Are Hell and the Cross Overkill for Sin?

00:00:00.000 | Hello everyone, this is Tony again, and before we dive into today's episode, I'd like to

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00:00:16.520 | It takes just a few minutes to fill out, and if you're willing to help us out, go online

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00:00:22.920 | That's DesiringGod.org/survey.

00:00:26.520 | And I'll mention that address again at the end of today's episode, which starts right

00:00:30.600 | now.

00:00:35.880 | Was the cross overkill for sin?

00:00:39.200 | It's a question from a listener named Lisa.

00:00:41.360 | "Dear Pastor John, thank you for your diligence in taking the time to help people all over

00:00:45.320 | the world work through difficult questions.

00:00:47.840 | I have one.

00:00:49.400 | Why do we need a Savior in the first place?

00:00:52.480 | I consider myself to be a good person, and when I look around at most people, I would

00:00:56.100 | say the same about them.

00:00:57.960 | I know I'm not perfect, and I cannot hold God's law perfectly, but I don't consider

00:01:02.160 | my thoughts and actions to be so terrible that they need to be punished by death.

00:01:07.120 | Should I really need to die because I disobeyed my parents as a child or told a lie?

00:01:11.960 | I have a difficult time seeing myself and those close to me as being wicked and utterly

00:01:16.120 | depraved.

00:01:17.240 | There is certainly great evil in the world, such as war, rape, murder, racism, oppression,

00:01:24.400 | etc.

00:01:25.400 | But the majority of the world doesn't need God to see these things as evil or to make

00:01:29.080 | a positive change.

00:01:31.320 | I certainly don't see how someone innocent, dying a horrible death, can somehow make my

00:01:36.640 | wrongs right in the sight of God.

00:01:39.060 | Can you help me make sense of this seemingly twisted justice and come to understand why

00:01:45.280 | I need Jesus?"

00:01:47.920 | I think Lisa speaks for millions of people who quietly don't feel comfortable, to put

00:01:56.720 | it mildly, don't feel comfortable with hell or with the cross of Christ.

00:02:02.480 | And I would state the problem like this.

00:02:05.360 | Where God is small and man is big, hell will be abhorrent, indeed absurd, and the cross

00:02:14.860 | will be foolishness.

00:02:16.700 | So where God is small and man is big, hell will be abhorrent and the cross will be foolishness.

00:02:23.440 | The most telling thing about Lisa's question is that her conception of evil can never be

00:02:30.420 | big enough to make sense of hell or the cross of Christ, because she defines evil only in

00:02:38.620 | relation to what harms man, not what demeans God.

00:02:44.640 | She says, for example, "I have a difficult time seeing myself as being wicked and utterly

00:02:50.880 | depraved," and then she defines evil like this.

00:02:54.860 | There is great evil in the world, such as war, rape, murder, racism, oppression, but

00:03:04.460 | the majority of the world doesn't need God to see these things as evil or make a change.

00:03:09.180 | So what are the great evils in the world, according to Lisa?

00:03:14.440 | And the answer is war, rape, murder, racism, oppression.

00:03:20.380 | Now all of these are ways that man harms man.

00:03:25.580 | You don't even need God in the picture in order to call those evil.

00:03:31.800 | Lisa doesn't seem to have a category for evil understood as the dishonoring, demeaning,

00:03:40.260 | disparaging, insulting of God, as infinitely worthy of honor.

00:03:47.300 | It doesn't come into her picture.

00:03:51.220 | So let's do a thought experiment.

00:03:53.340 | Suppose there is no God, and Lisa is a super successful Adolf Hitler.

00:04:00.620 | Not saying she leans that way at all, just an experiment.

00:04:04.420 | Super successful Adolf Hitler.

00:04:06.000 | She is able not only to kill all the Jews in the world, but all the other non-Aryans.

00:04:12.880 | Everybody in Africa, she kills.

00:04:15.300 | Everybody in China, she kills.

00:04:17.320 | Everybody in India, she kills.

00:04:19.280 | Everybody in South America, she kills.

00:04:22.660 | So she succeeds in orchestrating the murder of about 7 billion people, and the question

00:04:29.100 | is would she deserve eternal punishment in hell?

00:04:33.820 | And my answer is no, she wouldn't, for two reasons.

00:04:38.700 | First, if there's no God and we are simply complex chemical and material animals, then

00:04:45.420 | there's no such thing as right and wrong anyway, or desert, or merit, blameworthiness, just

00:04:52.540 | different chemical reactions.

00:04:54.700 | But second, and more importantly for my point, she wouldn't deserve an infinitely long punishment

00:05:01.500 | because 7 billion murders are still finite, and a finite number of finite crimes doesn't

00:05:11.080 | deserve an infinite punishment.

00:05:13.620 | In other words, when God is left out, there's no way to have an infinite crime deserving

00:05:21.180 | of an infinite punishment like hell or the cross.

00:05:26.740 | They would simply be unjust.

00:05:29.780 | But this is why God has spoken to us in the Bible.

00:05:33.680 | We will never understand the depth of our sinfulness without God's telling us what

00:05:40.060 | the problem is, which he has very clearly.

00:05:44.140 | Lisa and I would never come up with this truth on our own.

00:05:48.960 | We must learn it from the Bible.

00:05:52.200 | And what God has said is this, "The essence of evil, what makes evil evil, is not harm

00:06:00.760 | done to man, but indignities done to God."

00:06:06.600 | Harm to man is horrible, but it is meant to be a vivid parable of the outrage of failing

00:06:13.920 | to honor God, failing to glorify God, failing to thank God as God.

