Editorial
From the Newsletter of Revesby Presbyterian Church
March 2008
Rev Dr Peter Barnes
I was sitting in the manse lounge room with my Muslim friend who was trying to convince me that Islam is a religion of grace because Allah simply forgives. He declared that all who repent are received by Allah – he hoped – on the basis of their repentance. Nothing else is needed. The debate went on for a few hours, and, alas, my Muslim friend is still a Muslim. But it is a good question to consider: ‘Can God just forgive?’ Indeed, some might indignantly demand that God simply forgive all who come to Him and say that they are sorry for their sins. Is that so? What would that mean for the Christian message?
First, this would mean that God was bluffing in giving us His law. The Lord God told Adam in the Garden that in the day that he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would surely die (Gen.2:17). Throughout the Scriptures, God tells His people that there are blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience (Deut. 28). Indeed, it is a matter of life and death (Deut.30:19). The soul who sins will die (Ezek.18:4); the wages of sin is death (Rom.6:23). Ultimately, this penalty has to be paid. Some parents and teachers make all sorts of threats against disobedient children, but these threats are never carried out. God is not like that. He means what He says. When He declares that death is a necessary consequence of sin, that is to be taken with the utmost seriousness. God’s free grace does not mean that He sets aside His holy law but that He fulfils it.
Secondly, this would mean that our unholy rejection of an infinitely holy God is not such a serious offence after all. Apparently, it can all be undone by our repentance. Not so, says the Scripture. Sin requires atonement; it must be paid for. To those who considered that repentance and good deeds were enough, Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th century wrote: ‘You have not yet considered the weight of sin.’ That is still the problem today. Sin is treated lightly, and we have trouble grasping why Habbakuk says that God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and cannot look on wrong (Hab.1:13). Sinful human beings cannot look on God and live (Ex.33:20).
Thirdly, the cross of Christ would become pointless. As Paul says: ‘if justification came through the law, then Christ died for no purpose’ (Gal.2:21). If there were any way that a law could give life, then righteousness would have come by means of the law (Gal.3:21). That is the point: Christ went the way of the cross because there was no other way. He was not obliged by justice to save guilty sinners, but to save guilty sinners He had to die. Both Testaments tell us that without the shedding of blood, there can be no forgiveness of sins (Lev.17:11; Heb.9:22).
At the beginning of the twentieth century, many theologians were trying to present the cross as simply a declaration of God’s love for sinners. That sounds moving, but it makes no sense. The Scottish theologian, James Denney, was too concessive in a number of areas, but he is worth quoting in this regard:
There is something irrational in saying that the death of Christ is a great proof of love to the sinful, unless there is shown at the same time a rational connection between that death and the responsibilities which sin involves, and from which that death delivers. Perhaps one should beg pardon for using so simple an illustration, but the point is a vital one, and it is necessary to be clear. If I were sitting on the end of a pier, on a summer day, enjoying the sunshine and the air, and some one came along and jumped into the water and got drowned ‘to prove his love for me,’ I should find it quite unintelligible. I might be much in need of love, but an act in no rational relation to any of my necessities could not prove it. But if I had fallen over the pier and were drowning, and someone sprang into the water, and at the cost of making my peril, or what but for him would be my fate, his own, saved me from death, then I should say, ‘Greater love hath no man than this.’ I should say it intelligibly, because there would be an intellibible relation between the sacrifice which love made and the necessity from which it redeemed. Is it making any rash assumption to say that there must be such an intelligible relation between the death of Christ – the great act in which His love to sinners is demonstrated – and the sin of the world for which in His blood He is the propitiation? I do not think so. Nor have I yet seen any intelligible relation established between them, except that which is the key to the whole of New Testament teaching, and which bids us say, as we look at the Cross, He bore our sins, He died our death. It is so His love constrains us.
So my Muslim friend, and indeed any unbelieving soul, my repentance and your repentance are not enough. We must learn what it means to glory in the cross of Christ. This is demanded by the integrity of God’s law, the gravity of sin, and the reality of Christ’s sacrifice.
With warmest regards in Christ,
Peter Barnes