All language subtitles for American-Gospel -Christ-Crucified_2019_English-ELSUBTITLE.COM-ST_62472354

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♪ When I
survey the wondrous cross ♪

You need to understand

that the message of the
cross is foolishness

to those who are
perishing.

Given that that is the case

there is an immediate temptation

on the part of the proclaimer
of the good news

to try then to diminish,
if not remove

the difficult parts.

In a sense, you're creating a
Christian message

that's warm, kind, and popular

for contemporary culture,

but it's frankly, according
to this critic,

"unbiblical and historically
unreliable..."

That's true isn't it?

♪ And pour contempt on
all my pride. ♪

I'm concerned
that people today

don't know who God is.

Sometimes when I hear people
speak about God

I feel like an atheist.

The God they speak of-
I just don't believe in!

People say like,
"When did you lose your faith?"

It started fifteen minutes after
I accepted Jesus Christ as my

personal Lord and Savior!

Immediately encountered stuff
in scripture and was like,

"That makes no sense to me!"

When we say
"Christ died for our sins"

do we mean that God required
the murder of His son

in order to forgive?
No!

That maligns the
character of God!

It is frightening to me

that the doctrine most loved by
believers through church history

- the only doctrine that gives me
complete and solid hope-

so many modern writers
today hate!

I had this one
experience where

I was in a sanctuary of
a big Lutheran church

speaking to their hundreds of
confirmation students

and all of the parents
in the room,

and I said, "Raise your hand
if you've ever been told,

"'Jesus died for your sins.'"

And of course everybody
raised their hands.

And so then I said,
"Alright, I want all the parents

to explain to their
confirmation student,

'How does that work exactly?'
Like by what

cosmic mechanism does the
death of Jesus

take care of your
personal sins?"

And I could hear the groan-
like there was a groan

that went across this
full sanctuary

of hundreds of people. Because
all these adults were like,

"I don't know how it works!
I just know its true!"

♪ Love so amazing,
so divine ♪

♪ Demands my soul,
my life, my all. ♪

Progressive
Christianity actually changed

my life in a radical way.

I grew up in the church-

grew up in a family that

really had a genuine
love for Jesus,

genuine love for the Bible.

And it wasn't by
any measure perfect.

My family is not perfect, and
the churches I grew up in

were not perfect.

But I didn't really
go through any doubt

as a young child or even as an
adult I never experienced doubts

about the existence of God,

about the truthfulness
of Christianity,

about the reliability
of the Bible.

I just believed those things.

And spent some time in the
Christian music business

in a group called ZOEgirl.

We toured the country and even
certain parts of the world,

singing about Jesus to young
girls and to young people.

And that was something that was
very real for me.

Every Christian
I know sort of

is on some kind of a journey.

I grew up among Christians-my
dad is Tony Campolo,

a famous Christian.

And I thought my dad
was wonderful,

and I didn't become a Christian
until I was fifteen years old.

And it wasn't because like,
I hated my father,

or I was a rebellious kid.

It was just that I didn't really
believe in God.

So neither my
wife nor myself

were raised in Christian homes.

I was raised by a nominally
Christian mother,

and an atheist father.

And from a very early age
decided that I

was an atheist as well.

When I first became a Christian
I was crushed

under the conviction of sin.

And my selfishness was hurting
my marriage, hurting my family.

And God opened my eyes to that
in a very...

in a very painful way.

I mean I was
a nice kid-

I wanted to make the world
a better place,

and the church seemed to me
to be a vehicle to do that-

seemed to me like-

it felt like the only
game in town!

Like if you want to make the
world a better place-

this is the way you do it.

And so they kind of had me
at "Hello."

I walked in, I was like,
"I love this community!"

I was so attracted to it.

And what attracted me more than
anything to the Christian faith

was the truth of God's word.

It was the first time
I'd ever read His word.

And I had no church community,
I had no friends.

I didn't have a positive
support group-

I had a Bible that
I read in the dark

every night while I put
my son to sleep.

I still didn't believe in God,

but I wanted to be part of the
community so bad that I sort of

went along.

You know in Alcoholics Anonymous
they say you've got to

"fake it until you make it."

And so like, I faked it!

All that supernatural stuff-

that wasn't the attraction to
Christianity for me-

that was the price of admission.

I was reading
words that had a divine

character and nature that was
unmistakable to me

all of a sudden.

The Spirit of God had lifted the
veil from my eyes

and I was seeing the words of
God on paper.

But at some point
I'm up there on a youth retreat.

And there's three hundred kids,
and there's candlelight,

and we're swaying to the music
and singing, "I love you Lord!"

You know? And I had...

...a transcendent experience.

And I had one of those moments
in which I felt something!

Felt God speaking to me!

And that was it! Like,
I was like, "This is real!"

And then I was in.

What happened
there was a dramatic

change of worldview.
I went from

an atheist who held my reason,
and my intellect,

and my senses-all of my
faculties as the

ultimate standard of reality.

Now all of a sudden I have
the word of God

telling me

from God, things about reality

that were different than I
believed before.

You know it's funny like I'm
totally secular now! So like-

you know I don't believe in any
form of supernaturalism so-

like I would have a different
explanation for that experience.

But when I'm with secular people
and they're like,

"I bet you're embarrassed
that you-

that you say you felt the
Holy Spirit, or that you heard

God speaking to you." I'm like,
"Oh no!"

"That happened!"

Like I felt something, I heard
a voice! You know?

People don't believe in
transcendent experiences

I always say like,
"Haven't used the right drugs!"

"Haven't fallen in love with
the right partner."

"Haven't been to the right
rock concert."

Because like we've all had
these experiences where

we've felt swept up in something
bigger than ourselves.

And I think whatever narrative
you're in when that happens,

it confirms that narrative.

And so for me I was in a
Christian context-

I was like, "This is Jesus!"

Even though my
heart was with Jesus,

I wasn't really churched
during that time.

I didn't have a pastor during
that time. And I think that

made me vulnerable to
some things. And-

you know, travelling in the
Christian music business

you go to all kinds of
different churches.

You go to the big megachurches
with the celebrity pastors.

You go to the small little
churches that

just have a piano and
not much else. And-

you see it all!

And I think I began to become
a little bit jaded

I just went, "This can't be the
real thing."

Like, "This can't be right."

The Emerging
Church movement began

several years ago as a
conversation

among Evangelical Gen-X leaders

who were alarmed at church dropout
rates among twenties, and thirties.

About the same time, a pastor
from Maryland, Brian McLaren,

began writing about what he saw
as a growing disillusionment

with the way evangelical
Christianity

was being practiced.

The two paths that
came together

to form the Emerging Church
Movement in the late 1990's

were one, was a group of people
who were questioning the methods

of church as big business...

And I wonder about these multi-
millionaire preachers who are

fleecing their congregations,

and they watch their own people
in dire poverty!

They have this world's goods and
they're not

sharing what they have with
those who are in need

in their own communities-
it scares me!

The Emerging
Church movement

actually was right in a lot of
their criticisms

of shallow evangelicalism.
Pragmatic evangelicalism. The-

entire millennial
generation had-

for the most part-those that
had grown up as evangelicals-

had grown up in children's
church and then youth group

movements where pretty much the
emphasis was on fun and games-

not teaching. And so it's a
generation of people

who were not taught scripture,

and so they were pretty quick
to throw it out!

There's a sort of a comfort
in knowing that, one,

I don't have to have the answers

and that there aren't
necessarily answers.

Then you had another stream
that was

people who were questioning
the theology,

the doctrine,

the core message of
the gospel, like,

"What's the gospel
really about?"

And we were reading

people who had been considered
"off limits"

by a lot of evangelicals.

We were reading like
feminist theology,

and liberation theology,
and things like that.

But the idea was,
"Look, times are changing

we're moving out of
the modern realm,

and into the postmodern realm."

And the distinctive feature of
postmodernism was always

skepticism.

The modernist thought,

"We can know for sure
what truth is because

science will tell us."

And postmodernism has given up
on that fallacy.

And now concluded that really,
"Nothing can tell us for sure-

what truth is."

We talked a lot about the Bible.

How reliable and trustworthy
is the Bible?

And how reliable and
trustworthy are our

interpretations and applications
of the Bible?

So we can't be absolutely
confident

that we know anything.

And therefore postmodernism is
really the abandonment of

certainty, and knowledge.

In fact, if there's one sin
in the progressive church,

it's the "sin of certainty."

Beware of people who charge in
with certainty and Bible verses.

And by the time
ZOEgirl came to an end

my husband and I had found a
local non-denominational,

just run-of-the-mill evangelical
church here in the heart of

middle Tennessee where I live.

And we went to this church for
about eight months and

after about eight months
the pastor invited me

to be a part of a bit of a
deeper study group.

An inner-circle kind of
discussion group

where we would be studying the
Bible, we'd be studying

Christianity, theology.

And so the class unfolded,

and then he revealed that
although he didn't say this on

Sunday mornings-

he was actually more
of an agnostic!

And he called himself a
"hopeful agnostic."

And he would bring up
claim after claim

against the Bible.

A lot of it had to do with the
reliability of the Bible,

core doctrines that Christians
have believed for 2000 years.

And I wasn't prepared to answer-
I'd never even heard

of some of the questions, let
alone have thought through

some of the answers.

I look back now and I realize
that what was happening

was his deconstruction.

When I think
about what our podcast is,

and even the word
"decontruction,"

it's really to me as simple as
just encouraging people

to take part-to participate in
their own spiritual journey.

It's-I think taking a more
mature look at your faith,

taking ownership
over your faith.

Really digging into it to
determine what it is

that I believe.

And a lot of times what
that means is kind of

removing some of the things that
you grew up believing,

but certainly by no means
getting rid of everything.

Often, when
a Christian goes through a

process of deconstruction,

what they reconstruct to
is something that

doesn't look anything like
historic Christianity.

In my case, I went through that
process of deconstructing.

I didn't go quite to atheism.
I always did believe

that God was there.

But it sent me into
a crisis of faith,

a really dark time
of doubt where

I would rock my baby in the
rocking chair,

and just sing hymns into
the darkness, just-

not even really sure
that they were true.

It was as if I had been thrown
into the middle of the ocean

with just these
high crazy waves,

with nothing-nothing
to grab on to.

And I said, "God,
send me a lifeboat!

If Christianity is true,
send me a lifeboat!"

Because so many
Emergents wanted to be

politically correct,

even the moral foundations of
Christianity were beginning to

sort of crumble
underneath them,

because they wanted to
follow the spirit of the age

in being tolerant and diverse.

So you can't say,
"Homosexuality is a sin."

So as a young Christian reading
my Bible for the first time,

I ran into things like

the way God's word
talks about sexual sin.

I had homosexual friends in
high school and I-

I'd look at God's word telling
me that this is a sin,

and tried hard!

Because I love these people,
I care about these people!

I don't want to see their
lifestyle as something that is

sinful and needs to be
repented of.

And also, on top of that, it's
really culturally unpopular

and frowned upon
to think that way.

There's been a lot of
progress -so to speak-

for that community
in the last decade.

We now see politicians have
evolved on their stance on

same sex marriage.

I have to tell you, as I've said
I've been going through

an evolution on this issue.

I believe that marriage is the
union between a man and a woman.

Now for me as a Christian...

I had gay roommates
when I was in college.

And they had been-

this was 1985! It was not okay
to be gay in any part of

Christian America. Certainly not
the conservative church

I was growing up in.

When I came out in
favor of marriage equality,

I lost work, I lost
publishing contracts...

But these guys-
they were wonderful!

And they had been gay from
the moment that they were

aware of themselves sexually.

I'm straight, but I even know
like, being gay is not a choice!

It's our lifestyle,
it's who we are!

It's not something that we
choose to do, like lying is

or something like that.
Like this is how we are born,

how we feel.

Through the sins of Adam, sin
had come into the world...

This guy doesn't even
know what a dinosaur is!

We are all
born in sin!

We are born with
a sin nature.

All men were born into sin.
All men have a sin nature.

We're all rebelling against the
will of God apart from Christ.

And I don't think that it's
fair to tell us that how-

how we feel everyday, and
how our natural feelings come

is wrong. That's just...

Even if
they honestly believe they

were born that way,

Jesus says,
"You must be born again."

It took me a long time to be
open about that but like

very early on I realized
like, look-

the Bible's wrong
about this one!

It is important for me to go
ahead and affirm

that I think same-sex couples
should be able to get married.

And when I
look at the evolution of how

not only our nation,

but how professing Christians
view this issue,

you can definitely see how
this particular sin

has become somewhat of a
"line in the sand."

And what I was
faced with was the decision-

am I going to trust what God
says about this sin?

Or am I just going to go with
what the world and my feelings

say about this sin?

There's a time where you have
to look in the mirror and say,

"I have to go where
my heart's leading me."

I just knew too many
wonderful Christian people

who were in gay relationships.

My dad has since come out
in support of gay marriage,

but for many years was not, and
was like, "You've gone too far!"

Because I'm marrying
gay couples! You know?

And having been an atheist
for years, I knew

what following my feelings
would get me.

And I was done with that.

To say that
homosexuality is a sin

is practically social suicide!

Yesterday
CrossFitHQ fired Russell Berger

for basically saying
homosexuality is a sin.

And I was
watching a lot of my friends

reject the Christianity
they grew up with.

And so I started to think,
"Well I'm not going to reject

just what I was raised with.

'Cause maybe what I was raised
with wasn't the real thing.

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.

But I need to find out what
historic Christianity is.

And if I'm going to reject
Christianity, it's going to be

that I'm rejecting authentic,
real, historic Christianity,

and not just something
I was raised with."

And you had a lot
of people at the time

arguing against us saying,

"The methods change, the
message never changes." Like-

as though the gospel has never
changed. Which is again,

like theologically, and
historically unjustifiable.

The message of the
church has evolved.

So there are some
that would try to pit

the gospel of Jesus against the
gospel of Paul as if they were

somehow saying different things,
or making different messages.

I think the book
of Romans is the wrong place

to go to get a definition of
the gospel. I think-

we have to get a definition of
the gospel from Jesus!

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

That's where He's
defining the gospel.

But we have to see what the book
of Romans is really about.

It's a bad question,
that is not answerable!

You cannot answer,
"What is the gospel?"

"Jesus died on the cross
for my sin!"

That's not the gospel!

Jesus was preaching the gospel

before He died on
the cross for sin!

So like, Mark Chapter 1...

Jesus starts preaching
the gospel.

What was He preaching?
He hadn't died yet!

Nobody had unpacked any of it!

So it must be more than His
death on the cross

or we wouldn't even have
the gospels!

We would just have,
"Jesus died! Here's some Paul!"

So if He went out and started
preaching the gospel,

I know that no matter what-
whatever He was preaching

is different than what I've been
told the gospel is!

Yeah! Yeah!

As a boy growing up

it was explained to me that the
Bible is a book about Jesus.

Jesus is Himself "the gospel."
The good news.

He is the Lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world

as John the Baptist
points to Him.

So, in the Old Testament
He is predicted,

in the Gospels He's revealed,

in the Acts He's preached,

in the Epistles He's explained,

and in the book of Revelation
He's expected!

The center of the message of
both Jesus and Paul

was Christ Himself,
Christ-His work,

and the response that says,
I will submit, I will follow

after Christ.

I do not sum up the gospel!
I'm not going to do it!

You're not going to
bait me into it!

Tony's right!

Yeah! Yeah!

I can't answer that!

Yeah!

The good news is the
kingdom of God is at hand!

It's available. We can reach
out and touch it!

Of course, that
raises the question

what does the
"kingdom of God" mean?

Jesus
preached the kingdom

as the forgiveness of sins.

Jesus bypassed the temple

and its sacrifices

by offering in His own person
the forgiveness of sins.

Let His enemies tell us
who He was.

The Pharisee says, "Who does
He think He is-this man,

who imagines that He has the
power to forgive sins?

Only God has the power
to forgive sins!

What a blasphemer!"

Paul stated plainly what the
gospel was in 1 Cor. 15

when he said,
"Christ died for our sins

according to the scriptures,

He was buried, and He was
raised on the third day."

But Jesus
came preaching a gospel

that said,
"the kingdom is here!"

"And I'm the king!"

And wherever my reign and my
influence is-

there's the kingdom!

And He's introduced
the kingdom to all

who have a broken and a
contrite heart-poor in spirit.

