'You have been told that God is a loving, gracious, merciful, kind, compassionate, wonderful, and good sky fairy who runs a day care in the sky and has a bucket of suckers for everyone because we're all good people. That is a lie... God looks down and says 'I hate you, you are my enemy, and I will crush you,' and we say that is deserved, right and just, and then God says 'Because of Jesus I will love you and forgive you.' This is a miracle.' -Mark Driscoll
2 comments:
Possibly a tad overstated (presumably to make the point) after all, Jonah 4 is in the Bible. The Lord IS compassionate and gracious to his enemies... The lie isn't believing he is compassionate and gracious, the lie is believing that means he's all father christmasy and has no wrath on sin. But God's default position is his steadfast hesed committed stubborn love worked out in his grace to us. . Jonah as a whole book is pretty clear on that.. Sure, we only get that cos of Jesus, but that's God's purpose for his people, it's not like he's persuaded into loving us by Jesus, it's that Jesus is how he is able to pour out his love out on us. He came for us whilst we were his enemies. Yes we need to know that God is rightly angry at our sin, and that Jesus is our ONLY hope. But I think he could be misconstrued as saying God isn't compassionate and gracious, and that's just a lie.
Yeah I agree. This was my intial thought when I first read the quote.
I think Driscoll is just emphasising the point (maybe he overstates it) that God's grace and love can only come through Christ and without Christ the only thing God can give us is righteous hatred in the form of wrath.
Also he says: 'God is loving, gracious, merciful, kind.....because we're all good people'. Obivously this is lie because grace is not dependent on our goodness but stands alone as a free gift.
I shall post with more wisdom in the future, thanks Kath!
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