to pour his wrath out on a couple of sinners. Let’s see another passage in the Old Testament.

Ezekiel 18:20-23 (ESV)

²⁰ The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. ²¹ “But if a wicked person turns away from all his sins that he has committed and keeps all my statutes and does what is just and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. ²² None of the transgressions that he has committed shall be remembered against him; for the righteousness that he has done he shall live. ²³ Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?“

Again, the death and wickedness of sin seems to be described as something a sinner simply reaps upon themselves. I especially love verse 23, as this shows God’s heart towards us: “Stop sinning! You are killing yourselves! I would rather you turned from your evil ways than see you die!”

Romans 5:12-13 (ESV)

¹² Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— ¹³ for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

Romans is a New Testament book, so we are at a point where further clarity is being provided. Death spread to all mankind through our sins. Now death here doesn’t have to only literally mean physical/spiritual ends to our existence (though it certainly includes that). I believe this captures all things death-like: sorrow, fear, pain, anger, betrayal, and so on.

But notice a very important distinction is made. Sin is not counted where willful knowledge of the sin is absent. And yet, the death wrought by sin is still present. While there are a multitude of sins we are simply unaware of, they bring on death and decay all the same.

Why did God set things up like this? I will do a more thorough defense on why God would create a world like this, but just know for now that the only alternatives would likely be either a world of robots, or keeping us collectively infantile inside a baby-proofed crib. I understand that you will likely have objections to this, but the world is what it is. Talking about “what could have been” doesn’t provide us with much help.

Understanding Atonement

So there is a sin problem, God doesn’t want us to suffer the consequences of our own actions, but he cannot arbitrarily remove said consequences. If the situation is as bad as Paul states it is in Romans 5, then the situation seems hopeless! If not one person can perfectly refrain from sinning, then what can we possibly hope for? Short answer: atonement.

The Old Testament teaches us that God personally walked along a chosen people: the people of Israel. Surely if God is personally overseeing a group of people, they will do good… right? The truth is actually quite the opposite. In almost every book of the Old Testament, we see the nation of Israel at odds with God. They were sinners just as much as any other nation on Earth.

The one thing that Israel had over the other nations was a formal system of atonement. This was the temple institution of animal sacrifice. The Jews would regularly offer up the lives of innocent animals to “pay” for their sins. It was a means by which the people can demonstrate their genuine remorse over their sins, and it also gave a clear reflection of the seriousness of their sins. In a time where livestock was a much more closely tied to one’s personal wealth and survival, having to give up the best of your herd would definitely “hurt your pockets”. It was to teach them to stop sinning in a way that carried much more weight than simply hearing “stop sinning”.

Ok cool, the system is essentially resolved! Try your best to not sin, but if you do just offer up your best lamb and all is good. Here’s the problem: the sacrifices just wouldn’t stop. There was always more and more sin to pay for. The system went from a temporary band-aid into a Sisyphean task. The sin problem didn’t seem to have an ultimate solution after all.

And yet, God instituted the sacrificial system. Look back at Genesis 3:21. What did God clothe Adam and Eve with? Animal skins! He sets the paradigm of animals dying so that humans may live. Well, God certainly could have come up with a better system it seems, because this one clearly isn’t working out for a singular, tiny nation of people. How much worse would it be for the entire world?

A Prophesied Change of Plans

God works in mysterious ways… or at least that is something a Jew might have said on this subject of atonement. Especially now, since they no longer have the temple institution necessary to carry out sacrifices. Thankfully, the entry of Jesus Christ into history provides us with an explanation. The temple sacrificial system was always meant to end some day. Remember Abraham and Isaac? Let’s look at Genesis 22 again. First, notice what kind of animal Isaac is expecting for the sacrifice.

Genesis 22:7-8 (ESV)

⁷ And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” ⁸ Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.

So Isaac is expecting a lamb (the typical animal chosen for sacrifice), and Abraham let’s his son know that God himself will provide the lamb. Now let’s see what actually happens.

Genesis 22:9-14 (ESV)

⁹ When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. ¹⁰ Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. ¹¹ But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” ¹² He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” ¹³ And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. ¹⁴ So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

God provides after all! But a ram, not a lamb? With thorns around its head? Also notice what Abraham calls the place: “The Lord will provide“, not “The Lord has provided”. Now the first name technically is fine, but why not use the past tense to provide a clearer pointer to an exact event that happened? By saying “The Lord will provide“, we can fairly interpret this to mean the Lord has not ultimately provided, but will provide one day.

So God is going to provide something more one day. The temple sacrifice system is clearly not good enough, so a reasonable implication is that once God provides this new sacrifice, it will lead to a change in the way things are done. Thankfully, God just straight up says that he is planning exactly that.

Jeremiah 31:31-34 (ESV)

³¹ “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, ³² not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. ³³ For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴ And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Wow, a new covenant is foretold in the Old Testament! It even explicitly mentions a complete forgiveness of sins (iniquities) through this new covenant. But how exactly will this work? Can God just break from his end of the deal, even if the Israelites had broken theirs? No, God does not break his deals so lightly.