And so, even in the
Sermon on the Mount

Jesus makes it plain that it
is not our works that save us.

He said at the very opening of
the Sermon on the Mount,

"Blessed are the
poor in spirit,

for theirs, and theirs alone is
the kingdom of heaven."

The only people that belong
to the realm of Christ,

are those who recognize that
they are spiritually bankrupt.

That they have no righteousness
of their own-

that's what "poor in spirit"
means.

And He goes on to say,
"Blessed are those who mourn,

for they shall be comforted."

The idea being that-that the
Christian is someone who

mourns over his sin,

mourns over his lack of
righteousness,

looks at the perfection of God

looks at the perfection of His
law, and says, "I fall short!"

And he mourns over his personal
inadequacy before a holy God.

Jesus begins Mark,

steps out in Mark's gospel,

"The time is fulfilled,

the kingdom of God
is at hand;

repent and believe
the good news."

What good news?

That "I am the
light of the world."

That "I am the bread of life."

That "I am the good shepherd who
gives His life for the sheep."

Gives His life for the sheep?

Why would He give His life
for the sheep?

"All we like sheep
have gone astray,

we've turned, everyone,
to his own way;

and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all."

"I am the 'Him'" says Jesus.

Anytime, anywhere, anyone
has ever been saved,

it is by grace alone, through
faith alone, in Christ alone.

The call of the gospel is
a call to follow Christ.

And Christ made that call,
He said, "Follow me."

Paul makes the call in
the same way saying,

"We preach Christ
and Him crucified."

One of the
problems, I think,

with the American Gospel today,
is that we start

in the very wrong place.

We start with the
cross of Jesus Christ.

We're asking them
to accept a Savior

that they don't even
know they need!

So to me, this is why we have
so many false conversions today-

we've only given them
half the message.

What we have
to understand

is the gospel primarily has to
do with the attributes of God,

not just the sin of man.

You see, the sin of man
wouldn't be a problem

if God was like us.

But God is not like us.

And all His
attributes fit perfectly

together into one
glorious whole.

And you can sum them all up
by saying, "God is holy."

And of course
the signature text for that is

Isaiah chapter 6, when the
year that King Uzziah died,

the prophet Isaiah
went into the temple,

and he encounters God

in a vision that is
just extraordinary,

as he sees God high
and lifted up.

And then he hears the angels
crying out, "Holy, holy, holy!"

When something is repeated
three times

it takes it to the
superlative degree.

What the angels are crying out
is, "Holy, holier, holiest!"

Something
we see very often in

progressive Christianity

is the redefinition of words.

So they will takes words
that Christians have

historically understood to
be defined in a certain way,

they will assign them
a new definition

and then just use them in
regular conversation as if

we all understand
the new meaning!

So, a great example of this
comes from Nadia Bolz-Weber

who is a progressive Lutheran
minister who wrote a book

on biblical sexuality.
And in her view,

we need to completely have an
absolute upheaval of

the Christian view of sexuality.
In fact she says

we need to take everything
that we've believed

for the last 2000 years
and burn it to the ground!

So one of the foundations upon
which she builds her argument

is her definition of the word
"holy" or "holiness".

And so she defines the
word "holiness" to mean

something more like "unity."

Being together. It means there
being a unity between people

and unity with God.

And so this is why she can

give an example of someone
having a one night stand

and call it "holy," because
there's the unifying of

two people.

Well of course,
biblically speaking,

"holiness" actually means
the exact opposite!

In fact, biblical holiness has
to do with God

being separate from sin, being
completely "other" than sin.

He's transcendent, totally
set apart from His creation.

And whenever
sinful man is in the presence

of holy God, he becomes

painfully aware of
his own unholiness.

And Isaiah-he's undone!

And when he says, "Woe is me"
he is saying "cursed is me!"

Then one of the
seraphim flew to me with a

burning coal in his hand,

which he had taken from
the altar with tongs.

He touched my mouth
with it and said,

"Behold, this has
touched your lips;

and your iniquity
is taken away.

and your sin is forgiven."

The fact that
God forgives wicked men

presents a theological problem.

Now people say, "Why would that
be a problem?

It demonstrates that God's love,
and that God is merciful."

Well God is love,
and God is merciful,

but He's not only that.

And if you look over here
in Exodus 34

I'll read this to you. It's one
of the greatest revelations

of God in the scriptures!

Moses asks God to
show him His glory.

And He does! And then this is
the following that pursues,

It says, "The Lord descended in
the cloud and stood there

with him as he called upon
the name of the Lord.

Then the Lord passed by in front
of him and proclaimed,

"The Lord, the Lord God,
compassionate and gracious,

slow to anger, and abounding in
lovingkindness and truth;

who keeps lovingkindness
for thousands,

who forgives iniquity,
transgression and sin..."

So far so good!

That's really good news
for fallen man!

But then we go a little bit
farther and it says this,

"He will by no means leave
the guilty unpunished."

How does that go together?

That's the tension-

I call that sort of the
riddle of the Old Testament!

It's not tap-dancing around the
nature of God-

it's saying very
straightforwardly,

this is what God is like.

Now look at this-

How can God forgive all types
and kinds of sin,

and yet at the same time punish
every type and kind of sin?

Ultimately,
verses like that drive me

into the mystical
side of theology.

I have to disabuse
myself of thinking,

"That is a rational
contradiction!"

How can you say you forgive
everybody, but not the guilty?

We're all guilty, so you don't
forgive anybody?!

If you're not
forgiving the guilty,

who are you forgiving?!

God is no fool, and He does
not give contradictions.

That is who God is.

God is a God who in our minds
is constantly at tension.

Merciful, loving, forgiving...

but also not forgiving!

And He says, "I am loving,
but I am just."

That's interpretation!

That's not actually
what the verse says!

So I'm, I'm-

you know we all have our
right to interpret it

but it doesn't say,

"And God is just" in that verse-
that's not what it says.

That may be what it means.

But what the verse
actually says is,

"He does not forgive the
guilty."

That drives me out of my head
and into my heart, and say

this is verse

for me to

reflect on and digest,

and kind of
existentially experience,

as opposed to it being a
verse for me to figure out.

And then we go a little bit
further in the scriptures

and we can also see this in
Proverbs 17:15,

"He who justifies the wicked and
he who condemns the righteous,

Both of them alike are an
abomination to the Lord."

Most of our hymns in the church
have to do with God

justifying us who were wicked!

But here in Proverbs
it says that

anyone who justifies the
wicked-it's an abomination to God!

so how can God
justify wicked men,

as we see in Romans chapter 4,
and at the same time,

avoid the title of
"an abomination?"

The question is,
"How is forgiveness

meted out by God?"

Are there strings attached
to God's forgiveness?

Now, this is one of the most

comforting and beautiful
passages in the entire Bible,

taken from the book of Psalms,
and found in Romans 4:7-8.

And it says this: "Blessed are
those whose lawless deeds

have been forgiven, and whose
sins have been covered.

Blessed is the man whose sin the
Lord will not take into account."

What do we call a judge
who "covers" sin?

We say that he's unjust,
we say that he's corrupt.

And yet here we see God,

who makes the claim to be
righteous and holy

and He's covering sin.

The justice of
God is something that is

revealed in the Bible

as being fundamentally rooted
in the nature of God.

God is called,
"The Judge of all."

God is a
righteous judge,

and a God who has indignation
every day.

And the reason why He is the
judge is because He is

morally righteous.

"Righteousness and justice

are the foundation
of your throne;

lovingkindness and
truth go before you."

All human beings
have this longing for justice.

It's in our bones. It is deep
into the human psyche

that we want the world
to be made right!

As an atheist,

I often saw the suffering
in the world as-

as giving me justification for
my hatred towards God.

"How would He allow this
to happen?"

You know, right after I became
a Christian I started

working in the inner city
with poor people,

and I would meet people
that were suffering!

I met girls that
had been raped,

and kids that had their
fathers be killed!

I struggled with evil

to the degree that
I wanted to take vengeance

against evil people.

And I'll be perfectly honest,
I joined the military

so that I could
go kill evil people.

I learned through scripture

that that is misplaced.

Scripture says that,
"Vengeance is the Lord's."

And over the
course of that time I would say

that my commitment
to loving relationships

and to social justice

grew and grew and grew,

and my ability to believe in
a supernatural person

who intervened on behalf
of human beings,

kind of died the death of a
thousand unanswered prayers.

I was a believer in a
sovereign God who actually

predestined everything
and ran the world, and-

when somebody was sick, we
would pray like, "God,

heal sister Mary!"

And in my own life,

my wife suffered through years
and years- and continues to

suffer through years of
medical problems,

very serious genetic disorders,
and botched surgeries,

and near-death experiences.

And I mean, in my personal
experience even

just this last week, I've
had a lot of pain!

My daughter's in a lot of pain.

She has the same genetic
disorder that I do.

I told her, you know, there
will be times in your life

where whether it's mental
suffering, emotional, spiritual,

or physical,

where there is nothing you can
say, but "God, please!"

And we realize that there is
no way that we can go on

without Him!

I have a friend who says like,
"Nothing fails like prayer."

ANd that was my experience
like in the inner city.

Could you heal this lady
who's got six kids

that are depending on her?
Could you heal her from cancer?

And she would die!

Life shouldn't look like

a kid in a wheelchair.

Life shouldn't look like
cancer for the second time.

But the thing is-
it's not about that!

It's about giving God glory!

Either God knows
this is happening,

and this is His idea of
a "good time," in which case,

I'm not sure
I like God anymore!

Or maybe God isn't as much in
control of the world

as I thought He was.

And in rapid succession,

as a young Christian, of facing
these really terrible situations

God showed me how He was
working through those things,

and He reoriented me from
a perspective of entitlement

and pride and
judging God for He did,

to a perspective of seeing
God glorified in suffering.

And rejoicing for the way He was
able to turn terrible things

into good things.

In my lily-white suburb you
could get away with

the sovereignty argument!

You can't...

You can't have a God who is in
charge of everything

if you're in the inner city
and still end up liking Him!

Once I started suffering

it's almost like
that taught me

more and more about
how much God loved me.

And the only way I can
explain that is by God's grace!

Because it makes no sense!

If I could get
those years that she suffered

back, and allow her to be happy
and healthy in those years-

I wouldn't!

Because I can see how God
in His sovereignty

lead us closer to Him

than we ever would have been
had we not suffered in that way.

He just
shows us that ultimate act of

surrendering into suffering.

And ours is nothing, nothing,
and nowhere near His.

We also
have to be honest to realize

if God is going to purge
the world of all evil,

get rid of all the sin and

brokenness and
evil of this world-

just a little bit of self-
examination, and self-reflection

would lead us to realize,
"Uh oh!"

Our longing for justice
would come back against us!

So the great question in the
entire Bible is this:

If God is righteous, how can
He pardon men who are wicked

and still maintain
His righteousness?

Well, forgiveness in the Bible
carries a great cost,

because in order for God to
forgive the sinner,

God's justice must be satisfied!

And therefore, Jesus had
to pay a penalty

that would satisfy the wrath
of an infinite God!

I think
in the present day

there's a lot of discomfort

with the idea of God
being wrathful,

and there's a lot of discomfort
with the idea of

divinely sanctioned violence!

Is it not true, not that
long ago USA Today

talks about the Presbyterian
Church fighting over a song-

"In Christ Alone."

♪ In Christ alone
my hope is found ♪

And for years people had been
changing one of the lyrics!

♪ 'Til on that cross
as Jesus died ♪

♪ The wrath of God
was satisfied ♪

Some churches on the more
progressive side who had trouble

with this idea that God's wrath
needed to be satisfied,

had just changed
that one line to

God's love was magnified.

So when Jesus died on the cross,
God's love was magnified.

Well, when the new hymnal of the
Presbyterian Church USA-

which is one of the larger
denominations-

when they were doing their
new hymnal,

they actually went to the
copyright holders of the song

and said, you know,

"We want permission
to change this one line."

And the answer on the part
of the hymn writers, I think

has been a very strong,
"No! You mustn't change it!"

Because they understand

that God's wrath and God's love

are not in opposition
to one another,

but the one explains the other.

And this is the
dilemma of the American pulpit:

we've got a God of wrath
versus a God of love,

which is a dichotomy that the
Bible doesn't present!

So it just shows the split!

I mean both that the
Presbyterians wouldn't include it,

and that the song writers

wouldn't allow a
pretty minor change!

It's a classic illustration of
the attempt to kind of

contextualize the hard parts of
the Bible in such a way

as to make people comfortable,
and at the same time,

deny the truth of the gospel.

The one man said, who wanted
that lyric changed,

"This lyric comes close to
saying that God killed Jesus.

The cross is not an instrument
of God's wrath."

The title of my
most recent book is

"Did God Kill Jesus?"

Which I used because

it was a quandary I had myself,

and it was something that I had
heard from a lot of people,

and that is, they're struggling
with their understandings

of the cross, and Jesus'
death on the cross,

in which it seemed like God had
to exact some kind of revenge

or payment from Jesus.

If God needs someone to
"pay the price" for our sin,

the question is, "Does He ever
really forgive anyone at all?"

So how can He do that?
How can He forgive sins?

Does He just overlook them?

And the biblical answer is:
"No!"

That's what the death
of Christ is all about.

He paid the price of
other people's sins.

Some people call it
the "Penal Substitution Theory"

of the atonement.

I refer to it as "The Payment"
model of the atonement.

So the big question underlying
the book, and I think underlying

the cross in general-

when you think about it
theologically at least-is:

"Is God the author of the
crucifixion?"

Explain to me how the cross
could originate in God.

Or, to put it more bluntly:
"Did God kill Jesus?"

Well attacks on penal
substitution have been around

for a long time, but

I think they made their way into
the larger evangelical culture

through the book, "The Shack."

And because it was in
novel style,

it wasn't completely clear-

the theology that was
being taught in the book.

That's when your whole
wrath thing comes in, right?

My what?

Your wrath.

You lost me there!

One thing that was made clear
in the The Shack, though,

was that Jesus' death
accomplished

the reconciliation of all
human beings to God.

Everybody knows you punish
the people who disappoint you.

Hmm...

No!

I don't need to punish people.

Sin is its own punishment.

Well a few years later,
William Paul Young,

the author of The Shack,
came out with a book called

"Lies We Believe About God."

And in "Lies We Believe About
God," William Paul Young teaches

that it's a lie to think that
God originated the cross-

that it was God's idea
to send Jesus

to die on the cross
for our sins.

And that if that's true,

that makes Him nothing more
than a "cosmic abuser."

And this is a theme
that's very big

in the progressive Christian
church-is the idea

of "cosmic child abuse."

The problem with this way of
thinking about the cross is that

it turns God into some kind of
like divine child abuser!

And so this is largely rejected
in the progressive church.

I don't think God killed Jesus!

I think God died on the cross.

Did God kill Jesus?

Yes!

Did Jesus go to
the cross unwillingly?

No!

The idea that God

would say, "I'm going to punish
somebody else for your sins."

- it doesn't make
any sense anywhere!

Every version of the
atonement has problems.

The problem with
penal substitution

is that it puts God under,
or beholden to,

some transcendent
version of justice,

that even God has to live
under that umbrella,

and say, "Well I can't just
forgive these people,

someone needs to pay the debt!

Someone needs to
pay the penalty!"

"And so I'd like to
forgive you all,

but I've got to
pay off 'Justice' first!"

It begs the question,
"Who's in charge here?!"

God could say, "No I don't need
these people to pay me back!

I'm just going to
forgive their debt!

I'm going to declare
a year of Jubilee-

all human sin is forgiven!
Nobody has to die!"

When we say God
is perfectly just,

and that He can't
just wink at sin

and forgive sinners without
satisfying that justice,

we're not putting an external
standard above God

that controls His motivations
or His actions.

This justice, just like His
goodness, and His immutability,

and His love, are all a part of
His nature and His character.

For the Lord is righteous,

He loves righteousness;

The upright will
behold His face.

They're definitional
of who God is!

And we know that-

not because that's how we like
to think about God,

but because that's how God has
revealed Himself in scripture.

I think that's such
a huge theological prblem

to say, "These attributes
are just a part of God

and God cannot change."

Or, "God is beholden to
these attributes of God."

Who says?!

It's God!

God doesn't have to be beholden
to any attributes!

It's like people
say things like,

"You can't have love
without justice!"

And everyone is in the pew
is like, "Oh yeah...

