Hello everyone, this is Tony again, and before we dive into today's episode, I'd like to ask you for a favor. With this podcast, we want to serve you better in 2020 and beyond, and to serve you better means we need to know you better. And to this end, we put together a brief survey.

It takes just a few minutes to fill out, and if you're willing to help us out, go online to DesiringGod.org/survey. That's DesiringGod.org/survey. And I'll mention that address again at the end of today's episode, which starts right now. Was the cross overkill for sin? It's a question from a listener named Lisa.

"Dear Pastor John, thank you for your diligence in taking the time to help people all over the world work through difficult questions. I have one. Why do we need a Savior in the first place? I consider myself to be a good person, and when I look around at most people, I would say the same about them.

I know I'm not perfect, and I cannot hold God's law perfectly, but I don't consider my thoughts and actions to be so terrible that they need to be punished by death. Should I really need to die because I disobeyed my parents as a child or told a lie? I have a difficult time seeing myself and those close to me as being wicked and utterly depraved.

There is certainly great evil in the world, such as war, rape, murder, racism, oppression, etc. But the majority of the world doesn't need God to see these things as evil or to make a positive change. I certainly don't see how someone innocent, dying a horrible death, can somehow make my wrongs right in the sight of God.

Can you help me make sense of this seemingly twisted justice and come to understand why I need Jesus?" I think Lisa speaks for millions of people who quietly don't feel comfortable, to put it mildly, don't feel comfortable with hell or with the cross of Christ. And I would state the problem like this.

Where God is small and man is big, hell will be abhorrent, indeed absurd, and the cross will be foolishness. So where God is small and man is big, hell will be abhorrent and the cross will be foolishness. The most telling thing about Lisa's question is that her conception of evil can never be big enough to make sense of hell or the cross of Christ, because she defines evil only in relation to what harms man, not what demeans God.

She says, for example, "I have a difficult time seeing myself as being wicked and utterly depraved," and then she defines evil like this. There is great evil in the world, such as war, rape, murder, racism, oppression, but the majority of the world doesn't need God to see these things as evil or make a change.

So what are the great evils in the world, according to Lisa? And the answer is war, rape, murder, racism, oppression. Now all of these are ways that man harms man. You don't even need God in the picture in order to call those evil. Lisa doesn't seem to have a category for evil understood as the dishonoring, demeaning, disparaging, insulting of God, as infinitely worthy of honor.

It doesn't come into her picture. So let's do a thought experiment. Suppose there is no God, and Lisa is a super successful Adolf Hitler. Not saying she leans that way at all, just an experiment. Super successful Adolf Hitler. She is able not only to kill all the Jews in the world, but all the other non-Aryans.

Everybody in Africa, she kills. Everybody in China, she kills. Everybody in India, she kills. Everybody in South America, she kills. So she succeeds in orchestrating the murder of about 7 billion people, and the question is would she deserve eternal punishment in hell? And my answer is no, she wouldn't, for two reasons.

First, if there's no God and we are simply complex chemical and material animals, then there's no such thing as right and wrong anyway, or desert, or merit, blameworthiness, just different chemical reactions. But second, and more importantly for my point, she wouldn't deserve an infinitely long punishment because 7 billion murders are still finite, and a finite number of finite crimes doesn't deserve an infinite punishment.

In other words, when God is left out, there's no way to have an infinite crime deserving of an infinite punishment like hell or the cross. They would simply be unjust. But this is why God has spoken to us in the Bible. We will never understand the depth of our sinfulness without God's telling us what the problem is, which he has very clearly.

Lisa and I would never come up with this truth on our own. We must learn it from the Bible. And what God has said is this, "The essence of evil, what makes evil evil, is not harm done to man, but indignities done to God." Harm to man is horrible, but it is meant to be a vivid parable of the outrage of failing to honor God, failing to glorify God, failing to thank God as God.

So ask this question, if God is of infinite value, infinite beauty, infinite greatness, with all of his perfections uniting in an infinitely satisfying panorama of personal beauty and glory, then of what is he worthy from the human soul? That's the key question. And Jesus answers, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind." And Paul answered, "Whatever you do, whether you eat or whether you drink, not one minute of your life, but do it to the glory of God." And in another place, he said that he aims that Christ be magnified in his body, whether by life or by death.

Over and over again in the Bible, it's made plain that God created the world so that his infinitely valuable glory would be manifest in creation by the worshipful enjoyment of his creation. The essence of virtue, the essence of virtue, therefore, is to love and desire and prefer and treasure and enjoy and thus honor God above all things in this world.

And the essence of evil, essence of evil is loving and preferring and desiring and treasuring and enjoying anything above God. It's treason. And since God is of infinite worth and beauty and greatness and honor, infinite, the failure to love and treasure and enjoy him above all things is an infinite outrage worthy of infinite punishment.

This will make no sense where God is small and man is big. It will only make sense where people see God as great as he really is and see man, see ourselves and our outrageous God-belittling self-centeredness for what they are. Paul said both Jews and Greeks are under sin.

It is written, "None is righteous, no, not one." And then he explained what this failure is, this sin. He says in verse 23 of Romans 3, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." And you see how he moves immediately from the concept of sin to failing to embrace the glory of God as our supreme treasure.

And the reason I put it like that, failure to embrace the glory of God as our supreme treasure, the reason I put it like that is because just earlier back in chapter 1, verses 22 and 23, Paul describes the human race as claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of God for images.

There's the essence of evil. The outrage of the human race is not humans killing humans. That's not the outrage of the human race, but humans exchanging the glory of the immortal God for anything less. That's who we are. We are outrageous, treasonous, God-belittling, self-exalting rebels against God. And we are this way even in our so-called moral efforts to do good to other people while giving almost zero attention, zero affection, zero admiration to God and taking no delight in his glory.

God gave a glimpse of his rage toward such evil in these words from Jeremiah 2, 12 to 13, "Be appalled, O heavens," this is God talking, "Be appalled, O heavens, at this. Be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me." This is great evil.

"My people have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water." The great shock, the great appalling reality in the world is that humans have turned from God as the all-satisfying fountain of life and joy and tried to find it, not in God, but in what he made.

It is high treason and worthy of eternal punishment. That, Lisa, that, Lisa, is why we need a Savior. And I tremble with thankfulness that God in mercy sent his infinitely worthy Son to do what no mere man could ever do. Only a God-man can bear an infinite punishment for all who embrace him for the glorious one that he really is.

Amen. The great shock, the most wicked evil there is, the root behind all other evils, and the reason we wrong and harm one another is because we have turned away from God as our all-satisfying fountain of life and joy. That is so sobering. Thank you for that word, Pastor John, and thank you for the very honest question, Lisa.

I appreciate you articulating that for yourself and for the many, many people that you represent. This topic also raises that important question, "Is evil only evil when it harms other people?" That's a closely connected question, and that's coming up on the podcast in about a week on January 22nd, I believe.

Be watching for that one on the podcast. Is evil only evil when it harms others? A question that dovetails into this one from Lisa. But next up, "How should we best parent non-Christian teenagers? Should church attendance be required for an unbelieving teen who doesn't want to go?" It's a big question on the minds of a lot of parents.

It's up next on Wednesday. Until then, if you want to help us out, fill out our online survey. Several of you already had, and I thank you for doing that. If you want to join them, go to DesiringGod.org/survey. That's DesiringGod.org/survey. Thank you. � � � � �