2 Timothy 2:13 (ESV)

¹³ if we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.

The old covenant ultimately started with Abraham (at the time still called Abram), so maybe we can get hints from when that covenant was begun.

Genesis 15:7-21 (ESV)

⁷ And he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” ⁸ But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” ⁹ He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” ¹⁰ And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. ¹¹ And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
¹² As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. ¹³ Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. ¹⁴ But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. ¹⁵ As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. ¹⁶ And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
¹⁷ When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. ¹⁸ On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, ¹⁹ the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, ²⁰ the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, ²¹ the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.”

The style of treaty struck here between God and Abram takes on the form of what is called a suzerain-vassal treaty, a typical treaty style of Ancient Near East cultures of the time. Here are the essentials of such a treaty: the suzerain is the dominant party who promises to protect the vassal. The vassal is the submissive party who has to obey the suzerain. The animal carcasses cut in half are used for a vivid visual symbol of what will happen should one of the parties break the treaty: “If I break this treaty, may I become like one of these carcasses”. Notice that God actually keeps Abraham from passing through himself (see verse 12) while he (the smoking fire pot and flaming torch) passes through. It is almost as if he is saying “Abraham, I don’t want to have to kill you if you break this covenant. Therefore, I will keep you from that part of the oath and take on the penalty myself.” It would seem that God needs to die in order to formally break off from his old contract and start a new one.

If you are thinking that this is too much of a stretch, let’s read from the book of Isaiah. First, who is the one who will help put away our sins (see this footnote for further discussion on Isaiah 9²)?

Isaiah 9:2-7 (ESV)

²  The people who walked in darkness
    have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
    on them has light shone.
³ You have multiplied the nation;
    you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
    as with joy at the harvest,
    as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
⁴ For the yoke of his burden,
    and the staff for his shoulder,
    the rod of his oppressor,
    you have broken as on the day of Midian.
⁵ For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult
    and every garment rolled in blood
    will be burned as fuel for the fire.
⁶ For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
    and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
⁷ Of the increase of his government and of peace
    there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
    to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
    from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

It would appear that Isaiah’s servant figure takes on some divine prerogatives. Now what will happen to this servant³?

Isaiah 52:13-53:12 (ESV)

¹³ Behold, my servant shall act wisely;
    he shall be high and lifted up,
    and shall be exalted.
¹⁴ As many were astonished at you—
    his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,
    and his form beyond that of the children of mankind—
¹⁵ so shall he sprinkle many nations.
    Kings shall shut their mouths because of him,
for that which has not been told them they see,
    and that which they have not heard they understand.
53 Who has believed what he has heard from us?
    And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
² For he grew up before him like a young plant,
    and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
    and no beauty that we should desire him.
³ He was despised and rejected by men,
    a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
    he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
⁴ Surely he has borne our griefs
    and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
    smitten by God, and afflicted.
⁵ 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.
⁶ 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.
⁷ He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
    yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
    and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
    so he opened not his mouth.
⁸ By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
    and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
    stricken for the transgression of my people?
⁹ And they made his grave with the wicked
    and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
    and there was no deceit in his mouth.
¹⁰ Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
    he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
    he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
¹¹ Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
    make many to be accounted righteous,
    and he shall bear their iniquities.
¹² Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,
    and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death
    and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
    and makes intercession for the transgressors.

Arguably the clearest prophetic passage in the entire Bible, detailing not just the death of the messiah but also why he dies: to bear our sins.

The Signs of Change

I hope I haven’t lost you at this point. In fact, I imagine you can see where this is going from here, but let’s summarize what we have at this point. Humanity has a sin issue that we can’t seem to resolve on our own. It’s like we are trying to wash ourselves clean by rubbing ourselves with a mirror. Our good and bad deeds only reflect our nature; they cannot possibly change it. God still cares for us and wants to see us live and flourish, but the sin issue needs to be dealt with. The temple sacrifices aren’t doing the trick, but they (alongside other explicit passages) seem to be pointing us in the same direction: God is going to create a new covenant one day where sin is properly and fully dealt with. This will be enacted with one final sacrifice, a sacrifice that necessarily calls for death, and seemingly the death of God himself.

Justice and Mercy

It is ok my reader, I hear your objection: “Why doesn’t God just forgive us?” Here is an answer you might not expect… he could. God is God, he does as he pleases. Now usually that kind of logic puts an image in our head of an arbitrary dictator who “pleases” to do evil. But that doesn’t necessarily follow. Someone can do “as they please”, and still have everything they do be good because they take pleasure in doing good. I personally believe that God takes pleasure in “doing good”, but what does that mean exactly? Let’s walk through a thought experiment as a means of illustrating what God might be doing when it comes to mercy and justice.