Boy, that makes perfect sense!"

Who said you can't have
love without justice?

There's nothing in the Bible
that says you can't have

love without justice!

There are all sorts
of attributes of God.

And one of the ones that the
church used to talk a lot about

and has forgotten, is called
the simplicity of God-

which doesn't mean that
God is a simpleton.

But it means that
whatever God has, God is.

So it's not that He has

50% of love,
and 50% of justice,

or we can break it up into
smaller percentages so that

He has a little of this,
and a little of that in Him.

No, He actually has 100%
of every attribute!

That's why He's perfect!

For example,
when God demonstrates

righteousness or justice, He
does it in the most loving way.

And when He demonstrates love,
He does it righteously!

This too, I think is a really
great misunderstanding-

people think that God has
the ten commandments and

He has to submit to those
ten commandments...

No, He doesn't!

The ten commandments are
a reflection of who He is

and His nature!

They tell us what God is like,

and that this is what God
expects us to be like!

I have heard evangelists say
this sometimes-wrongly.

They say, "Instead of being just
with you, God was merciful."

But that means that God's mercy
or God's love was unjust!

So there's
a sermon by Stephen Furtick

of Elevation Church, where
he's basically saying

that in order for God
to love us, He had to

ignore His justice,
ignore His own holiness!

Let's say your child
is in a horrible accident.

and on the way to the emergency
room, every sign you see says,

"speed limit."

How much attention do
you pay to the numbers

beneath the speed limit
in that moment?

You would break that speed
limit! You would break the law

for love!

Any parent will break the law
for the sake of love!

And so he
uses this illustration

and applies it to the gospel.

And this is why the
gospel is still good news

in the world today, because God
broke the law for love!

I definitely
don't believe he recognizes the

implications behind
what he's saying.

One thing with his saying that
"God broke the law for love" is

he's calling God a sinner!

I said to every sinner!
God broke the law for love!

He's also saying that

what Jesus said is irrelevant!

Jesus said, "I came to fulfill
the law, and not one

jot or tittle will pass away."

You cannot say that God abandons
justice in favor of love.

So to say that God
broke the law for love

is absolutely absurd!

Love and
justice are inextricably linked.

We could think of a judge-

he says he's a
loving judge and yet

he's presented with a criminal
who's destroyed property and

killed people, and
abused others.

We would say that a judge who
allowed that criminal to walk

because of his "love,"

was actually being
profoundly unloving

to that criminal's victims.

To fail to punish evil,
is an unloving act.

If you're unjust,
you're also unloving.

Those two things are
inextricably linked.

Well, I agree.
In a human society

that's probably right.

But God transcends all
those categories!

Now God may choose to say,

"I'm going to always pair my
love with justice.

Always! These two things-

I'm not going to let
them be separated!"

But if God decided to-

Surely it's within God's power
to say, "It's just love!

We don't need justice anymore!

I'm going to wipe
the slate clean-

I'm going to forgive the sin!
Nobody has to die!"

That is surely within
God's power!

How is God supposed to
love the world,

and then simply shrug His
shoulders at some of the

horrors and injustice that
go on in this world?

How could a God of love not also
be a God of justice?

I'm saying, God,
if God chose to,

could have love without justice.
If God chose to.

The God that would
never judge anyone,

is not too loving-
He's not loving enough!

That's a sappy,
sentimental deity!

That is not the
God of the Bible!

Well the first thing I'd say
I saw in the movement

of the Emergent Church when I
was in college was

not just a misunderstanding of
doctrine or the misunderstanding

of the attributes of God-is was
a run from it all together!

To try and actually say,
"This is who God is,

and this is what He's like,"
was just out of bounds for them!

God gets to do
whatever God wants!

That's one of my fundamental
commitments to being a theist.

So one of the things that means
is that God can be arbitrary!

Then we're left with just the-
We don't really know who God is

because we can't
actually define Him.

And we can't turn to scripture
and say, "Okay-

this is what scripture says
about who God is!"

I would never use the sentence,

"God cannot do..."
(fill in the blank)

"God cannot be..."
(fill in the blank)

This means we
can't describe God's attributes

in any way!

So not only can't we make
negative statements,

like, "God cannot lie."
"God cannot sin."

"God cannot be unrighteous."

But we also wouldn't be able to
make positive statements either-

so these are the opposites-

"God is truth." "God is holy."
"God is righteous."

On like
theological principle,

I refuse to talk about
God in those ways.

Because I think that is me
humanizing God,

anthropomorphizing God.

If we start to determine that
God is predictable-

that God is always like this,
or God always does that,

or God cannot do this.

God becomes a robot that
we have programmed!

If God were to change, or if God
were able to change,

why should we trust Him?
Why should we believe the Bible?

Once you start to redefine God
like that you have a different one.

We're no longer talking
about the same God!

How are you
going to stand before a holy,

righteous, and just judge?

Every one of us has broken
His laws!

And the reality is,
because He's just,

the debt must
be paid for our sins!

They believe in a place
called "hell"

which is not scriptural!

We constantly have people
coming up to us to say,

"You know what? We love to see
that you're out here,

but we think you're doing
it all wrong!

You need to be just be
preaching love to everybody!"

We hell is a lie!
A place that doesn't exist.

That's the difference between
what I preach and believe,

and what they preach.

There is a
popular movement underfoot

to diminish the gravity of hell.

You know, the idea that
God is wrathful against sin

and that He literally, really
punishes evil doers.

One megachurch pastor has
ignited a theological firestorm

by suggesting that our response
to the Christian message

in this life,

will not necessarily determine
our eternal destiny.

At the time, Rob Bell,

who was a megachurch pastor
at a church in Michigan,

had come out with a
book called "Love Wins."

And it was posing the question:

"What if our accepted
views on hell-

what if there are alternate
was of looking at-

at what hell might be like,

or what the afterlife
even might look like?"

So when the book came out,

I think he had posted
a video, a preview...

Will only a few
select people make it to heaven?

And will billions and billions
of people burn forever in hell?

Yeah, before
I was a Christian, I would have

considered myself spiritual,
but not religious.

I really saw God as two
different people in the Bible.

And it was sort of like, "Old
Testament God is the angry God,

and New Testament God
is the nice God!"

And there were a lot of things
in the Bible that I just felt

were wrong.

As I read my Bible I

struggled with the
doctrine of hell.

That God, who is loving,
could send sinners to hell

to suffer for eternity!

I wanted this God who

would never send
someone to hell!

I wouldn't do it!
So why would He?

Had friends who were
of other faiths,

and knew really good
people who died,

and my theology said that if
you died without accepting

Jesus Christ as your personal
Lord and Savior,

you would burn in hell forever!
Like eternally!

And millions
of people were taught

that the primary message, the
center of the gospel of Jesus,

is that God is going
to send you to hell

unless you believe in Jesus.

And I was like...

"No!"

I couldn't stomach that!

You're amending the gospel,
the Christian message,

so that it's palatable to
contemporary people,

who find, for example, the idea
of hell and heaven

very difficult to stomach!

So here comes Rob Bell! He's
made a Christian gospel for you!

And it's perfectly palatable,
it's much easier to swallow!

That's what you've done-
haven't you?

I was really
into this sort of mysticism.

So then if there were people who
maybe were offering a softer God

-a God that said, "You know,

it's not just one way!
It's not just Jesus!"

One of the mistakes that human
beings make is believing that

there is only one way.

"Because all those roads
are going to lead to heaven."

That's what I thought!

This creates a basis
for what I'd call

a "natural religion,"
and a "universal religion."

Richard Rohr

is a Franciscan priest who has

a "Center for Action
and Contemplation"

in Albuquerque.

He's one
of the most influential

spiritual teachers of our
time...

Richard Rohr is
profoundly influential

among millennials and in the
progressive Christian church.

In fact in an article
that came out recently,

he said that one of his
publishers told him that

his biggest demographic
is younger Christians.

And these aren't
necessarily Catholics,

but these are post-evangelicals-
kids that grew up

in the evangelical church.

He's influenced some major
people such as Rob Bell.

"I can't begin to
tell you what it's like

to be here. I have been a
Richard Rohr fan for so long."

He's had a big influence on
progressive Christianity

with his ideas of universalism.

His latest book is
"The Universal Christ."

And then like, you know,
I became a universalist-

that everybody got saved whether
or not they accepted

Jesus Christ as their
"personal Lord and savior."

You see that's no
competitive religion!

No!

That's an inclusive-
all inclusive religion!

That's not the Jesus
most people know!

Certainly, it's true

that there have been people
in the history of the church

who have taught universalism-
that is the doctrine that

all people, finally,
will be saved.

That nobody will ultimately end
up in eternal condemnation.

That's why what
you call "universalism"

was much more of a common
Christian opinion in the first

three or four centuries.
You know?

And then it became
marginalized...

But it is certainly not the case
that it's the dominant view

in any epoch of the church
until...

right now!
Until the modern period.

It is an
unavoidable conclusion

from reading scripture

that Jesus Christ is the
only way that one can be saved-

that one can be
made right with God.

And that's why that's been
the consistent teaching

of the church for
over 2000 years.

John 3:18 says,

"Whoever believes in him
is not condemned,

but whoever does not believe is
condemned already, because he

has not believed in the name
of the only Son of God."

You wrote,
"Muslims do not simply have a

deficient theology,

they do not know God because
they have rejected Jesus Christ

His Son, and they stand
condemned."

And it's that state of
condemnation-being

under the wrath of God-

that the unbelieving world
hates to hear about.

Do you
believe that that statement

is Islamophobic?

Absolutely not, Senator!

I'm a Christian...

Well Christianity is
simultaneously

inclusive and exclusive.
I mean it's

inclusive in the sense
that we see here

in the throne room in heaven,
people from every tribe,

and language, and tongue,

coming to Christ,
embracing Christ!

And we see it's inclusive in
the sense that it doesn't

require works. I am simply
saved by faith in Christ!

It's not about performing, it's
not just 'good people, '

it's just anyone who
receives Jesus Christ!

But it's exclusive in that
it's just Jesus.

It's just Jesus!
But that's Christianity!

The modern sort of secular view
of religious pluralism, that-

that is the ultimate blasphemy!
That you can't say that,

because there are other people
that believe differently.

Do you believe
that people in the Muslim

religion stand condemned?
Is that your view?

Again Senator,
I'm a Christian...

We see a
perfect example of this actually

in Bernie Sanders-was
interviewing a nominee

for a political office,

and essentially put him through
a religious test for that office.

Do you
think that's respectful

of other religions?

Senator,
I wrote a post

based on being a Christian and
attending a Christian school,

that has a statement of faith,

that speaks clearly with regard

to the centrality of
Jesus Christ in salvation.

And Bernie said that because
there are Muslims who

don't believe this,

and based on Christian teaching
are "condemned" by God-

under the wrath of God
without Christ-

he equated that
with this nominee

believing something
inherently immoral!

I would
simply say, Mr. Chairman that

this nominee...
is really not someone

who is what this country
is supposed to be about.

I will vote no!

As if this
traditional Christian belief

was so wrong,
that it would be-

he'd be unable to
fulfill the duties

required of him in office.

And that's not something I'd
thought I'd see in my lifetime!

As far the
exclusivity of Christianity-

I have no idea because

I have seen so much beauty and
truth in so many other places.

You know, if people want
to call me "liberal," I-

I guess that's okay.

It's only from
their perspective.

If they really knew
the perennial tradition...

Richard Rohr
also says he's a perennialist.

And perennialism is the belief
that there is one divine reality

that unites all religions.

Externally, they appear
different and they-

they're practiced differently,

and they may have different
doctrines, but those are all

only externally factors.

There's actually a core, divine
truth that unites all of them.

One word for it
is "Christ."

One word for it,
is "Christ."

This of
course erases the distinction

of Christianity from any
other religion and

makes it just one of many.

And there are
such stark differences

between what certain religions
teach about some very big things!

And the
cross is what overshadows

all the other religions, and
as scripture says that

is the stumbling block for many!

If we're worried
about being right,

then no, they
can't all be right!

But I'm not sure that that's
necessarily the question

that we're supposed
to be asking.

That's not an important
question to me anyway right now.

I know that this is where I am-

I find myself in
the Christian tradition.

I'm into Jesus!

And I think Christ is
even bigger than Jesus!

Well how could anything be
bigger than Jesus?

(At least for a Christian)

Well there is,
and that's Christ!

Richard Rohr
makes a distinction

between the historical Jesus,

and what He calls the "Cosmic"
or "Universal Christ."

And you say,
there are two different

realities-
Jesus as the historical figure,

Christ as the cosmic figure-
which we've been

talking about it...

He divides Jesus and Christ
because he thinks

"Christ is bigger than Jesus."

I know people
may start to tense up

when they hear someone trying
to redefine Jesus for them.

You know?

One of
Richard Rohr's favorite things

to say is,

"Christ is not
Jesus' last name."

"Christ" is not
Jesus' last name! Alright?

Jesus became the Christ!

Christ is
not Jesus' last name.

And that's
a surprise to most Christians!

I think that's a strawman
because really

I don't know any
Christian who thinks

Christ is Jesus' last name!

I think most Christians who
know anything about the Bible

know that Christ is the Greek,
for the Jewish word "Messiah,"

which means "the anointed one."

So of course Jesus is "Christ"
because Jesus is the Messiah.

But what Richard Rohr
says is that the

first incarnation of Christ

is creation.

The big bang is the
birth of the "Christ"

14.5 billion years ago.

I have a
background in the New Age.

I was in there very many years.
I was involved in

Eastern belief systems-

first Hinduism, and then
Tibetan Buddhism for a while.

I was very interested
in astrology,

and eventually became
a professional astrologer.

Until I encountered
the true Christ,

and became a Christian
at that point.

I have been very alarmed to see
that in progressive Christianity

there are influences
from the New Age.

"Panentheism" is one of them,
which is one of

Richard Rohr's key teachings.

We're not "pantheists."

Authentic Christianity is
"panentheism!"

Theism,

and what I would call
"Christian Theism,"

is God as creator

who created the universe
out of nothing,

and is distinct
from His creation.

He's omnipresent,

because God can't be
contained in any one location.

But He remains distinct
from His creation.

Whereas pantheism is like the
opposite of that.

Pantheism is God and creation
are one and the same.

So the leaves are God,
the rocks are God,

and it just becomes
identical with creation.

"Panentheism"

is God is in creation,
and creation is in God,

but God also
transcends creation.

There's one God,

- who created all things!
- Yes.

Then everything
has to carry the divine DNA!

And so in Rohr's view,
you look at someone else

and you see Christ.

That makes every single one of
us have this inherent divinity-

this shared god-like nature.

So what Rohr is saying is that
"Christ" is another name

for every thing.

Don't think
of it first of all

as a religious concept.

think of it as a descriptor
for everything-

everything at least
that we can see.

Rob Bell has a
very similar view.

Rob Bell says
"everything is spiritual".

Welcome to
Everything is Spiritual!

He even did a seminar,
or a series of workshops with

Deepok Chopra,

who's probably one
of the foremost,

and richest New Agers around!

Advertising their course
as learning

how you're an expression
of the divine

Whereas,
the Bible teaches that we are

hopelessly lost
until Christ saves us.

Not containing this part of God
already inside of us-

this divine nature.

I think of Genesis 3:5 when
the serpent says to Eve,

"you shall be like God..."

and so when that bleeds over
into the gospel

it doesn't just
distort the gospel,

it obliterates the gospel!

Because of
Rohr's view on Panentheism,

and that creation is the first
incarnation of Christ,

everybody and every thing,
is in Christ.

He is the flesh
and blood embodiment

of something far larger
and more... cosmic.

And Rob Bell has talked
about Christ as being "cosmic",

and being a-
an energy, a divine energy

in the universe that
people stumble over.

People may be stumbling upon
this mystery hidden in every

inch of creation all the time,
and not knowing,

or having a name for it.

His influence is just profound,
recently Jen Hatmaker had

Richard Rohr on her podcast,
and she

referred to him as
"a spiritual father".

I along with just
thousands and thousnads of

my listeners,

um, have learned from you
for so many years.

We consider you a
spiritual father.

He's also
influenced I know-Brian McLaren.

And he's influenced
the Nazarene Church-

he was a speaker at the
2017 Young Clergy Conference

of the Nazarene Church.

He's been a
guest on the Liturgists podcast,

on The Deconstructionists
Podcast and has influenced them.

