When I was younger, I thought of God as a kind of magician – the most powerful magician there was. As such, he could do anything – anything! – he wanted to do. What he didn’t do, he didn’t want to do. Absolutely nothing limited him. He could perform any magic at all, and he was good and kind so of course he always used his powers for good. My imagination was fully satisfied with the awesomeness of such a hero – I wasn’t at all perturbed by the fact that as a God, he was completely unreasonable.
I have come to understand a few things about reality. It is not the shifting, shadowy thing we think it. Francis Schaeffer describes it this way: A is not non-A. In other words, God is limited, not as we are, by what is greater; but by himself. He can only be what he is; he cannot be what he is not. He is no less powerful because he cannot sin, nor because he cannot change what he is. He is no magician, because his power lies not in art, but within himself. Because it lies within, it can never be used outside the parameters set by who God is. This is why God CAN’T sin. He CAN’T ignore my sin. He CAN’T erase what has been done. My God had been, at times, non-God. He was outside reality. The God of the Bible dwells fully in reality.
Jesus, on his way to the cross, stopped alone in the garden of Gethsemane to cry to his father. What he prayed was this, “If there is ANY other way, let me have it. Take this away from me…nevertheless, I will do what you want, not what I want.” Could God have wanted his son to die and be punished by him?
There was NO other way. Not for God, the most powerful being in the universe. The great imperative of sin is death; blood. The Bible says, “…without the shedding of blood, there is no remission for sin.” “Sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.” It had to be satisfied, at our cost or his.
Love meant that it had to be at his cost. The God who is love had to choose death, not because he just stupidly and unreasonably loved me SO much; but because he is both just and love. He couldn’t erase sin. He couldn’t ignore it. He couldn’t stop loving. He had to die to satisfy the claims of sin. God HAD to.
But God can’t choose for me. He has already given me that privilege and that responsibility. He can’t force me to choose him with a wave of his wand. He is far too reasonable. He can’t be unreasonable. He can't be non-God.
2 comments:
***The great imperative of sin is death; blood***
Years ago I started to wonder why a blood sacrifice was required to make right the wrongs of sin; why death was the obvious and inevitable consequence of sin. I remember asking a pastor or two about this, and at the end of the day all they could do was shrug and say they didn't know.
It's a truly strange idea; couldn't God just as easily decided that the great imperative of sin was a "time out", or a "spanking" or a "grounding"?
God is God, right? God can do anything, include determine the consequences of evil...unless evil/sin is actually bigger than God and is something he cannot control.
If God cannot be other than He is, as you state, and therefore he can't tolerate or be in the presence of sin, doesn't that suggest that sin/evil is like kryptonite to God, that it is actually more powerful than God?
**It's a truly strange idea; couldn't God just as easily decided that the great imperative of sin was a "time out", or a "spanking" or a "grounding"? (Slapdash)
We have gotten far too used to the idea that God may be anything at all, including completely illogical.
The consequences of evil are not what God decides they are: they are the natural, necessary, logical consequences of what is. Death is the consequence of evil because evil is destructive. That's why it's evil. If it weren't destructive, or naturally death-causative, it wouldn't be evil.
**If God cannot be other than He is, as you state, and therefore he can't tolerate or be in the presence of sin, doesn't that suggest that sin/evil is like kryptonite to God, that it is actually more powerful than God? (Slapdash)
Almost, but not quite. That God cannot tolerate or be in the presence of evil necessitates one of two things: in the case of the two being brought together either God is going down or evil is. I'm putting my bets on Love, Light, Truth.
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