00:06:21.680 | So ask this question, if God is of infinite value, infinite beauty, infinite greatness,

00:06:31.440 | with all of his perfections uniting in an infinitely satisfying panorama of personal

00:06:39.560 | beauty and glory, then of what is he worthy from the human soul?

00:06:46.800 | That's the key question.

00:06:47.920 | And Jesus answers, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your

00:06:53.400 | soul and all your mind."

00:06:55.280 | And Paul answered, "Whatever you do, whether you eat or whether you drink, not one minute

00:07:00.160 | of your life, but do it to the glory of God."

00:07:04.000 | And in another place, he said that he aims that Christ be magnified in his body, whether

00:07:11.240 | by life or by death.

00:07:14.000 | Over and over again in the Bible, it's made plain that God created the world so that his

00:07:21.040 | infinitely valuable glory would be manifest in creation by the worshipful enjoyment of

00:07:29.160 | his creation.

00:07:30.920 | The essence of virtue, the essence of virtue, therefore, is to love and desire and prefer

00:07:38.840 | and treasure and enjoy and thus honor God above all things in this world.

00:07:47.240 | And the essence of evil, essence of evil is loving and preferring and desiring and treasuring

00:07:55.040 | and enjoying anything above God.

00:07:58.880 | It's treason.

00:08:00.400 | And since God is of infinite worth and beauty and greatness and honor, infinite, the failure

00:08:07.400 | to love and treasure and enjoy him above all things is an infinite outrage worthy of infinite

00:08:15.960 | punishment.

00:08:17.720 | This will make no sense where God is small and man is big.

00:08:22.480 | It will only make sense where people see God as great as he really is and see man, see

00:08:29.400 | ourselves and our outrageous God-belittling self-centeredness for what they are.

00:08:37.880 | Paul said both Jews and Greeks are under sin.

00:08:41.360 | It is written, "None is righteous, no, not one."

00:08:44.800 | And then he explained what this failure is, this sin.

00:08:48.600 | He says in verse 23 of Romans 3, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

00:08:55.240 | And you see how he moves immediately from the concept of sin to failing to embrace the

00:09:02.440 | glory of God as our supreme treasure.

00:09:05.280 | And the reason I put it like that, failure to embrace the glory of God as our supreme

00:09:08.960 | treasure, the reason I put it like that is because just earlier back in chapter 1, verses

00:09:13.960 | 22 and 23, Paul describes the human race as claiming to be wise, they became fools and

00:09:21.860 | exchanged the glory of God for images.

00:09:26.960 | There's the essence of evil.

00:09:28.560 | The outrage of the human race is not humans killing humans.

00:09:32.920 | That's not the outrage of the human race, but humans exchanging the glory of the immortal

00:09:39.300 | God for anything less.

00:09:42.980 | That's who we are.

00:09:44.420 | We are outrageous, treasonous, God-belittling, self-exalting rebels against God.

00:09:52.340 | And we are this way even in our so-called moral efforts to do good to other people while

00:09:58.960 | giving almost zero attention, zero affection, zero admiration to God and taking no delight

00:10:07.240 | in his glory.

00:10:09.700 | God gave a glimpse of his rage toward such evil in these words from Jeremiah 2, 12 to

00:10:19.840 | 13, "Be appalled, O heavens," this is God talking, "Be appalled, O heavens, at this.

00:10:26.920 | Be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two

00:10:32.320 | evils.

00:10:33.380 | They have forsaken me."

00:10:35.760 | This is great evil.

00:10:37.160 | "My people have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out for themselves

00:10:44.120 | cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water."

00:10:48.440 | The great shock, the great appalling reality in the world is that humans have turned from

00:10:56.440 | God as the all-satisfying fountain of life and joy and tried to find it, not in God,

00:11:03.120 | but in what he made.

00:11:04.120 | It is high treason and worthy of eternal punishment.

00:11:10.760 | That, Lisa, that, Lisa, is why we need a Savior.

00:11:17.680 | And I tremble with thankfulness that God in mercy sent his infinitely worthy Son to do

00:11:26.320 | what no mere man could ever do.

00:11:30.540 | Only a God-man can bear an infinite punishment for all who embrace him for the glorious one

00:11:38.600 | that he really is.

00:11:40.000 | Amen.

00:11:41.000 | The great shock, the most wicked evil there is, the root behind all other evils, and the

00:11:47.320 | reason we wrong and harm one another is because we have turned away from God as our all-satisfying

00:11:53.760 | fountain of life and joy.

00:11:56.480 | That is so sobering.

00:11:57.480 | Thank you for that word, Pastor John, and thank you for the very honest question, Lisa.

00:12:02.440 | I appreciate you articulating that for yourself and for the many, many people that you represent.

00:12:09.540 | This topic also raises that important question, "Is evil only evil when it harms other people?"

00:12:15.780 | That's a closely connected question, and that's coming up on the podcast in about a week on

00:12:20.000 | January 22nd, I believe.

00:12:22.100 | Be watching for that one on the podcast.

00:12:24.240 | Is evil only evil when it harms others?

00:12:27.400 | A question that dovetails into this one from Lisa.

00:12:30.320 | But next up, "How should we best parent non-Christian teenagers?

00:12:34.720 | Should church attendance be required for an unbelieving teen who doesn't want to go?"

00:12:38.640 | It's a big question on the minds of a lot of parents.

00:12:41.000 | It's up next on Wednesday.

00:12:43.360 | Until then, if you want to help us out, fill out our online survey.

00:12:47.080 | Several of you already had, and I thank you for doing that.

00:12:49.760 | If you want to join them, go to DesiringGod.org/survey.

00:12:53.520 | That's DesiringGod.org/survey.

00:12:54.520 | Thank you.

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Are Hell and the Cross Overkill for Sin?

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