“I will execute great vengeance on them with wrathful rebukes; and they will know that I am the Lord when I lay My vengeance on them.” - Ezekiel 25:17
“There is no hell for any of us to fear outside of ourselves.” - Quillen Hamilton Shinn, Universalist Minister
“Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; by rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” - Jesus (Matthew 10:28)
In the nineteenth century (1800’s) there was a Unitarian minister who saw it as his goal to share what the Unitarians call “good news.” The news, on its face, appears to be rather good: God has unending mercy and love for all of mankind and will never punish by sending them to hell. How blissful! We get to do whatever we want for our short time on the earth and then we will be rewarded by total pleasure, love, and whatever else falls under the category of paradise in your mind, once the body has broken down. No matter your religion, creed, background, or association, God will extend his hand to you when your breath runs out. This man, deemed, “St. Paul of the Universalist Church” spent his life passing out this message across the United States, and his legacy lives on.
How does this “gospel” sit with you? If we move past our own preconceived notions and personal appetite for freedom from accountability, the hollowness of the message is evident. Much like having candy for every meal will inevitably ruin the taste of candy, mercy without wrath will never equate to love. In fact, it ruins the idea of love.
If someone tortures and kills your mother and the judge lets them off the hook, not only does it put other peoples’ mothers in danger, the judge acts unjustly toward you. By failing to punish the one that is guilty, in a very real sense, you are being punished. By “mercifully” avoiding the ickiness of punishment for one person, someone else is punished. If it is not the perpetrator of the crime, then oftentimes it will be the victim. Love requires justice! Perhaps this is why the Psalmist could call out to God in this way:
“Arise, Lord, in your anger;
rise up against the rage of my enemies.
Awake, my God; decree justice.
…Vindicate me…”
-Psalm 7:6 and 8b
This is where it gets more personal for us. Most likely, (I hope) you do not identify yourself with the torturer and murderer of someone’s Mom, but that does not make you innocent. Instead of attacking another person, we have repeatedly (almost unceasingly), made attacks on the very One who created and loved us. This unfolds the necessity of the Old Testament Law. The point of the Old Testament’s code of conduct is not to make a way to crawl back into God’s good graces, nor is it a set of rules that we are meant to allegorize and find the secret metaphor for our lives.
The goal of the 613 Laws of Moses is to make us realize how thoroughly guilty we are, and how unable we are to approach the good God who (for some reason) wants to draw near to us, despite our rebellion. When we approach the do’s and do not’s, we are supposed to look at them as if they were holding up a mirror and showing the incompetence and shortcomings in our lives, so that we can be graciously guided to Jesus’ bloodied feet on that cross. (See Galatians 3:24).
Many suggest that the Old Testament God of wrath and punishment was replaced before the beginning of the New Testament. I’m not sure if those people have read the words of Jesus or Paul or any other New Testament author. Even if this concept was defendable, whoever replaced Him would not be a God of justice, nor a God of love.
Love does not let lawlessness go unpunished. Love takes the punishment on itself and offers a way out for the guilty party. Love does not ignore anti-love. Love offers a way out and allows the guilty to choose whether to continue rebelling (breaking the heart of the lawmaker) or to have their guilt reassigned to One that has no reason to be punished.
The idea that hell and punishment have been abandoned and replaced by plastered-on smiles and participation awards is not only not loving, there could be no love without hell and punishment. Hatred, warfare, oppression, and murder cannot be ignored but must be conquered. Thanks be to the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ that our Judge embodies the wonderful wrath of God and that He has offered safety from that deserved wrath to both us and our neighbors.