For us to say that Christ
doesn't continue to work,

or manifest in ways-

outside of our
Christian community,

is not a position or an
assumption I'm ready to make.

So there's no need for anybody

to have any kind
of faith in Jesus,

because we're already
"in Christ".

When people say like, Jesus is
the way, the truth and the life,

or Jesus is the-you know-
enter through the narrow gate,

they are assuming

their own interpretation

of what those statements
are actually referring to.

It says,
"Jesus said to him"

(to Thomas)

'I am the way, the truth,
and the life;

no one comes to the Father
but through Me.'"

Now this would be problematic
for Richard Rohr,

normally, except that he says,

that Jesus is talking as the
"Universal Christ" here.

And the reason we have so
misused,

and misnterpreted John's gospel,

is this is the eternal,
archetypal Christ talking.

He can say, "I am the way, and
the truth, and the life..."

But He's not
talking about Jesus-

he's talking about this mystery,
this amalgam

of matter and spirit, which
is the way for everybody!

His view of Jesus as "Savior"
is non-existent.

Jesus is not a savior, because
we don't need salvation.

We don't need to be reconciled.

Another word
that-interstingly this gets

redefined not just in
progressive Christianity

but also in the New Age
movement, and that's the word

"atonement".

Richard Rohr has said
"atonement" is really,

"at-one-ment"

and that it really means that
we're "at one" with God.

We called it
"at-one-ment"

instead of atonement-

there was no "bill to be paid"

there was simply
"a union to be named".

An "at-one-ment" if you
want to play with that word.

Again, Richard Rohr, other
progressives and New Agers,

and even some conservative
theologians will use

the English etymology of
the word atonement,

which is "at-one-ment",
so that's where we get the

English word, "atonement".

And they will build their
theology of atonement based on

the English word.

Whereas the Hebrew word,
which is "kaphar",

really means "to cover"
or "to propitiate".

And so, the English word has
more of a connotation of unity

and reconciliation-
and certainly that idea of

reconciliation is present in the
biblical idea of atonement.

But "to cover" and
"to propitiate",

it has to do with the penal
substitution of Jesus-

Him taking the wrath of God
upon Himself.

And making that atonement for
those who would put their

trust in Him.

So our atonement theory-

the Franciscan minority position

is basically saying,
'no atonement is necessary'.

I'm way more prone

to believe in a God that
redeems everyone,

and a God that actually wins
in the end,

not be destroying His enemies,
but by redeeming them,

and by fixing them,
and by healing them.

I don't know how God's
going to work that out,

and I do know there's-

there's a lot of evidence
to the contrary!

But I've got to believe that
what it means to God

is to be victorious and win!

I think that we can all agree,
God wins!

But trying to say that God
"winning" means

everyone will be saved
in the end, because

judgement is somehow
God "losing",

it just completely is
refuted by scripture;

constantly when God judges in
the scripture, this is seen as

God's victory over the
people He's judging.

And so in Christ we see one of
two victories is going to happen-

the victory of me
sharing in His victory,

and I get saved,
and I get redeemed,

or I rebell against it,
and the victory God has finally

over us all in the end
with judgement.

If God is victorious, then
God is victorious!

God doesn't lose!

That's what it means to be God!

So God's not
losing when He judges-

that's part of His winning.

The greatest
proponent, probably,

in the ancient church of
universal salvation is Origen.

And he was deeply influenced
by Middle Platonism, and

came to articulate

a doctrine-as far as we can
tell-of universal salvation.

And Origen was, or course,
condemned in the 6th century,

universalism was condemned
in the church.

Scripture does not give us
an escape hatch

that would allow us
to believe that-

anyone who is a universalist
is not a Bible believer!

Scripture is just too clear
on that subject-

there will be people
who perish.

There will be many people,
Jesus said, who perish.

That was a big moment for me-
I was like,

"Oh! So like Bart, you won't
worship any god-

like you have standards
for your god.

And actually, my friends who
don't believe in God,

when we talk about the God
that they don't believe in,

I don't believe in
that God either!

And when Russell wanted
to go to church-

that's what made me angry!

I didn't want to let go of
all that I've created!

You know, this sort of
Zen-Buddah-Jesus-

I don't know what religion!

Like I really don't understand

when people like pay all the
price to believe in stuff

that they know, like it's a
total leap of faith-

like they're just struggling-
like, "Ah! I'm gonna do it!"

And then they leap to a God,

who doesn't even
save Mahatma Gandhi!

Gandhi's in hell?
He is?

And someone knows this
for sure,

and felt the needs to let the
rest of us know?

Like, why would you want
to worship a god,

if you could imagine
a better god?

That's what I don't understand
like-if you could imagine a god

that's better than the one that
you worship-trade up!

It was really just about me
taking God

and making Him like myself.

And I had no idea
what holiness meant.

It comes back to idolatry.
Idolatry was the sin of Israel.

If you read The Old Testament,
they continually went

back to idolatry! You say,
what a dumb nation!

We're exactly the same!

We don't bow to a
God made with our hands,

we bow to a God made
with our mind.

You know, I hang around
with a lot of Christian people

and they're like, Who are you
to tell God who to be?

And I'm like, I'm not
telling God who to be!

I'm just telling you who I'll
worship and who I won't!

"You don't want to burn, do ya?"

Which like if that's the
best message you have,

that's just a crap message!

If Hell didn't exist, neither
with this ministry. Seriously.

I would be surfing.
I would have long hair.

Probably moved up to
somewhere in Australia,

dangling my feet as shark bait,
just living for myself-

but I can't!

If we love God,
we would obey Him!

If we love people,
we would warn them!

How much do you
have to hate somebody

to not prosthelytize?

How much do you have to hate
somebody to to believe that

everlasting life is possible,
and not tell them that?

Scripture doesn't leave us
any room whatsoever

to be universalists
or annihilationists.

And if you're bad,
what happens if there's no hell?

Do just get annihilated?
Is that-

- Pretty much.
- Yeah.

And that's what
the Baptists have against the

- Seventh-day Adventists.
- Yeah.

Jesus told that story about

the rich man and Lazarus.

So here's a man
who died in unbelief

and in the afterlife,
he is being punished.

He's conscious.
He can talk.

He wants to send someone
back to warn his brothers

not to come to this place!

That's how Jesus pictured the
afterlife! And you can't

believe what Jesus said and then
turn around and say, "Yeah, but

I believe that the wicked
dead will perish.

If they're bad,
they just getting annihilated,

so they don't ever
have to suffer again.

- Right!
- Yeah.

It is emotionally,

existentially difficult

to wrap your head and heart
around the idea of

eternal conscious punishment.

If there's any
other way to get around

a fiery, eternal pit...

why would we not be
open to that idea?

It's not something I don't
think I would wish

on my worst enemy!

It's really hard to think about!
I don't know any Christian

who loves the idea of the people
we know and love in this life

who don't put their
trust in Jesus

experiencing some kind of
eternal conscious torment.

I don't think anybody
thinks that's great!

You know, if I were God,
I would-

I don't know if I'd do it
that way! But I'm not God!

God's wisdom is
so much higher than ours!

His justice is perfect!
Our justice is radically broken!

So, we have the
Pope saying atheists

can go to heaven, and this
mullah saying

you can go to hell
for using Twitter!

We really need someone to clear
this up! And fortunately

we were able to contact someone
who is an authority on this

sort of thing, and he made
this tape for us...

So, one time, I saw
this video on Jimmy Kimmel,

where a guy
was dressed up as Satan,

and started to talk about
what hell was like

and why people would go to hell.

Additionally,
you will not suffer

the bitter flames of eternal
damnation for stuff like

swearing,
telling little white lies,

havin inappropriate fantasies,
homosexuality,

or consensual sex of any kind
between adults!

And he's probably
expressing a lot of the same

views that most
Americans would express.

Do you honestly
think God is gonna hand out

the same punishment for mass
murder than he does for sexting?

He's saying basically that

the only way you're going to go
to hell is if you kill someone.

If you meet me in the afterlife,

and you're confused as to why,

it's because of
the guy you killed...

The thing that
he's doing in that show

is he's actually taking
the place of God.

This is why people go to hell.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Based on what?

Based on his own judgment,
right?

Based on what he thinks is bad.

But our problem is that we
don't understand that God

is morally perfect.

And He not only warns He's
going to punish murderers,

and torturers, and rapists...

but also thieves and liars
and fornicators and blasphemers!

Lying is so serious, scripture
says all liars

will have their part in
the lake of fire!

Twenty times
in the New Testament alone,

the New Testament says that
hell is identified by "fire".

Jesus
describes Hell as a

furnace of fire,
weeping and gnashing of teeth,

as unquenchable fire,

eternal fire prepared for the
devil and his angels,

where the worm does not die,
and the fire is not quenched.

Wow. Do I
think me, personally, in my sin,

deserve eternal
conscious torment?

Um, I would like to say no!

Nope!

I don't think that the crime

and the punishment are...

balanced.

You know, I see God
as a very loving individual.

And why would He torment
somebody forever,

who only had a life of sixty,
or seventy, or eighty years?

Sinners punished in hell
continue to sin!

It's not as if, you know,
sinners in hell

have then come to their senses!

and have turned in saying,
Oh God, please, now

would you forgive me?
and, I love Christ

and I worship Him.
No. No,

the description and the way the
Bible understands it is

that there's a continuing
sense of rebellion,

and thumbing your nose
against God, and a further

hardening of their heart!

We're not understanding that
our greatest problem

that needs to be addressed

isn't just a sin problem of
the things that we have done,

but it's rather the person whom
we have done those sins against!

The thing is that God
is just a lot holier

than many of us think.

And if God really is holier,
then that means sin is worse

than many of us actually think.

I think the way that the Bible
tries to explain that is,

any sin against an infinite God
carries infinite consequences.

If I pick up a rock,
and I scratch a rock,

I'm guilty of scratching the
rock, but I'm not going to face

any consequences.

If I go to a dump site,
and I see a trashed car there,

and I take my key out and
I scratch the car,

people are going to say,
Hey, what are you doing?

If I go to a used car lot,
and I scratch a car,

Now... now I'm a
criminal offender. Right?

But if I go on a Ferrari lot...

I take the same key out
and I scratch the car, right?

My punishment just got
way bigger! Right?

It's intensified. Why?

Because of the value of
the thing I sinned against,

the thing I scratched. Right?

So, if God is
infinitely valuable,

if He is infinitely beautiful,
and infinitely set apart,

He's holy. Right?

One little scratch,
one little white lie...

It's like high treason against
the king of all the universe!

God's justice demands
the death of the sinner!

A jealous and
avenging God is the Lord;

The Lord is avenging
and wrathful.

The Lord takes vengeance
on His adversaries,

And He reserves
wrath for His enemies.

So, His holiness demands
that sin be dealt with.

Another way to say it is this:

every sin ever committed by
every person who has ever lived,

will be punished.

That is required by
divine holiness

and divine righteousness
and divine justice.

The idea of justice,
like "punish the wicked!"

No, I don't want
to punish anybody.

I want to redeem everybody.

It will either be
punished everlastingly

in the life of the sinner-

the impenitent
unbelieving sinner-

or that punishment will be
borne by Christ.

John MacArthur might
be right about Him!

That's not a god worthy
of my worship!

I'm just not interested.

But first of all,
you need to understand something-

God's wrath is not like ours.

Our wrath is primarily
self-centered.

It's... it's coercive.
It's unrighteous.

But God's wrath is pure!

and it is the result of His
love for that which is right!

God's love.
How does God even define love?

Well, it says in Romans 12 that
"Love must be sincere.

Hate what is evil."

If you love that
which is right,

you will hate evil!

If you love life,
you will hate death!

If you love African Americans,
you will hate slavery!

If you love children,
you will hate abortion!

If you love Jews,
you will hate the Holocaust!

Why is it that we reserve the
right, as fallible human beings,

to burn with indignation
when we see an injustice?

And yet we say if
God does the same thing,

that's somehow
morally beneath Him!

His love is fierce!

and in the same degree,
His wrath is fierce

against evil!

In my own life
trying to understand this,

I was really encouraged by
Revelation 19.

Revelation 19 gives
us a glimpse of our future.

And there we are
in the presence of God

and seeing Him judge,
they're crying out Hallelujah!

to God's judgment, specifically
praising Him for judging!

What this means is that from
this future perspective-

now being in the very presence
of God now, seeing the

justice of God, not just
hearing about it,

seeing it for themselves,
they say, "This is good!"

This judgment you're
bringing is something I

can actually appreciate now!

Now, perhaps now, in your life,
you're not in a place where you

can appreciate God's judgment,
but you can choose to trust Him!

But we do have in scripture,
reason to think that we're

going to be at
a place in the future

where we see it clearly for
ourselves, and we go, Oh...

I see how right and good
Your judgment was all along.

To get a better
idea of Richard Rohr's

view of God,
we have to understand

his critique of something
he calls "dualistic thinking".

You have to
practice rewiring this.

The normal way you and I are
wired is dualistically.

It's a way of
thinking about things as

"either-or". So either
something is one way,

or it's another.

The dualistic mind is
making these distinctions

between good and evil:
who's in, who's out,

who's a Christian,
who's not a Christian.

For me or against me,

a part of our religion or not.

Everything was
"either-or" thinking.

And he
thinks we need to cultivate

a non-dual mind.

When you get
to this level of maturity

and enlightenment, then we
learn to think in terms of

"both-and".

Once you're
fighting, you're dualistic!

Trust me on that, alright?

You've got to choose sides.

You've got to
prove your opinion!

But he's
being dualistic, of course,

because he's saying that it's
better to be non-dual

than dualistic. But that's
a dualistic statement!

Because you're making a
distinction. As long as you're

making distinctions,
you're being dualistic.

When you get
to the contemplative

level of life,

you don't think dualistically:
either-or.

You almost naturally
learn to think both-and.

Richard Rohr
teaches that we need

contemplative practices, like

what is called
"contemplative prayer".

So the goal of... of life
is the contemplative mind.

The contemplative practices,

which often involve certain
methods where you

go into the silence,
or where you

try to experience God
rather than think about God.

He thinks that these methods
will help you have a

new consciousness
and understanding.

So this is why
religions at the higher levels

try to get us disconnected
from this control tower.

Kind of
like in The Matrix when you

take a certain pill,
and you wake up.

It's like
taking the red pill.

And, everything you've believed
about reality before that point

is false, but then you'll be
open to this new paradigm.

Welcome to the real world.

Now, this
method of contemplation,

which he may even
call meditation,

is very different from what the
Bible means about meditation.

In the case of biblical
meditation,

you're actively using your mind.

You're not setting your
thinking mind aside,

and you're not trying to
have a mystical experience.

That's what begins to teach you
non-dual thinking...

In a video
clip, he says at this one point,

It's where you let
the whole moment

come towards you as it is.

Where you let the whole moment
come towards you as it is,

without dividing
the uncomfortable part,

or separating from
the mysterious part.

This is
really ironic, because

when it comes to Rohr's
understanding of

Christian doctrine, when it
comes to his understanding

of the attributes of God
and the atonement,

it really seems like that's
exactly what he's doing!

He's... he's dividing the
uncomfortable parts

and separating from
the mysterious parts. So...

a dualistic way of looking at
the nature of God would be

to say God is either
righteous and wrathful,

or He's gracious
and loving.

So, he actually is dualistic,

Because he's rejecting
one attribute of God

and accepting the other
attribute, when the truth is...

really, it's both!

Of course,
the non-dualistic way would be

that He displays both
His grace and His wrath

on the cross together!

The moment
that we choose a side

is the moment that we end up
in some theological error.

We don't want to live in
those paradoxes,

that an incomprehensible being
can be both-and.

I mean, we don't like
tension in the modern world.

We like it to be this or this.
We like it to be either-or.

We grew up with multiple choice-
fill in one bubble!

It's not A and B!

If you're going to
preach a biblical

definition of mercy,

then you must, at some point,
point to the wrath of God,

for what are you receiving
mercy from and for?

I don't love the idea
of God's wrath.

I don't think it's central to
the way the Bible portrays God,

particularly not in
the New Testament.

Clearly, Israel had an
experience with God's wrath.

So, it's also not something that
I would find ways to, you know,

interpret my way
out of or around.

It's part of Israel's
experience,

so we need to take it seriously.

But it also leads me to believe
that God changes.

