God is Primarily Holy
My thoughts on the topics brought up in this interview between Pastor Kendall Adams and William P. Young, the auther of ‘The Shack’.
1) Penal Substitutionary Atonement
My main problem with which this issue as addressed in the interview is that Kendall does not address the underlying issue. The underlying problem what Young has as well as probably the majority of people is that God is love. Now God is love (1 John 4:8). Love is an attribute of God but it not his primary quality.
God is first and foremost holy. The angels describe God as holy (Isaiah 6:3). Moses must take off his sandals when he approaches God b/c he is walking on holy ground (Ex. 3:5). God is set apart – he cannot be associated with sin. Isaiah fears for his life when he enters into the presence of God. (Isaiah 6:5) Isaiah does not run to him like a boy to his loving Father. He cowers and calls down cursing upon himself. I suspect that Isaiah did not primarily see God’s love but his holiness. Moses also cannot see God’s face otherwise he would die (Ex. 33:20). This is the most interesting case because it is here where God describes himself to Moses. (This is where it gets fun.)
The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.
Exodus 34:6-7.
God describes himself as compassionate and gracious, full of love and forgiveness. However he must also punish sin and he also punishes people. Why? Because God is primarily holy. He cannot stand sin. He cannot be in its presence. He must punish the guilty. He must punish sinful mankind for their sin which is death (Ro. 6:23).
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8.
God loves us so much that he would send his own son Jesus to die in our place as our penal substitutionary atonement. He endured the punishment that we deserved because God is love. Someone had to be punished for sin for that is who God is so instead of punishing us for our sins, God punished Jesus.
This shows an even greater love. He not only pardons our sin which is a form of his love, he also demonstrates justice and sacrifices his son in our place. Jesus willfully dies instead of us. His holiness adds another dimension to his love because he bears our punishment for us.
Many people call into question God when he does things that appear unloving. God has so much more than our present state in mind. We need an accurate understand of God if we want to begin to understand how and why God works.