COV LIFE BLOG

Psalm 7 – God’s Holy Anger Is Our Only Hope Against Injustice

Our theology-averse age has lost sight of divine vengeance. This doctrine doesn’t fit well in a soft, therapeutic, “best life now” kind of Christianity. There’s a lot of “blessing” in such a system, but little justice. Christ becomes a brand-consultant to the upwardly mobile. This doctrine is also largely missing in garden-variety “new way to be Christian” Christianity, which promises equity and grace, better social conditions, and radical acts, but little judgment of evil by the avenging king. Christ ends up a community organizer with a gift for resistance activism.
 
Such emaciated visions of Christian faith may still speak of divine love and Christ’s cross. But they fail to see that the cross is neither a mere display of affection nor an improvement program. The cross shows God unleashing grace in Christ as God upholds justice through Christ (Rom. 5:12–21).
 
As Christians, we should zealously desire the end of evil. We should pray for the abortion industry to be swallowed like Pharoah’s army in a sea of destruction. We should cry out for the cessation of racism. We should yearn for the end of murder, casual cruelty, genocide, sexual wickedness, and 10,000 other evils, and oppose them in word and deed.
 
Sin will not cease because of a vague trajectory in the cosmos toward goodness. The end of sin will come because Jesus will split the sky and make the whole earth his threshing floor (Rev. 20:11–21). This truth should inspire surging hope in the church. It should also drive us to evangelize all we can, remembering that the blunt force of the Christian doctrine of judgment has often awakened the slumbering. We do not want any sinner to taste the wrath of God. So, like the revivalist sermonizing of Jonathan Edwards many years ago, we pray, preach Christ, and implore fellow image-bearers to flee Sodom.
 
The promise of divine justice is glorious, but in the biblical story it yields to a still greater promise. This is the completion of our glorification (Rev. 21:21–27). In the new Jerusalem, we will worship the Lamb who atoned for sin, destroyed evil, and fulfilled the ancient prophecy by crushing the serpent’s head.
 
A skeptical culture asks us: Can you trust a God who punishes sin? We not only answer “yes”; we respond that we cannot trust a God who does not punish sin to the uttermost. How comforting, and how kind, of God to save us, protect us, and bring us all the way home.

Owen Strachan

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SCRIPTURES FOR THIS SUNDAY
Read Psalm 7. In numerous locations throughout this chapter you see David crying out for God’s justice. Why is God’s justice such a good thing? Do you pray for God’s justice on earth?

SONG FOR THIS WEEK
The Lion and the Lamb by Big Daddy Weave