He's denying God's immutability!

part of what makes God, God,
is that he doesn't change.

God is not
presented in the scriptures

as schizophrenic,
a Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde.

You've got as much grace in the
Old Testament as you do

in the New Testament!

He passed over the sins of
Moses and Abraham and David.

He did not hold them to the
degree that the law required.

That's grace!

"Noah found grace
in the eyes of the Lord."

Jesus talked more about hell
than people, I think, want to

give Him credit for.

I think people forget things
like Acts Chapter 5,

Ananias and Sapphira,
in the New Testament.

They were immediately judged!

It was, to me, a sense of like,
there's the Old Testament

God of wrath and judgment right
there in the early church,

the start of the church.
Ananias and Sapphira are

struck down dead
immediately for their sin!

And so,
what we see is we see that

that there's two ruts
that we want to avoid.

We certainly don't want
to fall into the rut

on one side of
the road that says,

It's all the wrath of God.
We see that in, in certain,

you know,
unbalanced ministries as well.

We also see the other rut
is that we...

All we want to do is talk about
the grace of God,

and the love of God,
and the mercy of God,

but we don't want to
talk about the wrath of God.

So, we need to be balanced.

we have to affirm that
both the Old Testament,

the New Testament,
is both and altogether

God's breathed out word,
fully authoritative.

Think of 2 Timothy 3,
Paul's referring to Scripture:

All Scripture is God breathed.

He's primarily referring
to the Old Testament!

Once you start picking
any one part of the Bible,

and saying like,
I think it's wrong,

you go like, Wait a second!
This is just a human book!

When the
reliability of the Bible

was being questioned and
brought under great scrutiny

in this class that I was in,

I kind of didn't know where to
look, and so I thought you know,

"I'm a follower of Jesus.

So, Jesus is the one who
claimed to be God,

was resurrected from the dead-

He gets to make the rules

about what I believe
about everything.

And so when I was
in college, I studied

the writings of Karl Barth, and
I was like, Oh my gosh! like,

"I think this is just
a human document."

Like, there are all sorts
of inconsistencies...

I mean, when people talk to me
about inerrancy...

Is the Bible inerrant?

When someone uses, like,
"without error", or "inerrant",

or "infallible" to
describe the Bible,

they're essentially saying they
wish they had a different

kind of book!

For example, Rob Bell

has said that it degrades the
Bible to put it in the category

of inerrant, or the word of God.

It actually degrades
and devalues the Bible,

because it places categories
on the Bible that

that nobody in the Bible would
ever have thought to even

place on the Bible.

But to say
that the Bible is "inerrant"

when it doesn't even refer
to itself as "inerrant"

is really, really problematic!
To say that it's authoritative,

I would say,
"What do you mean by that?"

Just looking
at what Jesus believed

about the Old Testament
is stunning!

It's very clear that Jesus
affirmed over and over

and over again,

that the Old Testament
was the word of God.

Jesus is
the word of God incarnate,

and yet he submitted
to the scriptures.

Three times
the devil comes and tempts Him,

And Jesus says each time, It is
written." "It is written."

"It is written. The devil even
quotes scripture back to Him!

So, in Matthew 15:4

He referenced several
commands from Exodus,

and Leviticus, and Deuteronomy,

and how he described them was
he said, For God said,

and then he quotes
the Old Testament passage.

He told the Pharisees that
they void the word of God

by adding their own
traditions to it.

So, He's referring to scripture
as the word of God there.

And so, when he
says in his high priestly prayer

in John 17:17, "Sanctify them
in truth; Your word is truth,"

it meant that it's revelation!

And, it's reliable revelation
because it comes from God.

Scripture has come to us
over time.

That's what we mean by
"progressive", over time.

But it's not as if the earlier
revelation is regressive,

or inferior, and somehow
the New Testament is

better in the sense that it's

correcting the
mistakes of the old.

But progressive Christianity

as a movement looks at
the earliest Christians.

They look at Paul and Peter.

The first disciples, the first
century church,

the second century church,

and they view that as: that's
Christianity in its infancy.

Essentially,
you read the Bible as an

evolving narrative.

So,
the knowledge they had

of God at that time

wasn't quite as evolved as the
knowledge that we have now.

Instead of,
Well, God did this.

We don't know! All we have
is human accounts of what-

how people understood it

in their evolving understandings
of how the world works.

All throughout history,

human beings are growing,
and maturing, and evolving

into what Brian McLaren
would call,

A higher and wiser
view of God.

So, the
Bible becomes sort of like

an interesting book to see
what people thought of God

at the time,

but it's not actually
God breathed words.

In the evolution
of human consciousness,

we were infantile,

and we pulled God down
to our level, you know?

A fighting God, an angry God,

- a jealous God...
- Yeah.

So Oprah,
apparently, according to her,

was first alienated
from Christianity

hearing a sermon about God
as a jealous God.

I think I shared
this with you before.

I was sitting in
a church service,

listening to a really fine
minister talk about

God being angry and jealous,

and in the same breath saying
omnipotent,

all-caring, all-loving!

For you shall
not worship any other god,

for the Lord, whose name is
Jealous, is a jealous God.

And I was, you know,

caught up in the rapture of that
moment until he said "jealous."

And she took
the word jealous in the

wrong way, not understanding
what that means,

that God is zealous for who He
is, and won't share His glory.

She took it as meaning
jealous of her.

And God's also jealous?

Jealous... God is
jealous of me?

Jealous God? Like, but God is
love! How is that possible? Um,

I don't think I have so much
of a problem with Oprah

maybe recoiling in that moment.

Something about that didn't...

didn't feel right in my spirit.

But what I have a problem with
is that instead of testing

the spirits, instead of going
through the scriptures

to understand for herself,

she just totally tossed out
any concept of what

the pastor was saying

and decided to just
go with her feelings.

That's
when the... the search

for something more
than doctrine,

uh, started to stir within me.

I would love
to talk to that person,

because that person is very
intelligent, very hard-working,

they've... they've
created an empire!

Now, this is what
I would say to them:

If I walked into your central
offices where you have

your main office as founder
and president of your empire,

and I walked right in and said,
"I'm taking over!"

and I started commanding people
to do certain things,

I started taking money,

I started spending
it a certain way.

Although I have nothing to do
with what you built,

you would probably walk out of
your office with disdain,

and rightfully so, and say to
me, "Who do you think you are?"

"This is not yours!" And I say,
"Well whose is it?"

"Well it's mine, I made it!"

And you would... you would be
rightfully jealous

for the thing that you had
created, that you had made.

Would you reserve the right for
you to feel that way,

for you to burn with a
righteous jealousy

over the things
that you created?

And yet you say that
God has no right

to be jealous over the things
that He has made.

He has every right!
This is His world!

But His jealousy goes beyond
ours in that ours is oftentimes

selfish and self-centered.

His jealousy also
benefits His creatures,

because He knows
that for us to live

for anything other than Him

will just lead to us
being ruined.

And so, His jealousy
actually is motivated

not only by His glory,
but by His love!

All of that Old Testament
is God-given.

And you can't just
simply say, "Well...

we're in the New Testament era
now. We're going to

dismiss the Old Testament!"

That is a wrong view of
Scripture,

that's a wrong view of
divine revelation,

and it will never lead us
to a proper understanding

of the cross.

In the New
Testament, I see the greatest

display of wrath ever, ever
displayed before mankind,

far greater than
Sodom and Gomorrah,

far greater than
the flood of Noah!

It was when God poured out His
holy wrath on His son

there on that rugged cross
for all of us who would believe.

Any idea of like a
divine being who kills his son-

I just reject wholeheartedly.

I think it's important that
when we read the Bible,

we realize that we're
gonna read things

that offend our sensibilities!

That's a sick God
and a sick story!

And so that's why we
need to let the Bible,

we need to let the word of God,
correct our sensibilities,

when they're wrong!

One of the worst things about
the American gospel today

is that people are made to
believe that God

loves the sinner,
but he hates the sin.

So that, somehow,
sin is divorced from the sinner.

I just have
some verses that seriously

say the opposite!

that not only does God hate sin,

but He also hates the sinner,
in his sin!

For You are
not a God who takes pleasure

in wickedness;
No evil dwells with you.

The boastful shall not
stand before your eyes;

You hate all who do iniquity.

The next verse,
The Lord abhors

the man of bloodshed. Not just
that he abhors bloodshed,

He abhors the man of bloodshed!

Jacob I loved,
but Esau I hated."

I mean there is a hatred of God
toward the sinner!

After all, it is not simply
the sin that goes to hell,

but the sinner!

So there is
this love-hate relationship

that God has with the sinner.

I just think that
comes from a lack of

biblical literacy,
that we have now. Right?

I mean, people don't
open up their Bibles

and if you don't open up your
Bible you're going to believe

what Tom & Jerry says.

And Tom & Jerry says
that Satan is the one

that is going to torment you.

And it is not
the devil who is inflicting

the wrath in hell.

The devil is the
recipient of wrath,

he is not the
dispenser of wrath.

So, who is exercising
wrath in hell?

Let me give you
another example:

Heaven is heaven
because God is there.

Well that is most...
that is true!

But then the counter
is not true:

"Hell is hell because
God's not there."

That's not what
scripture teaches!

Hell is the wrath
of Almighty God!

God is omnipresent.

God is everywhere present.

and not only is God present
in the heights of heaven,

but God is also present
in the depths of hell.

So, Matthew 10:28 says:

Do not fear those
who kill the body

but are unable to kill the soul;

but rather fear Him
who is able to destroy

both soul and body in hell.

The reality is

if you are a unbeliever, and
if you are condemned to hell,

you're not separated from God!

You may be separated
from God's love!

And Revelation 14:10 gives

some shocking insight-

that the wrath
is being inflicted

by Jesus Christ Himself!

in the very presence
of Christ in hell.

That's a terrifying thought-

that the sinner
will never escape,

not only the wrath of Christ,
but Christ Himself!

Now some of you will walk out
of here tonight shocked!

You'll say, I've never
heard anything like that.

You'll say, He was mean-
spirited. All sorts of things,

but I can assure you
if you would only read old books

you would find out this is what
preachers have always said!

They don't say it anymore
because they want big churches!

So as my eyes were opened to my
own sin more and more,

and to the amazing holiness
and perfection of God

and the incredible divide
between myself and my creator,

I began not to see hell
as this cosmic injustice,

but I began to see it as
something that

every one of us deserved!

and how incredible
God's mercy is,

that He's chosen to offer us
a way to be saved.

But God,
being rich in mercy,

because of His great love
with which He loved us,

even when we were dead
in our transgressions,

made us alive
together with Christ

(by grace you
have been saved).

But God's love is
of such a character,

that He's even able to love

and show love
and demonstrate love

towards the
objects of His wrath.

It is though with one hand,

God is holding back
His justice against this world,

and with another hand He is
pleading for men to come!

but one day both hands
will be dropped!

You know that, don't you?

Often, I think,
there's a misunderstanding

among Atheists and even
among progressive Christians,

who would say, Well, you're
only believing the gospel

that you believe, because
you're scared of hell.

When you tell me
that I should follow Jesus,

so that I don't burn forever,
it sounds like a threat!

As if like you scare people
enough they will

all of a sudden, magically,
decide to love God and

follow Jesus.

There are many
motivations in scripture.

we can make mistakes
about biblical motivation by

going a couple of directions.
One mistake is to not say,

"There is a plurality
of motivations."

That is reward, gain, fear of
consequence, love for God-

these are all motivations
that the scriptures use.

The other mistake is not to say,

"There is a priority
of motivations."

We must be careful when we start

talking about fear

as a motivation
to serve the Lord.

The Bible clearly says
that we ought to fear the Lord.

The fear of the Lord
is the beginning of wisdom...

But there the Bible's talking
about a holy fear.

To me, one of the best places in
the Bible to discern

what biblical fear is,

that it's not simply terror,

is the prophecies of the
coming Messiah, in Isaiah.

Where we're told in the second
and third verses

that when Jesus comes,

He will come
in the fear of the Lord.

Whatever we think to be the
relationship between

the Father and the Son-
we know it is perfect love!

And fear being described there,
with a Son who

perfectly loves His Father,

cannot simply mean
"terror of harm,"

rather it has the notion of
I have full regard,

proper respect,
reverence and awe

for all that my
heavenly Father is.

It's faith working through love

because of a correct
understanding of God. Now,

Now, I do believe that in
the early stages of conviction

God often uses this
motivation of fear,

but once God moves us
from self-preservation

in that process of conviction,

and reveals who He is,
through His son,

granting faith and repentance,

through the power of
regeneration-love takes over.

and love casts out that fear.

So if their relationship of God
can be described as,

Well, I'm afraid I'm going
to die and go to hell

so I've got to accept Jesus.

That tells me they have not
come to see God as He really is.

That person is still
all about himself.

All men want to go to Heaven.
All men want to avoid hell,

but it is primarily for self-
idolatry and self-preservation.

We have to have
a correct understanding

of the gospel call.

Today it is very common
for someone to say,

Do you know you're a sinner?

And if someone says,
Yes, I know, I'm a sinner.

Well then, they go
right onto the next question.

But you see, whether we know
we're a sinner or not

really is no indicator
that God is working

or that we're being
convicted of our sin.

The question is not,
Do you know you're a sinner?

The question is, Has God,
through the gospel,

so worked in your heart that you
now hate the sin you once loved,

and you love the righteousness
you once hated?"

If someone says,
Yeah, I know I'm a sinner.

Then the question is, Would
you like to go to heaven?

And I always make
this statement:

Who doesn't want
to go to heaven?

As a matter fact,
our entire view

in sociology and in the realm
of the political is-

is this-a utopia!

But Jesus'
fundamental question was,

How do we bring heaven here?

Everyone wants to live
in a perfect place!

So the question
in the Gospel call is not,

Do you want to go to heaven?

The question in the gospel call
is this: Do you want God?

You see, almost everyone wants
to go to heaven-they just don't

want a righteous God to be
there when they get there!

I'm not a Christian
because I'm afraid of hell.

I'm a Christian because I love
God, who loved me enough

to save me from hell!

And it's because we love Him!

I don't want to be apart
from His love forever.

I don't want to be separated
from Him in any way

because I love Him!

And so the
grace of God, much more than

the fires of hell, became
the focus of my attention.

Grace is really
one of the attributes of God!

Grace is God's undeserved
activity of kindness-

doing for me what I
cannot do for myself.

I think we all benefit from
God's benevolence,

in a general way.

The Bible says He causes
the rain and the sun

to fall on the just
and the unjust.

Even Hitler was allowed
to enjoy a beautiful sunset.

But it's only through
repentance and faith

in Jesus Christ,

that a person goes from
being at enmity with God,

under God's curse,
under God's wrath,

to a place of safety
and blessing and peace!

The Bible calls that
"reconciliation."

That we have been reconciled to
God, while we were His enemies!

For while we
were still helpless

at the right time Christ died
for the ungodly.

For one will hardly die
for a righteous man;

though perhaps for the good man
someone would dare even to die.

But God demonstrates
His own love toward us

in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us.

How can God pardon a wicked man
and still be a righteous God?

Paul answers that question-
he answers this problem,

in Romans chapter three.

For all have
sinned and fall short

of the glory of God,

being justified as
a gift by His grace

through the redemption
which is in Christ Jesus.

Redemption is the payment
of a ransom of a price,

So that a slave, a criminal,
a prisoner might go free.

Well, Christ paid that ransom!

And some people have believed,
wrongly, that somehow

Christ paid a ransom
to the devil.

And that's not at all the case!

The ransom was paid
to the justice of God.

...whom God displayed publicly

as a propitiation
in His blood through faith.

Propitiation
turns back God's wrath.

It meets God's righteous,
holy demand.

This was to
demonstrate His righteousness.

Now why would God
have to do that?

Well when we look through
human history and see

God's dealing with men,
especially in the Old Testament,

we see God forgiving
and saving unrighteous men,

who deserved death!

...because in
the forbearance of God

He passed over the sins
previously committed.

In the flood
of Noah, Noah should have died!

He was a sinner.

God, you called Abraham and
called him your friend

and yet he was a sinner!

He did not believe you,
at times.

He lied about his wife.

When David
committed the sin of adultery

and murder, the law said
he was to be stoned.

That's why David
didn't offer any sacrifice.

There was no sacrifice
he could offer!

and yet when he prays
that most beautiful,

repentative prayer of Psalm 51-

What does he appeal to,

but the mercy and the
lovingkindness of God?