Let’s imagine we are in a courtroom. A judge is deciding how to sentence a criminal (could be a murderer, petty thief, rapist, etc.). Now this particular judge loves to forgive people. The judge understands that people make mistakes sometimes, and that giving them second, third, fourth chances is only fair to account for natural human error. At what point do we say that this judge is corrupt? Now let’s say the criminal being sentenced is the judge’s child. Now the judge making sure their own child doesn’t get hit with years of prison is certainly loving of them, but clearly there is no justice to be found with such a judge. How should the victims of these crimes react?

Let’s now imagine the other extreme. We have a judge who is textbook perfect. This judge gives out exactly the right sentence to every person; he will not let any justice go unserved in his courtroom. This judge has three children, each committing some serious crimes. Now this judge is not going to stop serving perfect justice just because he has his own children in front of him, so he throws the book at them and they all get maximum sentences. Do you think his children are wondering if their dad ever loved them? Why didn’t this judge, out of his love for his kids, show them a bit of mercy? Try telling that to the victims.

Are we stuck with one of these two extremes? Thankfully, the answer is no! This is part of the beauty of the gospel: it is the “good news” of mercy and justice finding perfect harmony in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Death That Brings Us Life

At this point I don’t feel the need to do much exposition, for the New Testament is abundantly clear enough for me.

Mark 10:32-34 (ESV)

³² And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. And they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, ³³ saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. ³⁴ And they will mock him and spit on him, and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.”

Mark 10:45 (ESV)

⁴⁵ “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Romans 3:21-31 (ESV)

²¹ But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— ²² the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ 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. ²⁶ It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
²⁷ Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. ²⁸ For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. ²⁹ Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, ³⁰ since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. ³¹ Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

Philippians 2:5-11 (ESV)

 ⁵ Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ⁹ Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹ and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Hebrews 1:1-4 (ESV)

1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, ² but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. ³ He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, ⁴ having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

Hebrews 8:6-7 (ESV)

⁶ But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. ⁷ For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.

Hebrews 9:13-15 (ESV)

¹³ For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, ¹⁴ how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
¹⁵ Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

1 John 2:1-6 (ESV)

2 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. ² He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. ³ And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. ⁴ Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, ⁵ but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: ⁶ whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

The Righteous Judge Vindicated

Let’s wrap up by reconnecting to our thought experiment concerning different types of judges. How does the God of the Bible fit in the picture? Here is essentially how I see it.

God is a just judge, he cannot simply “forgive” sin by simply sweeping it under the rug. At the same time he is supremely loving (1 John 4:8), and does not wish to see any of us justly punished for our sins/suffer the consequences of our actions (because we would not survive). These purposes seem to be diametrically opposed to each other, and yet I mentioned earlier that Jesus Christ somehow performs a perfect union of mercy and justice… how so?

God, through the person of Jesus Christ the Son, offers to pay the penalty we rightly owe, but in exchange we need to allow him to redeem us from our sinful nature by following him as his disciples. No one can say the punishment for our sins has not been suffered, for Jesus Christ suffered the worst of it on the cross on our behalf. No one can say that believers in Christ “get off scot-free”, for we are expected to die to our old, sinful selves and become intentional followers of Christ.

Romans 6:1-4 (ESV)

6 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? ² By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? ³ Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

And if anyone chooses to reject Christ and consequently suffers the right penalty of their own sins, no one can call God the judge wrong for doing so. For in rejecting Christ, one declares: “I do not seek the redemption and renewal of life offered through Jesus, but rather I would like the ability to continue freely committing my crimes without the convictions that come with being a follower of Jesus.”

“God sees our hearts! He will know that I had good intentions, but just didn’t commit to obeying Jesus for good reasons.” What is “heaven” if not an eternity with God⁴? Therefore how can you expect God to bring you in if you reject Jesus Christ, who in his very nature is the same God you think will accept you into heaven? Should he bring you to himself against your will? If you could get to heaven while actively avoiding Jesus, do you still think he would have suffered what he did? Is not his death (his manner of death even) surely the evidence we need to know that the path to God he set down is the only one that actually works?

Choose Jesus Christ, he is the only one who saves.

1. https://biblehub.com/greek/266.htm ↩︎
2. I am aware there is some debate as to how Isaiah 9 should be appropriately translated (especially on the phrase “Mighty God” or “El-Gibbor”). Depending on the translation/interpretation choices one does not get a clear ascribing of divinity to the servant figure of Isaiah. I believe there is enough context clues to make a strong argument for this servant being described as having attributes that are greater than what a simple human would have (“Everlasting Father”, “there will be no end”, “from this time forth and forevermore”). ↩︎
3. Isaiah is a very large book of the Bible. It mixes together future messianic prophecy with current (to the time of Isaiah) prophecies and judgments and is simply not as straight forward as “the first half is talking about the time of Isaiah, the second half is about the future messiah”. There is more explicitly written about the messianic “servant” figure between Isaiah 9 and Isaiah 53, but this would likely need to be a post of its own to explain how what I am doing is not “cherry-picking”. ↩︎
4. The Christian doctrine surrounding Heaven is actually somewhat deeper and more complicated than most people (including most Christians) know it to be. It will have to be another post some other time, but just know that the idea of our spirits being in Heaven with God is actually not our final destination. ↩︎