1) God hates sin. His ‘wrath’ indicates his opposition to sin
2) The penalty of sin is death, which is the opposite to having eternal life in God’s presence
3) In order for God to grant us eternal life, he must deal with our sin, which he does in the death of Jesus.
4) The result is that the wrath of God against sin is no longer against those who repent and believe, so his rightful and necessary opposition to sin (his wrath) is no longer a barrier to us receiving eternal life.
So, in Jesus, God provides a solution to the problem of “our sin and its consequences” as you put it. He does not deliver us from a “hateful God” as you put it. But the wording is an expression of the former and not the latter. The wrath of God continues against sin, and needs to in order for him to be perfect and just. But for those who are in Christ, that wrath against us as sinners is satisfied – it is no longer a barrier to eternal life
The language used with respect to God’s wrath / anger is never “sated”, but always “turned away” or “rescued” (or “hidden”). Punishment and repentance is made, and so God’s fierce anger is turned away (Num 25:4, Deut 13:17, Josh 7:26, 2 Chron 29:10, 30:8, Ezra 10:14, Jer 4:8, Jonah 3:9).
I think the issue is muddying the distinction between justice and wrath. God’s wrath is coming because of injustice and evil. Embracing justice and good turns away that wrath. Sin demands the punishment of death. Sin also brings God’s wrath. Jesus death pays for (justice) our sins (e.g. Rom 3:25, 4:25), and this turns aside God’s wrath. But God’s wrath does not fall on Jesus per se. In fact, the wrath that was due to us doesn’t go anywhere, because in Jesus justice has been done.
When Stephen Travis revised Christ and the Judgement of God, he included an additional chapter specifically responding to those proposing penal substitution as the main way to understand Jesus’ death. The chapter is a tour de force, a masterly exploration of the issue, fully engaging with alternative views, and is worth reading in full. He comments:
Most interpreters of Paul would agree with Howard Marshall, that ‘Paul’s vocabulary expresses the results of Christ’s death rather than its character, and this fits in with New Testament thought in general, which is more concerned with the nature of salvation than with the precise way in which it has been achieved.’ (p 181)
There is no place [in the OT] for the popular idea that in the sacrificial ritual God is somehow punishing the animal…or for the inference that something parallel to that is happening in the sacrificial death of Christ. (p 197)
Paul’s understanding of the death of Christ includes, but does not place at the centre, the idea that he bore the retributive punishment for our sins…To understand the atonement exclusively in those terms involves a misunderstanding of what Paul means by ‘the wrath of God.’ (p 199)
The meaning of the cross is not that God punished his Son in order to avoid punishing humanity, but that in Christ God himself took responsibility for the world’s evil and absorbed its consequences into itself. (p 200)
Finally comes the question of copyright. The Presbyterian Church were right to consult the hymn’s authors before changing the words in a published work. But what is copyright about? Principally two things: recognition of the author; and recompense for the work. It is not about hymn writers controlling our doctrine. In fact, if you read the words of the song, it is full of biblical language, and would be thought of as theologically conservative, even without this one phrase. There is plenty else here that I would hope the writers are pleased that people want to sing. So my recommendation would be to use it, to amend this one phrase, to credit the original writers, to note the amendment, and to pay up your royalty fee. Who knows? You might even end up provoking reflection on what Jesus’ death and resurrection (the NT holds the two together) actually mean for us.
Derek Rishmawy, who is currently undertaking a PhD on doctrine. I think Derek would want to staunchly defend the idea of ‘penal substitution’ as a way of understanding the significance of the death of Jesus, but he offers three important qualifications which match my concerns quite closely.
1. Don’t Break Up the Trinity
One common mistake is to speak as if the cross momentarily divided the Trinity. We sing rich hymns with lines like “the Father turned his face away” and mistakenly gain the impression that, on the cross, God unleashed his judgment on Jesus in such a way that ontologically separated the Father from the Son. This suggests a split in the being of the eternal, unchangeable, perfect life of Father, Son, and Spirit.
What’s more, this isn’t the historic orthodox view of penal substitution—at least not as we encounter it in Calvin. He’s quite clear:
Yet we do not suggest that God was ever inimical or angry toward [Jesus]. How could he be angry toward his beloved Son, “in whom his heart reposed” [cf. Matt. 3:17]? How could Christ by his intercession appease the Father toward others, if he were himself hateful to God? This is what we are saying: he bore the weight of divine severity, since he was “stricken and afflicted” [cf. Isa. 53:5] by God’s hand, and experienced all the signs of a wrathful and avenging God. (Institutes of the Christian Religion, II.xvi.11)…
2. Don’t Forget Love Came First
A second mistake is connected to the first. Many have rejected the atonement as the satisfaction of God’s justice because they’ve gotten the impression that Calvary is about a loving Jesus satisfying an angry Father out for blood. Even when not explicitly taught this way, many in the pews can get this impression.
But this isn’t what we see in Scripture. Instead, we see the triune God of holy love purposing from all eternity to redeem sinners for himself…
3. Don’t Assume Wrath Is Everything
I’ve focused on issues connected to wrath and punishment because Reformed evangelical preaching tends to rightly focus on penal substitution in its preaching of the cross. Penal substitution is central and foundational. Don’t forget, though, that the cross achieved even more. Christ accomplishes a lot in his life, death, and resurrection. Herman Bavinck notes the diversity of the New Testament witness: “Like the person, the work of Christ is so multifaceted that it cannot be captured in a single word nor summarized in a single formula.” We must remember not to sideline the various other aspects of Christ’s cross-work.
For instance, when was the last time you preached on Christ’s victory over the powers of sin, death, and Satan? The drama of the gospel isn’t just about interpersonal reconciliation between God and humanity, as glorious as that is, but also about its payout in liberating God’s people from the clutches of his enemies. The apostle John tells us the same Christ who came to make atonement for sin (1 John 2:2) also came to destroy the Devil’s works (1 John 3:8).
So, when speaking of Jesus’ death for us, we need to focus on the unity of action of Jesus and the Father (and the Spirit), the primacy of love, and the cross as defeating the powers, reconciling us with God and one another, liberating us, demonstrating God’s love, leaving us an example, destroying the work of the devil and signalling the beginning of the end of ‘this age’, as well as dealing with sin and obtaining the assurance of forgiveness. Whether that leaves much of the more common uses of ‘penal substitution’ in preaching and teaching is an interesting point of debate.
I am not quite as convinced as Derek that, for example, having a developed understanding of the ‘two natures’ of Jesus will help us out of this. In the end, the idea that God himself becomes part of our world, and out of his love for us takes on the very sin which has separated, alienated and enslaved us, is a mind-boggling mystery. That does not mean we shouldn’t speak of it, still less that we shouldn’t preach on it (on Good Friday of all days, as some have suggested!). But it does mean that we should be careful to deploy the language and metaphors that we find in the New Testament—and ‘satisfying God’s wrath’ isn’t part of it.
www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/did-jesus-die-to-satisfy-gods-wrath/hope this helps !!!