And when God exposes David for
his sin by the prophet Nathan,

Nathan tells him, You'll not
die, God forgives you.

In that moment, the God of
the Bible appeared

to be unrighteous.

Well, how could God
save Noah, Abraham and David?

because God's Son died for all
of them on Calvary!

For the
demonstration, I say,

of His righteousness
at the present time,

so that He would be just and
the justifier of the one

who has faith in Jesus.

Those men in
the Old Testament were saved

by faith. They were
saved by faith,

but faith in the
saving work of God!

The most troubling thing is
when conservative exegetes

say, with certainty,
"That's what this means.

That solves the problem!
That solves the crisis!"

I would just challenge you to
look at the consistent witness

of the entire Bible, from the
very beginning of the Bible

it's clear that somebody
has to pay a price for sin.

Something has to die.
In the Old Testament

we have the sacrificial system.
The spotless Lamb

had to give its life
for the sins of Israel.

So God called
for blood to be shed.

And when the people trusted in
the shedding of that blood-

the promise of God for the
forgiveness of their sins,

they were forgiven. Not because
there was anything about that

animal's blood
that saved them,

but they were trusting
in the sacrifice

that God had provided for them,

which was a shadow of the
ultimate sacrifice to come!

There must be an
atonement for us to believe in,

and that atonement
is the person of Jesus Christ.

And so what gets
subtly, sort of,

caught and taught is that

Jesus rescues you from God.

There's a God who loves some
people enough

that He'll save them,
while He burns everybody else.

That's not really
that good of news!

Like I could do better!

But what kind
of God is that,

that we would need to be
rescued from this God?

You say that God has saved you.
From what has God saved you?

We are saved
from God Himself!

And there's only one who
can save from God

and that is God, Himself!

That is, Jesus

who rescues us from
the wrath to come.

Salvation is deliverance

from the wrath of God,
against sin!

Much more then,

having now been justified
by His blood,

we shall be saved from the
wrath of God through Him.

I like to say it this way:

God has saved us
from Himself.

God has saved us by Himself.

And God has saved us
for Himself.

How could that God
ever be good?

How could that God
ever be trusted?

And how could that
ever be good news?

I'll never forget
I got a text from my friend,

Did you see
John Piper's tweet?

And so I looked it up, myself...

There was a famous tweet,

from John Piper, that said,
Farewell Rob Bell.

And he came under a lot of
criticism for this tweet.

John Piper is
dismissing another pastor,

from Christian community?
We're like what does this mean?

He's asking questions! Like...

are we not supposed to do that?

People like
Rachel Held Evans and

other progressives
said, you know,

He didn't even read the book,
and yet he's

condemning Rob Bell.

A lot of the people who seemed

to have the harshest criticism,
in regards to Rob's book,

- had not in fact read the book!
- Hmm.

He never takes
a position in the book.

He merely poses the question.

But one thing
that often gets left out of that

conversation is that there was
a trailer for the book

in which Rob Bell, basically,
denied the wrath of God.

He denied core things of the
gospel in asking questions.

So to say, Well,
he was just asking questions.

One thing I've seen
over and over again

in the progressive church

is that sometimes there's an
answer embedded in the question.

This is why lots of
people want nothing to do

with the Christian faith!
They see it as an endless list

of absurdities and
inconsistencies and they say,

Why would I ever want
to be a part of that?

And so that's when questions
actually become statements,

masquerading as questions.

and I think that's what
John Piper was responding to.

Penal
substitutionary atonement

is something that I used to be

so unbelievably committed to,

That I thought it was
the only way to view God.

The problem is when I started
to actually learn the history...

The payment model
of Jesus' death on the cross,

traditionally called
penal substitution,

is a recent development.

You can find little hints of it
in the early church,

but it really came to the fore
a thousand years ago,

halfway in the history
of Christianity.

and then it became amped up,
even more,

500 years ago
at the Reformation.

And so that sent me on a bit of
a search through church history

because I wanted to know if
what they were saying was true.

Is this something that
really wasn't a part of

the earliest form
of Christianity?

The doctrine
of penal substitution

really came to its own
in the Reformation

and post-Reformation era,
but that does not mean

that it was not there
in seed form, in embryonic form,

and even in somewhat developed
form earlier in the

history of the church.
Historical theology does

does properly develop over time,

but we have to understand
what we mean by that.

Everything is given to us
in the scripture,

Yet, as the church confronts
various challenges

and false teaching, it has
to learn to become precise.

This happened in
the doctrine of the Trinity.

The same thing is true
in the atonement.

The atonement
wasn't attacked early on,

but as time went on,
there had to become more

clarification and precision
given to

the nature of the cross.

And so when we get to

the discussion of
the church fathers,

we want to ask
the question, not

"Do they have a full developed
penal substitutionary

theory of the atonement?"
We want to ask,

Do they talk about the
atonement having a

penal and substitutionary
aspect to it?

And there the answer's
actually really easy!

In the early church there were
a couple other theories,

versions, understandings,
interpretations,

of Jesus' death on the cross.

that were really popular.
The most popular one,

in first thousand years,
was what I call

"the victory theory."

There is a
dominant theme in a lot of the

church fathers about the
cross of Christ

and His resurrection, and that
is what we sometimes call

"Christus Victor."
Or at least,

that's what modern
scholars call it.

And this is the view,
a classic view,

that Jesus had victory over sin,

over death and over the devil,
on the cross.

And we find this emphasis
in scripture, as well,

about this victory that
conquered Satan,

not just our sin.
Hebrews speaks about it:

Since therefore the children
share in flesh and blood,

he himself also
partook of the same things,

that through death he might
destroy the one who has

power over death,
that is the devil,

and deliver all those who
through fear of death

were subject to
lifelong slavery."

This is a biblical view,
this concept of Jesus as

the victorious one.

But to suggest that
they held this view

as some sort of contradiction of
penal substitution

is simply not true!

See, this is why this penal
substitutionary atonement theory

begins with Calvin.
That's where it comes from!

It's 500 years old.
It's a product of modernity.

To demonstrate
this, let me share a quote from

Eusebius of Caesarea.
And this guy

lived 1000 years
before Calvin.

and you just want to listen to
this quote for "penal" and

"substitutionary" language.
Here it is:

Thus, the Lamb of God, that
taketh away the sin of the world

became a curse on our behalf.

He then stated, 'And the Lamb
of God not only did this,

but was chastised on our behalf
and suffered

a penalty He did not owe,
but which we owed because of

the multitude of our sins;

and so He became the cause
of the forgiveness of our sins,

because He received
death for us,

and transferred to Himself

the scourging, the insults,
and the dishonor,

which were due to us,
and drew down upon Himself

the appointed curse,
being made a curse for us.'"

And so the idea
that that theme of substitution

is absent from
early Christianity

is demonstrably false!

One of the biblical words used
to talk about the atonement

is "ransom." So it shouldn't
surprise us that we have the

"ransom theory"
of the atonement.

And in the early church the
ransom theory is very prominent.

Jesus, in His
own words, said,

For the Son of Man has come
not to be served, but to serve,

and to give His life
a ransom for many.

Where the ransom theory
started to go wrong

was this idea crept into
the conversation

that the ransom was
paid to Satan! And that just

doesn't make sense!
And it almost puts

God at the mercy of Satan.

But if we understand "ransom"
as a satisfaction

of God's justice,

well we're very close
to the substitutionary theory!

But what they
don't want to do, is they don't

want to say, "At the center,
at the hub, at the very core

of the death of Jesus Christ
is substitution,

penalty substitution."

There are
substitutionary themes in

various versions of the
atonement. No question about it!

It doesn't mean, however,
that God is demanding a payment!

The book and movie
The Chronicles of Narnia:

The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe,

the C. S. Lewis classic,
we have a picture

of what may be
that ransom to the devil view.

Where Aslan makes a deal
with the White Witch.

You know, Aslan
representing Jesus.

The White Witch
representing Satan.

He has to buy Edmund,
from the devil,

so that he gives his own life.

The White Witch thinking
she's conquered Aslan,

is like, "Now I'm going to
just dominate. I've killed him.

I can take over."
But it's a big trick!

And so after Aslan is slain

he uses the "older law"
to overcome the devil

and to claim victory.

So now he has Edmund
and the victory.

Today this view
that Jesus paid a debt to Satan

is taught by many
in the Word of Faith,

New Apostolic Reformation
movement.

They believe in what's called
the "spiritual death of Jesus."

They believe that Jesus
died two deaths-

one physical, on the cross,
and one spiritual.

Now Jesus went to hell,

suffered the depth of hell,
that no man has ever suffered!

That when Jesus died on the
cross, then He went to hell!

Jesus goes to hell.
I believe He went to Hades.

He went down and descended
into the depths of the earth,

for three days, and
He pays for the sin of mankind.

And He suffered,
was tortured by the demons...

The demons attacked Him in hell
and trying to annihilate Him,

and he was in that pit,
just emaciated!

What they are teaching

is that Jesus' death on
the cross didn't save us.

What happened was
He went into hell

and that's where
He won our salvation!

but that is not what
the scripture says,

and that's not what Jesus meant
when He said, It is... What?

Finished.

When you carry
this doctrine out to its

logical conclusion,
it's a very heretical doctrine

because if Jesus
died spiritually

then He never was God,
to begin with!

because God cannot
cease to be God!

One of the early figures who
speaks into this greatly

is Anselm.

Anselm was a theologian

and he later became
Archbishop of Canterbury.

And particularly,
most wonderfully,

he wrote on the atonement

in a book called
Why the God Man?

One of the things
that Anselm wanted to do

is to reassert that,
no the debt

was owed to God,
not to Satan.

The one who
destroys both soul and body

in hell is not Satan. The one
who destroys soul and body

in hell is God!
The judge is God.

There's another version
that came along

about the same time
as the "payment theory,"

and it was developed
by a theologian

named Peter Abelard,

who said everything
about God is love,

and so everything in the
crucifixion of Jesus

must be love!

It has to be, ultimately,
about love.

And so I call it the
"magnet theory."

Others have called it
the "moral influence theory."

And what Abelard argued is that
when Jesus hangs on the cross,

He's like a massive magnet.
It's an act of such overwhelming

sacrificial love, that He draws
people into Himself by that act.

Then it ties right back
into Jesus' Last Supper,

where He washes the
disciples' feet and says,

I've set an example for you.
Now go do this for others.

There was
an earlier theologian,

in the early 20th century, James
Denny, who used the example of

of a man sitting on
the end of a pier

and falling into the water,
and not being able to swim.

Somebody runs and jumps off the
pier and saves him,

and brings him out! And in that,
risks his own life and-

and finally, actually, himself
ends up drowning,

but saving the
other man's life!

Well he's accomplished
something,

even though it was at
the cost of his own life.

He's accomplished saving that
man who was in danger.

What if, on the other hand,
somebody's sitting

on the end of the pier,
perfectly fine,

not falling into the water,

and some guy comes running along
down the pier saying,

I'm going to show you how much
I love you by dying for you!"

And jumping in the water
and just drowning!

Well that death doesn't
show anything,

because it doesn't
accomplish anything!

In the first example
it accomplished

the saving of that man's life,
and therefore it showed

a self-sacrificial love.

In the second example it
doesn't accomplish anything

and therefore doesn't show
anything at all!

Well I think that's the problem
with a lot of these other ideas

of the atonement when they try
to stand without substitution.

So none of the other images
work, if that one isn't true!

It's the most fundamental
of them all.

It's the most central of them.
You take that out-

it's like "Jenga"
- everything else falls down!

The fallacy is to claim

that one version of the
atonement is s dominant!

That's the fallacy!

His substitution, in our place,

is essential for all those other

beautiful images in
the New Testament

to have any meaning
or coherence at all.

There is a
constant stream

of misrepresentations,
strawman arguments,

against penal substitution.

Hey! God is less
grumpy 'cause of Jesus!

Atonement theory in 17 seconds!
And much more...

Others say that
penal substitution requires

we view God like a pagan deity,

who is mollified by throwing
a virgin into a volcano.

The God
who is mollified by

throwing the virgin
in the volcano,

or the God who is mollified by
His Son being nailed to a tree,

is not the "Abba" of Jesus!

Brian Zahnd is a pastor in
Missouri, who wrote a book

called, Sinners in the
Hands of a Loving God

and what's clear from his book
is that he hates

penal substitution-He thinks
it's a terrible evil,

evil doctrine!

But what's also clear from
his book, is that he never

actually interacts
with penal substitution!

He handles strawman and
misrepresentations on every page

and never engages
with the biblical doctrine!

Some years ago, I wrote a book

called, The Lost
Message of Jesus.

In it I said, "The cross is not
a form of 'cosmic child abuse.'

Vengeful father punishing
his son for an offence

he didn't commit!"

So, there's a story about a
father, a son, and a train, that-

this is often used in youth
groups to illustrate the gospel.

It goes like this:

there's a dad who's a switch
operator on a railroad tracks,

and his switch house
is way up on a hill,

overlooking the bridge.

And so he
brings his son to work one day,

and his son is fishing
near the tracks

while he is operating the
drawbridge, and,

you know, this drawbridge
allows the ships to...

to go back and forth
underneath it.

And so, while the father
is away for a moment,

the son notices that
there's a train approaching.

And so, he tries to warn his
father, but he can't find him.

And so, the son attempts to
lower the bridge himself,

but he falls into the gears
of the drawbridge.

And so, this leaves the father
with this horrible decision.

He's... if he lowers
the drawbridge,

then the passengers of
the train will be saved,

but it will kill his son.

But if he chooses to
save his son,

then the train will actually
derail, and then

all the passengers on
the train will die.

And so, the father ends up
choosing to lower the bridge,

which saves the passengers
on the train, but

but kills his son.
His son is crushed in the gears.

And then, if the
story's being told by a

youth pastor who really wants
to... really wants to

twist the knife,
he'll say,

And as he looked in the
windows of the train,

there were people gambling, and
drinking, and fornicating."

And like,
"They didn't even know

the sacrifice that had just been
made to cause them to, you know,

survive-to allow them to live!"

It's a very
powerful, emotional image,

and when it's used,
some people have said,

"Now that's a perfect example
of what I mean by the

abusive nature of this teaching
of penal substitution

in the death of Christ."

To which I go, well,
that shows the limitation

of our illustrations!

But particularly abhorrent

is the penal substitutionary
atonement theory

that turns the Father of Jesus
into a pagan deity

who can only be placated by the
barbarism of child sacrifice-

and this will not do!

But what it completely misses,
is Christ's own

voluntary laying down
of His life!

He was not like the little
child, trapped there unwittingly,

you know, having his life
sacrificed by his father

for the good of strangers.

But what they're
forgetting is that

God is triune...

that the Father, and the Son,
and the Spirit-

they're all of one essence.

And because they're
all of one essence,

they all agree

in terms of motivation
for the cross.

It would be
wrong to suggest that, um,

the Lord Jesus is being
subjected to a punishment

for which He was unwilling.

Jesus says in
the Gospel of John,

Nobody takes my life,

I lay it down willfully.
And He says,

If I have the power
to lay it down,

and he says, I also have
the power, the authority,

to take it up again.

Or, that He in turn was seeking
to coerce the Father

to display His love in a way
that would be-if you like-

breaking new territory.

It makes God a
vindictive monster!

Does God really love me,
or has He simply been paid off?

The Bible is so helpful to us
if we just read it, you know?

That, uh, the most famous
verse in the Bible

explains the magnificence
of a love of God, you know,

John 3:16: "...that He
so loved that He gave..."

Jesus did not die on the cross

so that the Father
would love us.

Jesus died on the cross
because the Father loves us!

The scripture is very clear that
to understand Jesus correctly,

we have to understand that
He is the Son of God

from all eternity!

We have a
Trinitarian God:

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
equal in rank, and authority,

and power, and equally God.

And our plan of salvation
flowed out of their love

or one another, so we should not
at all picture a-

a flailing Son who's
turning from a vengeful Father.

He's fully God
with the Father and Spirit,

and at a point in time,
as John's gospel tells us,

that the Son of God,
"the Word became flesh."

And what this means is that
the Son of God added to

His divine nature, a second
nature, a human nature.

so that we can really say that
in the Son of God,

God Himself is taking
His own righteous requirements

upon Himself in our place!

God's justice was
satisfied by God!

