Theology Matters

Archive for February, 2009

This is either fun or addictive or both. It’s causing me no end of headache, but I’m learning CSS and trying not to. I got the background like I want it, not I’m trying to figure out how to do cool things like make the posts translucent, keep the header fixed, and so forth. I think I need to rewrite the style.css file just so I can get a better grasp on what’s going on…Or not…

[Update!]

Well, it looks like I’m done for now. I found a cool program called Artisteer that creates a Wordpress blog design for you. After some heavy modification, I think I settled on something I like. The background was created by a cool program called Chaoscope. There are just a few tweaks I’d like to do (like making stuff transparent and fixing the header and sidebar) but I’m just not that motivated right now.

So, I am teaching a Sunday School class at my church called “Wonderful God, Mighty Savior” as a follow in to an introductory class I taught last term. We spent a few weeks talking about God, His nature, His attributes, His personality, and so forth and will be talking about how each person of the Trinity acts and plays a part in our salvation from birth to rebirth to death. In talking about God’s nature and attributes, One of the things we talked about was how to reconcile seemingly contradictory attributes like “love” and “wrath” or “love” and “hate”. In talking about God’s wrath, I said that the scariest thing about God’s wrath is not necessarily His hatred or His justice. To me, the scariest thing about God’s wrath is his patience. Think about it for a second. What is the purpose of God’s patience?

Romans 2:4 ESV Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

One purpose of God’s patience is to lead to repentance surely, but what is another?

Romans 9:22-24 ESV What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, (23) in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory– (24) even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

So, God’s patience is twofold then - one to lead us to repentance, but the other to lead to wrath. Going back to Romans 2 for a second:

Romans 2:5 ESV But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

God’s patience actually allows us to store up wrath for ourselves! Imagine that! And in the end, His wrath is either poured out on Christ…

Romans 3:21-26 ESV But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it– (22) the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: (23) for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, (24) and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, (25) whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. (26) It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

or on us…

John 3:36 ESV Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

And His wrath is born from patience. God has endured sin with longsuffering since that fateful day in Eden. Imagine the wrath that comes when He is patient no longer.

Imagine.