Richard Lovelace, some 32 years ago, had some great words for
Rob Bell and those who would argue that “love wins” where there is no
wrath and reality of hell. Lovelace writes:
- Richard Lovelace, Dynamics for Spiritual Life, 84-85 (emphasis mine).
Provocations & Paintings
“The cross is the perfect statement both
of God’s wrath against sin and of the depth of his love and mercy in the
recovery of the damaged creation and its damagers. God’s mercy,
patience, and love must be fully preached in the church. But they are not credible
unless they are presented in tension with God’s infinite power,
complete and sovereign control of the universe, holiness, and
righteousness. And where God’s righteousness is clearly presented,
compassionate warnings of his holy anger against sin must be given, and
warnings also of the certainty of divine judgment in endless alienation
from God which will be unimaginably worse than the literal descriptions
of hell. It is no wonder that the world and the church are not awakened
when our leadership is either singing a lullaby concerning these
matters or presenting them in a caricature which is so grotesque that it
is unbelievable.
The tension between God’s holy
righteousness and his compassionate mercy cannot be legitimately
resolved by remolding his character into an image of pure benevolence as
the church did in the nineteenth century. There is only one way that
this contradiction can be removed: through the cross of Christ which
reveals the severity of God’s anger against sin and the depth of his
compassion in paying its penalty through the vicarious sacrifice of his
Son. In systems which resolve this tension by softening the
character of God, Christ and his work become an addendum, and spiritual
darkness becomes complete because the true God has been abandoned for
the worship of a magnified image of human tolerance.”
BOOM.- Richard Lovelace, Dynamics for Spiritual Life, 84-85 (emphasis mine).
Provocations & Paintings
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