He absorbed, as God, the
punishment that we deserved.

So, when someone calls the
doctrine of penal

substitutionary atonement
"divine child abuse,"

they're failing to make
that distinction that

Jesus Christ was God in the
flesh, laying down His life

intentionally!

That's not child abuse!
That is a hero of the story

taking the cross on as a
means of saving His people!

And, what they're really
criticizing is just a

weak caricature
of the doctrine itself.

It is a perfect design

that is Trinitarian
in nature,

where each member of the
Trinity voluntarily and freely

does their part.

I love how Jesus,
in John chapter 17,

repeatedly refers to those
whom the Father gave to Him.

And the glory that He had
with the Father in eternity,

this glory that is now
going to be revealed.

This is referred to in theology
as the "covenant of redemption."

This is a
manifestation

of the love of the Father,
the love of the Son,

and the love of the Spirit.

The idea is
the Father loved the Son,

and He expressed
His love for the Son

by bequeathing a people
to the Son in eternity past.

And when the Father sends,

He knows in that sending
what He's giving up!

The Son
responds in love to the Father

by dying to redeem the people
whom the Father gave to Him.

And the Son
voluntarily comes

out of love for the Father,
out of love for this people!

And the Spirit,
the personification of the love

between the Father and the Son,
actually applies redemption

to all those for
whom Christ died.

And so, my salvation really is
part of a bigger expression

of the love that
God has for God!

All this construct creating
contradiction between

the persons of the Trinity
is just the work of the devil.

This is the doctrine
of Christianity!

This is the doctrine that
separates Christianity

from every other
religion in the world!

At the end of
the Reformation era,

there arose a whole viewpoint
known as Socinianism.

Socinianism is really going
back to earlier heresies.

It denied the doctrine
of the Trinity, and of course

denied the deity of the Son.
It denied penal substitution.

It ultimately argued
that God is a Unitarian God,

not Trinitarian,

that God is simply able to
forgive sins without any kind

of atonement or payment for sin.

But this was their argument:

"If God demands a payment,
then He isn't really forgiving.

If He forgives, He shouldn't
demand a payment!

You can either have sins
forgiven or paid for,

but not both!"

I do not deny that there is
a substitutionary component

in Jesus' death on the cross.

Paul writes about it,
and I'm not denying it!

I'm just saying God did not say,

I need a pound of flesh
from those people,

but their pounds of flesh
aren't good enough, holy enough,

heavy enough, or whatever.

I need Jesus! I need a
divine pound of flesh!

I mean, I had this image of God
going like, Okay, listen.

This guy's worthy of death.

I don't... I don't care if I
kill him, I just...

I m gonna kill somebody!

I just gotta kill somebody
out there! And Jesus goes,

You can kill me!
And he goes, Oh, okay!

As long as I get
to kill somebody!

And the obvious
question is, like,

"Why does God need to kill
anybody in order to forgive?"

That's the Socinian
argument, and

on the face of it, it seems to
appeal to human reason.

And you might say, "Well,
so what's wrong with that argument?"

And scripture
answers it clearly:

"without shedding of blood,
there is no forgiveness."

Forgiveness always requires
some sort of sacrifice.

Why can't God do what He
asks us to be able to do,

to freely forgive without
demanding retribution first?

Jesus doesn't say,
Punch him in the mouth,

and then you can forgive him.

Or, Kill their baby, and
then you can forgive him.

He just goes like,
Just forgive 'em!

If Jesus says we're supposed
to forgive each other,

why can't God just
forgive us?

So often the
parable of the prodigal son

is used as a rebuttal to
penal substitutionary atonement.

Again, I go back to the parable
of the prodigal son-

There was no payment!
The Father is not paid!

He isn't saying, Okay, I'm-
I'm gonna forgive that kid

for taking the inheritance and
squandering it and all of that,

but somebody's gonna...
somebody's gonna pay me back!

No, there's no payment!

So the whole concept of
thinking that forgiveness

can be offered without an
actual sacrifice on God's part

doesn't even jive with the way
we think about forgiveness

in human circumstances
in everyday life.

In Matthew
chapter 5, Jesus says,

"You have heard that it was
said, 'An eye for an eye,

and a tooth for a tooth.'
But I say to you,

do not resist an evil person;

but whoever slaps you on
your right cheek,

turn the other to him also."

So, Jesus is saying that if
someone sins against you

by slapping you
on the right cheek,

the justice would mean
"an eye for an eye."

So, justice would be return
a slap for a slap.

As all theologians should know,
the very concept of forgiveness

is based on the ancient
practice of releasing a debt

rather than collecting
it from someone else.

But Jesus is
commanding us to forgive those

who have sinned against us, and
doing this requires us to...

to turn the other cheek.
And turning the other cheek

is to absorb the justice
owed to that person.

so the justice that that person
actually deserves,

we're absorbing
back upon ourselves.

And so, in the story of
the prodigal son,

there is a debt that is owed.

And remember, the son had asked
for his share of the estate,

and of course squandered
his whole inheritance-

he spent everything!

And so, in order for the father
to forgive his son,

he had to absorb
the loss of that money himself.

He's either replacing it,
or he's taking the loss,

but the point is he's not
making the son pay it back.

And what God does in the gospel

is He decides not to pay them
back what they deserve,

but rather bear the brunt
of that sin on Himself.

In the gospel, God's justice

demands the death of the sinner!
We know this from Romans 6:23,

which says that
"the wages of sin is death."

But instead of giving us the
death that we deserve,

God chose to forgive us by

essentially turning
the other cheek.

And so, what He was doing was
absorbing that justice,

which is our death,
into Himself,

in the person of Jesus Christ.

So, instead of us dying for our
sins, which is what we deserve,

Christ dies for our sins.

We're sinners
redeemed by a gracious God-

a gracious God who is
- You're a liar!

- saving souls!
- And the truth is

- not in you!
- What a graceful God-

- What a merciful
God!

What a loving God,
that He would send His Son

- to die on a cross
- Lie!

- that we might
have life!

One of the most
important passages

in the entire Bible, and one of
my favorite verses in the Bible

is found in 2 Corinthians 5:21,
where Paul writes,

He made Him who knew no sin
to be sin on our behalf,

so that we might become the
righteousness of God in Him.

First of all I'd like to point
out it says "He," that is God,

made "Him,"
that is the Son, Jesus,

"who knew no sin to
be sin on our behalf..." Now,

Now the first thing that we
need to understand is

how magnificent Jesus truly is!
He was without sin!

That is an amazing thing!

One time I was dealing
with a person,

I was witnessing to them, and
they were a part of a religion

that claimed to be Christian,
but he believed that

he hadn't sinned in 11 years.

One of the
most popular teachers today that

preaches that Christians can
attain sinless perfection,

in this lifetime, is Todd White,
of Lifestyle Christianity.

You can actually have the Word
so strong inside of your heart

that you never have to slip!

People are like, Well, that's
false! That's not true!

Well you're wrong!
I live with me!

I have lived for 12 years
without looking lustfully

at a woman, ever!
In 12 years!

And people are like, Well,
that's not possible!

You're wrong! I live with me!

This is the
heresy of sinless perfectionism

and it is a part of what's
known as the Pelagian heresy.

In the epistle of 1 John
chapter 1, it says,

If we say we have no sin,

we deceive ourselves,
and the truth is not in us.

And so I asked him, I said,

What do you suppose
is the greatest sin?

And he said, Well, I don't
know. And I said, "Well,

could it be breaking
the greatest command?

And he said, Well I never
thought about it that way.

And I said,
What is the greatest command?

It's to love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart, soul,

mind and strength.

The first
commandment is to love God

with all your heart,
with all your soul,

with all your strength,
with all your mind.

If ou wake up in love with
Jesus. If you go to sleep

in love with Jesus-

If you wake up in the middle of
the night in love with Jesus,

you will fulfill the
first command!

Of all the billions of people
who have walked this earth-

there has never been-
of all that mass-

not one person, who for
one fraction of a second,

loved the Lord, their God,
with all their heart, soul,

mind and strength!

And yet here we
have Jesus of Nazareth-

There was never one moment
when He did not love the Lord,

His God, with all His heart,
soul, mind and strength.

He is truly the magnificent
individual of history!

Now this righteous man,
according to the plan of God,

He bears the sins of His people.

It says He, that is God,
made Him who knew no sin

to be sin on our behalf.

What does it mean that He was
made sin on our behalf?

I believe that this question
is answered

in the latter part of the text:

So that we might become the
righteousness of God in Him.

Now, the moment
a person believes in Jesus,

they are not transformed into a
perfectly righteous being

that never sins again.

He came and gave
me this blank canvas.

He came and gave me
this pure heart

and I've never violated
it with anything!

They're nt infused
with some special grace

so as to be sinless, and through
their sinlessness,

earn their salvation.

It's a legal term.

The moment a person
believes in Christ,

God legally, or forensically
declares them to be

right with Him!

And He treats them
as right with Him!

On the cross our sin
was imputed to Christ.

He did not, on the cross,
become corrupt or defiled

or twisted or sinful.

He was always the
spotless Lamb of God!

but on the cross our sin
was imputed to Him.

God legally, or forensically
declared His Son to be guilty

in our place and
treated Him as guilty!

"All of us,
like sheep, have gone astray,

each of us has turned
to his own way,

but the Lord has caused
the iniquity of us all

to fall on Him."

If you go back to Isaiah 53,
700 years before Christ...

But He was pierced through

for our transgressions,

He was crushed
for our iniquities;

The chastening for our
well-being fell upon Him,

And by His scourging
we are healed."

All of that is
substitutionary language.

All of that is
penal substitution.

What does Paul say when it
comes to, "I deliver to you

as of first importance..."?

"that Christ died
for our sins..."

That's the language
of substitution.

Peter says,
The just dies for the unjust."

That's penalty substitution!

After the death
of Christ, starting with

the first century and on
through several centuries,

countless Christians
were crucified!

Some of them set on fire,
as they hung there on that tree!

And yet the history of martyrdom
tells us that many of them

went to the cross,
praising God with joy,

that they had the opportunity
to die in a similar manner

to their Lord! Now are you
going to tell me

that the followers
of Jesus Christ

bravely and boldly embraced
the cross without complaint,

while the captain of their
salvation cries out three times,

Let this cup pass from me?

What was in the cup?

Then He said to them,

'My soul is deeply grieved
to the point of death;

remain here and
keep watch with Me.'

And He went a little
beyond them,

and fell on His face and prayed,
saying, 'My Father,

if it is possible,
let this cup pass from Me;

yet not as I will,
but as You will.'"

And some
people have said, "Well that's

a moment of weakness!
No!

Not a moment of weakness!
Let this cup pass from me

is the only, possible,
appropriate comment

for someone who's
never known sin!

This is the eternal
second member of the Trinity.

This is the eternal,
holy, undefiled Son of God,

who is looking at the moment

when He is going to be punished

for all the sins of all the
people who would ever be saved

in all of human history!

We don't have a
perfect hatred for sin-He did!

everything in His being
was repulsed by the thought

of iniquity!

That is deity being anticipatory

of something that the divine
nature never had experienced!

You see the
difference is this-

those martyrs, they had upon
them the pleasure of God!

The delight of God!

The Holy Spirit giving
them strength,

granting them assurance,

even bringing them joy!

Yet on Calvary it was
completely different!

You have statements,
in the Prophets

and in the Psalms,
of the cup of God's wrath.

For thus the Lord,

the God of Israel says to me,

'Take this cup of the wine
of wrath from my hand

and cause all the nations to
whom I send you to drink it.'"

Jesus was
volunteering to drink the cup

of God's wrath, the cup that
we deserve to drink!

And God plunges
the world into darkness,

while Christ is being crucified,

indicating the turning off
of the light of His countenance.

About the
ninth hour Jesus cried out,

with a loud voice, saying,

My God, my God,
why have You forsaken Me?

It was if there
was a cry from heaven-

excuse my language, but I can be
no more accurate than to say,

it was as if Jesus
heard the words,

God damn you!

because that's what
it meant to be cursed!

Christ redeemed
us from the curse of the law

having become a curse for us.

for it is written, cursed is
everyone who hangs on a tree.

The Father has
withdrawn His favorable presence,

and now the Father is pouring
out His active wrath,

upon his Son!

But the Lord
was pleased to crush Him,

putting Him to grief."

You know, Isaiah 53:10
is so important!

It pleased the Lord
to crush Him.

That doesn't mean that God
got some delight

out of seeing His Son suffer,

but it meant that the will
of God was accomplished

in the redemption
of God's people,

through the suffering of
His Son, under the wrath of God.

All forgiveness does
is take away the negative.

There has to be the
acquisition of the positive.

We need a positive righteousness

if we are to be accepted
by God, the Father.

It is by the death of Christ
that our sins are washed away.

It is by the life of Christ,
that we receive

the perfect righteousness
that He has secured for us!

I mean, you cannot read
the gospels and think that!

If you read just the gospels,

you would not come
out of it thinking,

Oh, Christ's life was to
fulfill the righteousness,

so that God could kill Him,

and we could have
a perfect sacrifice.

He came
"to fulfill all righteousness."

(Matthew 3:15)

And Christ by His
obedience to the law

is able to give to us

the righteousness
that we so desperately need!

Remember Job chapter 9?

Job says,
I need an intercessor,

Someone to stand between
God and me-

He could put his hand on God
and put his hand on me.

Who could do that?
And we know it's Jesus Christ,

the God-man-

He's fully God
so He can be our intercessor,

and He's fully man,
so He can be our representative.

Just as hell
is a separation from the

favorable presence
and blessing of God.

Jesus, our substitute,

had to be forsaken by God,
separated from his divine favor,

becoming a curse for us.

I did kind of have a problem
with the fact that

there was this incongruency-
if we're Trinitarian,

and there is this,
kind of, problem

where Jesus, who is the
second member of the Trinity,

needs to be cut off
from divine communion...

You think that somehow we were
able to get inside that space

and rip the
Trinity to shreds?!

...because He
took on our sin, and God is holy

and God can't bear sin,
so if Jesus beared sin,

He must've been cut off!

That's a... that's a problem!

Well I think that one of the
things that we couldn't say

is that somehow or another
it was a sham!

That Christ was not experiencing

the wrath of the Father
upon Himself.

We have to have a
proper view of the incarnation:

The Son of God in
His humanity is... is dying.

The divine nature
is not dying.

The Son is dying
in that human nature.

Yet at the same time
we have to say that it's

the Son of God,
who is doing all of this.

The Son of God who is in
inseparable relation

with the Father and Spirit.

It would be wrong for us

to diminish the reality of that
dereliction in any way.

Still, the unity of the Blessed
Trinity was not actually broken!

It takes me into a realm
that is almost unfathomable!

And then right
before He died, He cried out,

It is finished!"
Which means, "paid in full."

The wrath of God
was poured forth until justice-

divine justice-
was completely satisfied.

"He said, 'It is finished!'

and He bowed his head
and give up His spirit."

You say, Well, how in the world

could He bear, in three hours,
all the punishment

from God for all the sins
of all who would ever believe,

when all those people-
if they didn't believe-

couldn't bear the weight of
their own punishment

throughout all eternity?"

You see...
it is the value of God!

Yes, Jesus of Nazareth
was a man,

but Jesus of Nazareth was God-
God in the flesh!

and with that came the
infinite value of His person!

and that's how He could die
in our place

and save us
from a multitude of sins.

If we say that the crucifixion
is what God is doing to Jesus,

we do violence to the Trinity!

So did God kill Jesus
or did man kill Jesus?

And the answer is "both!"

In Peter's sermon,
in Acts chapter 2,

Peter says that This man,
referring to Christ Jesus,

was delivered over by the
predetermined plan

and foreknowledge of God;

and yet you nailed
Him to the cross

by the hands of godless men
and put Him to death.

And so we see right there
that both God killed Christ,

and man killed Christ.

And here we see the tension
between the sovereignty of God,

and the responsibility
and accountability of man.

And our finite minds
can't fully grasp that,

but this is true,
and we believe it to be true

because God's Word
said that it is.

And I'm telling you
that sets up a system...

It makes God the author
of a terribly unjust system!

God set it all up,
created it this way,

knowing He would
have to kill His Son,

as the only way
to pay for this.

Now you can do like
"theological gymnastics"

and try to say, Well, God's
really loving and merciful..."

or whatever. But that's not
at the heart of that theory-

at the heart of that theory
is justice!

not love, not mercy,
not grace... justice!

