How Could Jesus Save Us from God's Wrath?

Tom: Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. We are going through Dave Hunt’s book Seeking and Finding God. We’ve been doing it for a number of weeks, and, Dave, we’re right to my favorite chapter. I’m excited—we’re going to be talking about the gospel. Chapter 7’s entitled, “What Is the Gospel?” Well, first sentence, we’ll start with that, Dave: “What is the gospel that saves and from what does it save us?” We might as well get down to the basics here.

Dave: Right. I imagine a lot of people wonder. You want to get saved—saved from what, you know? Saved from our sins and the consequences of it. Saves us from God’s judgment upon sin. And the gospel, of course—well, that depends upon what you’re being saved from and how you’re going to be saved—it would tell how we are going to be saved, and to understand that, we would have to go back to the Garden of Eden, I guess, wouldn’t we?

Tom: Dave, we’ve mentioned this before, we talk about the whole Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. We spend most of our time in the New Testament; that’s fine. But you don’t understand the gospel, you don’t understand our nature—how we got to be where we are today—without going back to chapter 1 of Genesis—actually, the first couple of chapters of Genesis.

Dave: Mm-hmm. Genesis, of course—these are the foundational chapters in that book. This is the explanation of the whole thing, and we have a lot of problems with theistic evolution, for example, denying that the flood was world-wide—the foundation for everything that the rest of the Bible deals with is found right there. The first few chapters of Genesis tell us of the creation of man, and then his separation from God, and what went wrong. All the rest of the Bible is about what God is doing, has been doing, and how He is going to bring man back to Himself. So, Genesis, I think—certainly it introduces us to God; it introduces us to the creation; introduces us to Satan, unfortunately, coming in the form of a serpent; it introduces us to sin, rebelling against God…

Tom: Seduction, as well…

Dave: Yes, the seduction of Satan. God gave man the easiest command He could possibly give him. I don’t know how many thousands or millions, maybe, of trees there were; I don’t know how large this garden was, but every kind of fruit—it must have been fabulous, Tom. The taste buds of Adam and Eve would be a lot better than ours now, and that fruit—wow! No chemicals, all-natural, the original trees as God created them, and they could eat of every tree except one. God was giving them a test. He wasn’t tempting them; God does not tempt man, trying to get man to do evil, but He tests man, to see whether man will obey Him. And it was the easiest command you could possibly give: “Just eat of any of these trees, thousands of them, but here’s one tree—don’t eat of that one.” You couldn’t ask for an easier command, and they didn’t keep it.

Well, the Bible, I think, indicates the difference between Adam and Eve: Eve was deceived, the Bible says. She was deceived by the serpent who said, “God’s holding out on you. You can become one of the gods, too.” Of course, this is what Satan had decided: “I will be like the Most High.” He didn’t say he was going to be over God, he wasn’t going to replace God, but he was going to be equal with God.

Tom: Lucifer in heaven.

Dave: Right. You get that in Isaiah 14 and other places. And you could say in one stroke, he did away with monotheism, one God, and introduced polytheism—there could be many gods—and then he tells Eve, “You can be one of the gods, too, and that is going to open up fabulous possibilities.”

Tom: Dave, it seems the seduction is really a seduction—it begins with, “Did God say?”

Dave: Right.

Tom: So, now you’re undermining God’s authority, to begin with. And then, of course, he rejects God’s authority. “You will surely not die….” But let’s go back to the penalties. Genesis:2:17But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
See All..., 18, right in there: “The day you eat thereof…”

Dave: “…you will surely die.” Adam and Eve didn’t know what death was. They had never seen it. Now, of course, there are those who teach theistic evolution. They say death had been around. I guess Adam and Eve would have seen animals dying and so forth, because they believe in theistic evolution, that these animals had been evolving and dying, evolving and dying, and finally, when they got close enough to humanoids, then God put a human soul and spirit in them. Now, that is not what the Bible says. You cannot reconcile that with God creating Adam out of the dust of the earth, and then breathing into his nostrils the breath of life. Adam is all alone at that point—Eve has not been created—and God creates Eve after Adam has been on this earth for some time, we don’t know how long. He has named the animals and so forth, and he has exhibited loneliness, which of course God knew would be the case, and God says, “It’s not good for man to be alone. I will make him a helper, or partner,” and He put him into a deep sleep and out of a rib He created Eve. So, Eve really came from man, and Eve was created for man, as the Scripture says. “Man was not created for woman, but the woman was created for the man.” Now, you cannot reconcile that with two critters, male and female, evolving and dying, evolving and dying—there is no way to put millions of years onto this earth. But that’s what Hugh Ross does and other theistic evolutionists—they teach it in our seminaries. [To] my understanding, Hugh Ross has been on James Dobson’s program more than once, and I understand that Dobson—maybe this is not true, I hope it’s not true—will not have Ken Ham on his program who teaches creation—not theistic evolution, but creation. And, as the Bible says, “By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin.” That’s Romans 5. So how could there be death before Adam sinned? We’ve got to go back to the Bible. Let’s believe what the Bible says and, Tom, if I cannot accept what the Bible in plain language says about the origin of man, why should I accept what it says about the destiny of man? And if I cannot accept what it says about the entrance of sin into this world, and how it separated man from God, why should I believe what the Bible says about the solution to sin and the way man will be reconciled to God?

