Let me start off by saying, that if you didn't take part in Secret Church 2013, you really missed a blessing. Ask anyone who was there and they'll tell you it was intense. Seriously, if you dropped your pen, you were likely to miss about 5 pages of notes. However, despite the intensity of David Platt's teaching, he said a lot of really good things and now that I've had time to go back and unpack them, they are really starting to sink in.
The one thing that I think has stuck in my mind more than anything else I heard last night was a comment Platt made about our tendency to pussy-foot around the idea of hell. He made the point that we must declare the doctrine of hell unapologetically. He said when it comes to hell, "We need to stop apologizing for God" and "We need to start apologizing to God."
Platt quoted from Francis Chan's book Erasing Hell,
“Like the nervous kid who tries to keep his friends from seeing his drunken father, I have tried to hide God at times. Who do I think I am? The truth is, God is perfect and right in all that He does. I am a fool for thinking otherwise. He does not need nor want me to ‘cover’ for Him. There’s nothing to be covered. Everything about Him and all He does is perfect.” - Francis Chan
I have to confess that many times I have reacted the same way. We are so afraid of offending those outside of the faith that we are embarrassed with the idea that people will be eternally damned for turning away from God. We are embarrassed with the idea that God would have the nerve to send them to hell for rejecting Him.
"God is love, isn't He? He wouldn't really send anyone to hell, would He?"
As evangelical Christians who accept the authority of Scripture, we've found ourselves in an uncomfortable place. On one side our commitment to the Bible demands that we believe that God will send the unrepentant to hell. But on the other side our emotions urge us to distance ourselves from such a seemingly extreme measure.
Platt quotes Ajith Fernando on this point,
“Evangelicals are often apologetic about the biblical view of retribution. They say that they wish that what the Bible says about the punishment of sinners is not true, that they find it hard to accept this doctrine emotionally, but that because the Bible teaches it they are forced to believe it. This type of thinking is understandable, given our human frailty and inability to fully understand God’s ways. We do not see the seriousness of sin as strongly as God sees it. But many today seem to be proud that their hearts rebel against the judgment of God. The message they convey to an outsider is that they think God is wrong and unfair, but that’s what he is going to do, so they reluctantly include it in their statement of faith.” - Ajith Fernando
Did you catch that, "[we] think God is wrong and unfair, but that's what he is going to do, so [we] reluctantly include it in [our] statement of faith." This is where the problem lies. We have placed ourselves in a place of judgment over the actions of Almighty God. We don't approve, but we have to go along with what God says because we're powerless to do anything about it.
Platt argues that the ultimate reason for why we view the doctrine of hell and divine retribution in such a way is that we have too low a view of God and too high a view of man. What happens when we don't have a proper perspective of God and man, is we tend to level two things that are NOT equal. Sin against God is so heinous that only one act of sin is enough to condemn one to hell forever. It is who the crime is against more than what the crime is that often determines the severity of punishment.
Platt shared a story from a Christian brother working in an Arab country, that illustrates this point. The brother was riding in a taxi having a conversation with the driver, who did not believe that he had done enough bad to be sent to hell. So, he asked the driver, "What would happen if I slapped you?"
He said, "I'd kick you out of the cab."
Again, he asked, "What would happen if I slapped that police officer over there?"
The driver said, "He'd probably beat you up and then throw you in jail."
Then he asked, "What would happen if I slapped our king?"
The driver said, "You would be killed!"
The Christian worker then said, "You see the actual offense is the same in each case, but the one against whom it is directed determines the severity of the punishment."
Likewise, because of the infinite, matchless, unapproachable, inconceivable majesty of God, any offense against Him is deserving of infinite punishment.
Again, Platt quotes Chan,
“Would you have thought to rescue sinful people from their sins by sending your Son to take on human flesh? Would you have thought to enter creation through the womb of a young Jewish woman and be born in a feeding trough? Would you have thought to allow your created beings to torture your Son, lacerate His flesh with whips, and then drive nails through His hands and feet? It’s incredibly arrogant to pick and choose which incomprehensible truths we embrace. No one wants to ditch God’s plan of redemption, even though it doesn’t make sense to us. Neither should we erase God’s revealed plan of punishment because it doesn’t sit well with us. As soon as we do this, we are putting God’s actions in submission to our own reasoning, which is a ridiculous thing for clay to do.” - Francis Chan
That really hit me. We're okay with the incomprehensible idea of God sacrificing His Son to save a bunch of sorry wretches like us. But when it comes to another idea that we can't comprehend, eternal retribution, that we don't like, we feel justified in questioning God. When I realized that I was holding on to ideas like this, may not overtly but maybe somewhere in the back of my mind, I was humbled.
So, I had to confess that I needed to stop apologizing for God and the fact that one day He is going to exact retribution on those who have reject Him. Instead, I needed to apologize to God for sitting in judgment over Him, a place that I have no right to sit.
God isn't looking for apologists, He's just looking for obedient servants.