Why can't it be both?

The storyline of the Bible
brings all of us to our knees!

An incomprehensible sovereign,
and mighty king,

Who can be "both/and"
unto His own glory.

If they really dug down deep

and saw the version of God
that is at the root

of the "payment model"
of the atonement,

they would say,
That's not the God I worship.

That's not the
God of the Bible.

If you reject the doctrine

of penal substitution,
can you still be a Christian?

Um, I would say this-
if you don't fully understand

the doctrine of penal
substitution, but you at least

understand that Christ died,

and paid the penalty for your
sins, and you accept Him

as your Savior-
you can be a Christian.

You might not be able
to articulate the full doctrine.

But to deny that doctrine,

to say that Christ did not die
in your place, for your sins,

is to flatly deny the
atonement itself.

And it is to deny the validation
of the Father,

who raised Him from the dead.

"He was raised for
our justification"

because the penalty satisfied
the justice of God.

See, the resurrection

was the affirmation that Jesus
was who He said He was,

and that what He did, worked!

The devil has no claim on Him!

Sin has no claim on Him!

Death has no claim on Him!

Therefore, the good news
for the Christian,

is that when we belong
to Christ, all of those things

can be said of us as well!

Then in the end
I stopped believing that Jesus

physically rose from the dead.
You know, you end up,

sort of believing,
"It's a metaphor!" You know?

Like- and all the way through
this as I would talk to people

they would go like, You are
trying to mess with my faith!

And I was like,
No, no!

I'm just trying to
hold onto mine!

Just trying to
stay in the game!"

There is no metaphor here!
Christianity wouldn't exist

had it been a metaphor.

If the resurrection of Jesus

wasn't a real event,
in real history,

then Christianity is false,
and the questions mean nothing!

Paul said,
If Christ has not been raised,

then your faith is in vain and
you're still in your sins.

You can't deny Christ,
and you can't deny His work,

and be saved!

There came a
point, five or six years ago,

where I had a bike crash,
and I almost died!

and I had a head injury,
and for a month

I couldn't think straight.
And when I came out of that-

when... when I recovered
my senses,

I realized like,
I'm going to die!

I almost died,
and I'm going to die!

and when I die this brain of
mine will break down,

and my personality
is right here, in my brain.

I know that because like if you
smash my brain against a tree

at 40 miles an hour-
I change!

I remember saying to my wife,
I think this life

is all we get!

And she said,
Yeah, I think so too.

And she said, I think you
better stop being

a professional Christian,

'cause you don't believe
any of it anymore!"

So I'm a secular humanist,

because I don't believe
in supernaturalism,

but I'm really committed
to these values

of love and justice

and wonder and gratitude.

♪ Oh that
old rugged cross ♪

♪ so despised
by the world ♪

♪ has a wondrous
attraction for me. ♪

There's a myth
in our culture that

Christianity in the West
is dying.

But if you look closely
at the denominations that are

hemorrhaging members,
it's all the same denominations

who have stopped teaching
fundamental Christian truths,

like the inerrancy of Scripture,

like the exclusivity of Jesus
in salvation,

and the reality of hell.

They've given up on teaching
these Christian truths,

and in the process
they have been emptied

of the power that is the gospel!

♪ Stained
with blood so divine. ♪

♪ A wondrous
beauty I see. ♪

I tried the gospel!

I loved the idea
of a loving Jesus

and I kept changing-
I kept ignoring Bible verses,

and underlining
different Bible verses,

and I kept like,
bending things around

so that I could end up
with a god...

who I could truly love!

The problem is-

is that once you're done
making all those adjustments,

I realized that the god
I believed in

was a god of my
own invention!

Believe me, the last god
I believed in was awesome!

I loved that guy!
He was just like me!

So what we are seeing is not

the failing of Christianity
in the West.

What we are seeing is,
nominal Christians,

who were never
Christian to begin with,

are shedding that skin,
they're setting aside that garb,

and they're being honest
about who they really are!

If my whole life
and my whole identity,

and all my relationships

depend upon me believing in
Jesus in a certain way,

I'd be crazy to entertain
any other idea!

♪ And
exchange it one day ♪

The wonder isn't that I
stayed a Christian for 30 years-

it's that I got out at all!

The only
difference between me

and the Atheist,
is the grace of God!

And so I was
driving in my car, one day,

and was listening to the radio,
just kind of scanning,

and I heard this man's voice,

actually answering a lot
of the claims that

this pastor had
brought up in class.

He was just very calm
and intelligent in how

he was answering these claims.

And it turns out that it was a
Christian apologetics event,

and the man answering the
questions was Ravi Zacharias.

And so I discovered this whole
wide world of apologetics.

So I began to follow him, and
got hooked up with a seminary

and began to take classes in
seminary. I began to study

and study, and study!

And I'm so thankful to God
that what was reconstructed

through the help
of the Holy Spirit,

was historic Christianity.

That looks a little
bit different

than what I was raised with.
There've been some things

I've corrected along the way.
There've been

some doctrines I've rethought,

but the core, the gospel,
stands!

And the historic claims that
Christianity has made for

2,000 years, stands!

The Bible is reliable!

And I've come to affirm in an
even stronger way, than before,

that it is authoritative
for my life,

that it is-as Jesus said
it was-the Word of God.

Liberal Christianity
shares a foundation

with Atheism, with unbelief.

I think Atheism is actually
the most healthy

spiritual response
to that view of God!

That's why you
can have an Atheist like

Richard Dawkins,
who shares the same

moral indignation and disgust

over a doctrine like
penal substitutionary atonement

as the liberal theologian.

Why didn't He
just forgive them?

Why was it necessary to have
a human sacrifice?

To have His Son
tortured and executed,

in order that the sins of
mankind should be absolved!

Is that not the most disgusting
idea you ever heard?

And the
question is, "Do I know people

whose belief in the supernatural
has died the same way mine did,

who are still preaching
in pulpits,

and who are still
working as missionaries?"

I do! I know lots of them!
They write to me secretly!

And they say the same thing to
me-they say, "Listen,

at this stage in the game
what else am I gonna do?

Who else... Where am I gonna go?

What is there for me
outside of this?

These are
essentials to the gospel!

This is what Christianity is!
and if we deny those things,

it might be something else,
but it's not Christianity!

Probably the biggest
single heresy of fundamentalism

is that it turned around
the biblical notion of faith,

180 degrees!

Faith clearly means,
the very word means,

"walking in darkness,"
not certitude!

He's actually saying maybe that

faith is blind, which,
of course, Christians

don't understand faith to be
a blind leap in the dark!

And we also don't understand it
to be 100% certitude,

which is what Richard Rohr
is pitting faith against.

He's basically saying
the opposite of faith

is complete and 100%
absolute certainty.

Neither one of those are
biblical definitions of faith.

Faith, biblically, is "trust."
and often throughout scripture

we see that trust being
based on good evidence

to believe that something is
true. This is why we refer to

the Christian faith,
as being a reasonable faith.

And so for me...
I-I sometimes look at Tony and

Rob Bell, and all my, kind of,
progressive Christian friends,

and I think to myself...

There are so many people
trying to reform the church,

and there are so few people
trying to create

loving communities for people

who don't believe in
any of the stuff-

I wish some of you would just
give up the language

and come over and help me!

I'd rather them be honest
about their unbelief

then staying within the church
and corrupting it from within!

It's actually a purifying
effect on the church,

and it's a good thing!

When I do evangelism...

You say, "Evangelism?" I think
evangelism, like,

technically means
"sharing the good news."

It's just that my good news is
that you can pursue goodness

for its own sake!

I mean, it's funny like,
Jesus at one point said,

You know, if you really want
to understand the Gospel...

Love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,

and all your soul, and all your
strength, and all your mind.

And then He said, And the
second commandment, is like

unto it: love your neighbor as
you love yourself."

"Love God, love people."

and the great irony is, that
this is actually a summary

of the law!

And so on
some level Jesus was saying,

like, "Look! You want to know
the ultimate expression

of Christianity?
Love people!

And I go like, I don't think
He was far off!

And so, you know,
people say like, Wow,

you haven't really
changed that much,

since you left
Christianity behind.

And I go, like,
No, I haven't!

Essentially,
what you're saying is,

"Our goal is to
actually keep the law!"

and that's something that the
gospel is here to remind us

that we cannot do!

And that's not good news!
That's why the gospel

is good news to those who
recognize that they're sinners,

to those who recognize
that they...

there is a flaw
deep in humanity,

that isn't going to be fixed
by doing all the good works

that you can think of
in the world.

Both in the prosperity gospel

and in the emergent movement,

the message still is about
you and what you do,

either to "achieve a better you,"
or to "achieve a better world."

It's all about "law."
It's all about what you can do.

instead of about God
and what He has accomplished

in history for us and
for our salvation.

No, the good news
is that He saves me

from trying to make myself a
better me, when I can't,

and He saves me from the guilt
and bondage of a world

that is full of oppression
and injustice!

"In your humanist worldview,
how does...

How do all the sins of the world
get reconciled and fixed?

They don't!

They don't! That's why you
have to try to stop

people from hurting people!
That's why you have to work

to make a better world!
Because there's some

brokenness you can't fix!

There are some wounds
you can't heal!

There are some losses
you can't make right,

you can't make whole!

In response to that gospel

I do want to love
and serve my neighbor!

But it's not because
that's the gospel!

Yes, we should do good works-
that should be a fruit

of our salvation,

but that isn't what saves us!
It can't save us!

God is jealous
for His own glory,

and He will not share it
with anybody else!

Contemporary
worship so often begins with

with man and his need,
rather than God and His glory-

that we've essentially
placed ourselves

at the center of the universe!

See, the cross, to me,
isn't the revelation of my sin.

The cross is actually
the revealing of my value!

We put man in the middle of it.

Man is this great prize,
and this great reason.

Something underneath of that
sin must've been of great value

for heaven to go bankrupt
to get me back!

As though
the world just existed,

God happened upon us,
and He saw man and was just

so taken with us,

that He decided to do
something about it!

If the blood of Jesus
determines your worth,

and heaven went bankrupt
to get you back,

that makes you pretty worth it!

People say the cross is a sign
of how much man is worth-

That's not true!
The cross is a sign of

how depraved we really are,
that it took the death

of God's own Son!

So,
there's a song called "Worth"-

It was written by the associate
pastor of my former church,

and part of the lyrics go:

You thought I was
worth saving.

♪ You thought I was
worth saving! ♪

"You thought I was
to die for."

♪ "You thought I was
to die for!" ♪

When you really think about
the lyrics of that song,

it's suggesting that we
were owed something by God.

When we flip this, and when
it becomes man-centered,

and when there becomes this
inherent worth in me that

drew out this work of Christ...

Heaven went
bankrupt to get you back,

because God thought that you
were worth the price

that He paid to redeem you!

All of a sudden,

the idea of grace is gone-

because it is merited!

I did Jesus a favor by
being so wonderful!

instead of Christ, and
His finished work,

being an act of
God's grace to me.

Now, this is very,
very important.

God's motive for saving people
is not found in that people!

So, why did God love
and save Israel?

Well, in Deuteronomy Chapter 7,
verses 7-8, it explicitly says:

"The Lord did not set His love
on you, Israel, or choose you

because you were more in number
than any of the other peoples,

for you were the
fewest of all peoples,

but because the Lord loved you
and kept the oath

which He swore
to your forefathers."

In other words, God saving
Israel was not because of

anything great within Israel,
but because of His love,

because of His faithfulness,
because He keeps His word!

So, the term "glorify"
often means "to magnify"

in a positive way-

to really zoom in with a
magnifying glass

on what that thing is,

and expose it for
how beautiful it is.

Glorifying God is
recognizing who He is

as He's been revealed
in the scriptures.

So, the more we get to
understand who God is,

we get blown away!

And when we come to
the message of the gospel,

especially in Ephesians,

the motivation of God
in redemption,

is that we might be
"to the praise of His glory."

So it's actually... it's the
opposite of the song that

that has that line:

Like a rose trampled
on the ground..."

♪ Like a rose ♪

♪ trampled on
the ground ♪

And it says, and He...

He "thought of me above all."

♪ And thought of me
above all ♪

Which, of course, makes perfect
sense to a person.

They say, Well, of course,
everybody would think about me.

But in actual fact, no!

His focus was on Himself!
His focus was on His glory!

Yes, He loves humanity!

But that's not the
primary motivation.

The primary motivation is
His love for Himself,

and a desire to
show off Himself.

And He wants us to see, not
just the power and creativity

we can see in nature.
He wants us to see His grace,

and His mercy, and He even
wants us to see His wrath!

"For the sake
of My name I delay My wrath,

and for My praise I restrain it
for you,

in order not to cut you off."

And you might think, "Well,
that's kind of egotistical.

God is all about Himself?
Like, that's

really annoying, you know?"

But who else could God be about?

For God to not be
God-centered

would be actually to say
something untrue about

the universe,
because God truly is

at the center of the universe.
He's the creator of all things.

We all are in the
orbit around Him.

But there is a beauty
in the fact that God

can be focused on Himself
and His own glory,

because God is a Trinity!

And so, there is a paradoxical
others-centeredness

even there in the
God-centeredness of God.

And the Father, in an
expression of love to the Son,

determined that He
would create a world,

that He would allow
that world to fall into sin,

hat He would recover from
that world a redeemed humanity,

that they would give that
redeemed humanity as a

bride to His Son,
so that that redeemed humanity

forever and ever, and ever,
could glorify His Son!

You are, in some sense,
an incidental part of a great

act of love
that is within the Trinity!

Everything is to
the glory of God!

God is righteous!

He is the highest good,
the most beautiful thing,

the only perfect being!

And therefore, He is the
only thing in the universe

that actually deserves
praise and honor and glory.

God would be unrighteous

if He let us glorify anything
else other than Him!

Something underneath of sin

was so important for heaven
to pay such a high price

to redeem your life!

You see,
if God saved me because of

my value, then my focus is on
myself and how amazing I am!

Because God thought
so highly of you,

that He sent His Son and thought
that you were worth it...

In other
words, I'm worshipping myself!

But if God saved me
because of His love-

who He is, not who I am-

then God's glory, His value,
His worth, is magnified!

Heaven thought that much of you

that God sent His
only Son for you!

If God started pointing at us,

we'd be missing out on the
greatest gift, which is Himself!

And so, for God
to glorify Himself

and point the
world to Himself-

He's actually doing the
most loving thing possible,

because there is nothing else
more satisfying than God,

there is nothing
more lovely than God!

there is nothing
more loving than God!

The love of God is greatly

and exponentially amplified

when God loves those
who are unlovely!

Jesus didn't come into the
world 'cause you were such a

grotesque sinner!

Now, the
teaching of William Paul Young

and Todd White-they're
similar in that they

both are denying the
doctrine of original sin.

I think
the lie is... that all we are

is a "piece of crap." And it's
just because God is merciful...

- Well that's a
lie some religions tell people

that you are
"born of sin, you are sin..."

- "You're
depraved. You're worthless."

Now, scripture is clear on ths:

"None is righteous, no not one.
No one understands,

no one seeks for God.
And all have turned aside,

together they have
become worthless."

See, we've said that
we're "worthless," and we're

and we're "worms in the dirt,"
not realizing that

that's what Satan is!

Christ and His work

doesn't find its value because
of who I am as the one

whom He redeemed!

We're saying that my worth
is not in what I own!

My worth is not
in my achievements!

But I, instead, find my value

in the fact that the one
of ultimate worth

died to redeem me,
in spite of the fact

that I was inherently
not worthy of that!

The therapeutic gospel says:

"God loves me
because I'm valuable."

The biblical gospel says:

"I am valuable
because God loves me."

Anyone can love someone who's-
who's lovely!

there's nothing supernatural
about that, or nothing even

divine about that!

You see, we love things
that are attractive to us,

the things that are the most
beautiful, the most expensive!

But see, God is
different than us!

God loves sinners who are the
opposite of attractive to Him!

In fact, He dies
for His enemies!

That is
amazing love,

unparalleled love,
matchless love,

that can only come from God!

What was God doing at Calvary?

There was a
simultaneous display

of all of God's attributes!

Not just His love
and forgiveness,

but by no means letting
the guilty party go!

Love and wrath on display,

goodness and kindness
on display,

justice and mercy on display,

simultaneously!

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