Tom: Dave, this is a little aside, but you sort of opened the door. There are a number of really well-known and highly esteemed Christians in the category of apologetics, even, who—Hugh Ross has them listed on his website as promoting the Old Age theory versus the Young Earth theory. Now, is that a problem?

Dave: Well, the problem is, you have consequences to an Old Age. How did sin enter in, and when did sin enter in? Adam wasn’t here? Adam got created later? There are just many, many problems to that. The Bible says the evening and the morning were the first day, evening and the morning the second day—doesn’t sound like ages. We don’t need ages, you see? The only reason you would need to propose millions of years is because you’ve been intimidated by science, which says it took millions of years. Why did it take millions, billions of years in order to evolve these critters? And that is a most inefficient and cruel way for God to create anything. You’ve got them that they’re poorly formed and they’re dying because they can’t survive, survival of the fittest and natural selection—natural selection, why do you need natural selection when God can do this with a word? I’m getting angry, Tom, because it’s doing away with what God says in His Word. Why can’t I believe what God says in His Word? “Well, because I don’t think it could happen that way.” I think God, who created this universe, probably knows a little bit more about how He did it than these scientists who are struggling to go back and figure it out on their own. Because, Tom, what’s the point of trying to figure out how this happened when God has told us that He created it? “By faith, we understand the worlds were framed by the word of God,” period. God spoke it into existence. A lot of reasons, Tom, but I guess that’s too much depth to go into. We want to get into the gospel, yeah.

Tom: So, Genesis:2:17But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
See All...,18: “The day you eat thereof, you will surely die.” Death. What is death? Separation, right?

Dave: Well, God is the giver of life. Life is in God. There’s no life except from God. We don’t even know what life is. Far as I know, Tom, I haven’t heard it from any medical scientists, haven’t heard it from anybody. We begin dying as soon as we’re born. Why? What is death? What is life? The Bible says God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, whatever that is. Man became a living soul, not just the body, but there’s a soul and a spirit inside man. There’s a person inside that makes the choices, does the thinking, and so forth. That’s not a product of the brain—we’ve been over that many times; the brain does not originate your thoughts or you would be the prisoner of your brain, wondering, “What is my brain going to think of next?” Well, you couldn’t even wonder, because the brain would do the wondering for you, and we use the brain like a computer to operate our body, so it’s a…an eternal being created by God to live in this body that God has formed from the dust of the ground.

Tom: But it’s dying, you said.

Dave: Well, because they disobeyed, they rebelled against God, and they were separated from God, the Giver of life. So death is separation from God ultimately. Physical death is separation from this physical body. Spiritual death, which happened to Adam instantly, if we’re going to believe the Bible, the very day (or the moment is what the Bible really means), “the day you eat thereof, you will die. You rebel against Me, you are separated from Me by sin. We’re out of touch, Adam,” and you hear the pathos, the voice of God, as He cries out, “Adam, where are you?” God doesn’t know where Adam is? He can’t find him? He doesn’t know which tree he’s hiding behind? No. “Adam, what have you done? Where are you now? Look, you’re hiding from Me now.” This whole thing has been destroyed, and, Tom, I think any person who really contemplates life thinks about it deeply. You know this is not the way it should be.

Something went wrong back there. Something went horribly wrong. Yeah, we still have some comprehension of love, but it’s not the Hollywood love. Everything has been defiled. It’s been deformed. So, you have a young man sitting in a car with a young lady and he says, “Oh, I love you so much.” What he really means is, “I love me and I want you.” And he doesn’t even understand that, and she doesn’t figure that out until it’s too late. The whole thing went wrong. It’s like, I think the human race is haunted by a memory of a paradise—Paradise Lost, you know, by Milton. Powerful poem. Something went wrong. There’s no justice anymore. Truth has been trampled. So, this is where it happened. It was separation from God. God could still talk to man, still plead with man, still weep over man, but there was a barrier. So, all the rest of the Bible, the gospel, tells us about this: How is God going to solve this problem? God’s got a real problem on His hands, because…

Tom: Well, why couldn’t man just turn around? You know, Adam and Eve saying, “Hey, look, we blew it, forgive us, and let’s get on with business here.”

Dave: [chuckles] Because man is not really a man unless he’s indwelt by God. God has to be living through man. Man was created in the image of God. Well, it’s not on my own, because obviously man was supposed to reflect the love, the patience, the goodness, the kindness, the mercy, [the] compassion of God. Tom, it must have been a fantastic experience in the garden. There was no selfishness. Adam and Eve—I mean, the love that they had for one another and for God, it’s beyond our comprehension. But we will know it one day when we will be with Christ and we will be like Him, and there will be no more death…wow! It’s something to look forward to. But God creates man, and He loves man. He doesn’t want man to sin, He doesn’t want man to be separated. Somebody says, “Well, then why did He give them a command? If He hadn’t given him any command, then there wouldn’t have been any sin, would there?” I guess man could come up on his own with some idea. [chuckles] I don’t know that God gave Satan, Lucifer, a command, did He? But Lucifer conceived in his heart his rebellion.

