The Redemptive Power of Violence

I saw this article from ChristianityToday.com about how many of what we might consider "evangelical" scholars are shying away from the idea of atonement as penal substitution -- Jesus takes the wrath of God that should have been directed at us.

Two years after publishing his controversial book The Lost Message of Jesus (Zondervan, 2004), [Steve] Chalke wrote, "The church's inability to shake off the great distortion of God contained in the theory of penal substitution, with its inbuilt belief in retribution and the redemptive power of violence, has cost us dearly." Chalke and others say that substitution, at worst, produces a twisted justification of violence and encourages selfish, individualistic abuses of power.

The phrase "redemptive power of violence" is, to me, something that I can't shy away from (as much as I might want to). Think about Noah, think about Lot, think about the Israelites fleeing from the Egyptians. All of them would be grateful for the redemptive power of God's violence.

We tackled Revelation 15 in class today, where the people of God are standing beside the Sea of Glass and Fire, singing the Song of Moses and the Lamb. The Sea, for them, is an instrument of salvation -- they've been redeemed from the earth through following the Lamb to the end (14:4). But for the wicked, the Sea is the instrument of judgment -- for they will all be cast into it (or something like it) for all eternity.

Violence is part of God's program. The Israelites could not take the Promised Land as God desires them to do until they had completely annihilated the Canaanites. And it was their failure to do so that ultimately caused them to go into exile.

Our problem with this idea is that we put our feelings of violence upon God. Our violence is capricious, destructive, and self-serving. God's violence is righteous, redemptive, and God-serving. That's why He can get away with it, and we can't.

To me, this is the power and beauty of Good Friday: the day when God's righteous violence turned upon His Son. Christ endured the wrath that God that should have leveled on me. Unfortunately, the instrument of salvation will also be, for the wicked, the stone that makes them stumble (1 Pet 2:8) or folly to those who are perishing (1 Cor 1:18). The cross will be for them the instrument of their destruction.

"Surely this is the Son of God!" Oh, that more would say this with us, and be redeemed from God's coming wrath.