But God is giving man—He’s making it as easy as He can, the easiest test: “Just don’t eat of this tree.” He’s testing man, because, Tom, it’s a difficult thought, but I’m sure sin had to enter. I think man had to die, he had to be separated from God so that he could be brought back to God in a new relationship. Sometimes people say, “Well, now, wait a minute, if man has free will, is he going to lose his free will in heaven? Well, if he still has free will in heaven, what is going to keep him from sinning in heaven, from rebelling in heaven? After all, Satan was the most beautiful, perfect being that God ever made, wisest and so forth, and he rebelled. Why wouldn’t it be conceived in heaven in the hearts of the redeemed somehow, some time, to rebel?” Well, Satan was never redeemed. He didn’t have a basis for love, gratitude; he was never made a new creature in Christ Jesus, he was never indwelt by Christ. See, man was indwelt by the Spirit of God, but now we’re indwelt by the Spirit of Christ. He has brought God and man together in one, and “we love Him because He first loved us.” And I don’t think we can understand God’s love without the cross, because we see there God’s love in relation to man’s sin, man’s rebellion. These are creatures, evil creatures—they would tear God from His throne. They have cried, “Away with Him!” They have crucified Christ. They’ve beaten Him and mocked Him, and yet He says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Tom, we’ve got everything just founded upon what happened in the Garden of Eden, and then upon God’s response, and I don’t like to go back and mention Calvinism again, but how can a Calvinist—well, Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will—“Well, man doesn’t make choices, God decides all of this, and God causes man to do this…” So, God commands man not to sin, then He causes man to sin, then He punishes man for sinning, and then He comes up with a plan for some men to be reconciled to Him, but most of them won’t be, and He’s predestined some to heaven and predestined some to hell, and you can’t even believe until you are regenerated, and God does it all. Then what’s the point of a reward? What is the point of the whole Bible with God pleading with people to whom He doesn’t give the grace? Tom, it’s a mystery. “Great is the mystery of godliness.” But the mystery of iniquity also is so incredible—that Christ would say, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” Well, He’s asking the Father to forgive sinners that He has already predestined to eternal torment? And God didn’t want to forgive them, otherwise He could have forgiven them; He could forgive anybody He wants by giving them irresistible grace if He wanted to, but He has decided He’s not going to forgive them because He sent them to hell or predestined them to hell, and then the Son of God is asking His Father to forgive them? What have we got? The Father doesn’t know what the Son wants and the Son doesn’t know what the Father wants. Or you have Paul saying, “I would go to hell if it would rescue, if it would save, my people, the Jews.” Paul, are you out of touch with God?

Well, Tom, on the one hand, it seems like we’ve gotten far afield, and on the other hand, we haven’t, because it’s all about “What is sin? How’d it enter into this world?” And it is profound…

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Dave: …it is beyond our comprehension. But we know this: we know that man must be in a right relationship with God to be a real man, and that involves obedience to Him, and if He does not obey God—he launches out on his own to do his own thing—God cannot have fellowship with that. So Paul argues in Romans, “How can God be just? He loves man, but how can He justly forgive sinners?” And that’s what the gospel is about.

Tom: Mm-hmm. And that’s the dilemma for man, going back to the Garden—you mentioned it earlier, from Genesis on, right after the Fall, it’s God’s plan to reconcile man to Himself.

Dave: Right.

Tom: If all of the Bible is about that…

Dave: That’s right.

Tom: …from chapter 3 onward, Dave, it’s all about God’s plan, it’s all about what only He can do, yet man, left to his own devices, he’s without hope.

Dave: Exactly. And in [Genesis] 3:15, of course, is the first promise of the Messiah, the Savior: “The seed of the woman.” Not the seed of man and woman together forming a cell, a new cell out of which man or woman will be formed; no, the seed of the woman, the virgin birth. God Himself is going to save man, but He can’t save man without becoming a man in order to represent man. “By one man sin entered into the world.” It’s by a man born of a virgin. God becoming man, Tom: it’s beyond our comprehension, and out of this comes a new race of men who will never sin again, who will be brought into God’s presence in the very image of Christ who is the image of God. God made man in His image. Now, that image is going to be restored, never to be lost. That’s the gospel. It is fantastic, Tom. It goes beyond my highest thought, I can’t even…But I contemplate, I think about it, and I say, “Lord, help me to understand more.”

Tom: Dave, this is just the beginning of trying to understand the gospel, as we’ll attempt to communicate it. Next week we’re going to deal with the basic elements of the gospel: who Christ is, who we are, and what Christ’s death accomplished.