Why Should We Return To The God Of Wrath And Grace?

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Isaiah 59 14, justice is turned back and righteousness stands far away, for truth has stumbled in the public square.

It's clear now that America has just been defined. The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. Those are the words of Winston Churchill. Today we hear the last of five interviews with Pastor Erwin Lutzer along with Pastor Larry McCarthy. They are discussing why law must be based on truth. The bottom line in Pastor Lutzer's book, The Eclipse of God, our nation's disastrous search for a more inclusive deity.

Don't forget this book can be yours. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Now, with a final time together, let's listen as Pastors Erwin Lutzer and Larry McCarthy wrap up our look at the need to ground law in transcendent truth. Hi, this is Pastor Lutzer. Thank you so much for joining us today.

We have a very special program. I have in the studio my friend, one of the pastors here at the Moody Church by the name of Larry McCarthy, and he and I have been dialoguing on my new book entitled The Eclipse of God, our nation's disastrous search for a more inclusive deity. Now, I need to emphasize that we are going to be covering two chapters today, and that's a tall order, so we're only going to be hitting the highlights. We're going to be talking about the need for God when it comes to law, but also that last chapter entitled Returning to the God of Wrath and Grace, not Unconditional Love. Wow, we sure have a lot to cover today, don't we, Larry? Go ahead, read the chapter title.

I'm going to get right to it. Chapter 10, Returning to God as Lawgiver, Not as Vacillating Ruler. All right, Pastor, God as Lawgiver. This is a sobering chapter, but you've got to explain it to me. Why return to Nazi Germany as the example of the point that you're trying to make regarding a country and its laws? First of all, Larry, I want to say to our audience that before you were hired here as a pastor at the Moody Church, you were an attorney. Guilty.

That means yes. So you know, of course, that the whole issue of law is incredibly important. Why did I return to Nazi Germany? Thankfully, America is not Nazi Germany. And I think that throwing around the term, you know, he's a Nazi, whether it's done by one political party or the other, I think it's very unfortunate.

I think that's a whole separate category and we should stay away from that kind of rhetoric. But that being said, the reason that I return to Nazi Germany is because it's the best example that I know of what happens when law is disconnected from transcendent truth. Because what happened in Nazi Germany is Hitler became the lawgiver. Everyone, I think, knows the story of how the Reichstag burned in 1933. And Hitler then proclaimed that he would be in charge. He took away all the personal rights of people, freedom of assembly, freedom of press, freedom of criticism of the Reich.

All that was taken away. And he established people's courts. And this is so important for all of us to know that when people are confronted with chaos on the one hand or strict law and order on the other, they will choose law and order because you can't live with chaos. What a fascinating thought. Fear, the threat of fear and chaos to proactively institute laws to take control.

Exactly. And the people accepted it. They said it is much better that we give up our personal freedoms and live than live in chaos.

I mean, there were soup lines in Munich and in Berlin. There were gangs that were controlling things. Hitler came in. He was going to be a strong leader. And the people supported him. They did not know where the end was going to come with all of his killing of the Jews.

That, of course, was hidden from them initially. But here's the point. Hitler became the lawgiver. And once you have man making laws that are disconnected, as I've emphasized before, from transcendent values, you can go in any direction you wish. Pastor, that suggests that just because it's lawful doesn't make it right. Is that what you're saying?

That's exactly what I'm saying. I think you think today, for example, we have a great debate about abortion. But even when abortion is lawful, it does not make it right. And to your point, the killing of the Jews was lawful. Because Hitler declared that they were untermensch.

In German, that means subhuman. And so you could kill them without reprisal. I make the statement in the chapter that has often been quoted that says this, show me your laws and I will show you your God. If there is no law above the Supreme Court of the United States, the Supreme Court is God. If there's no law above me, I become my own God. So what happened here is Hitler, in godlike fashion, made laws that made the killing of the Jews legal. It's a fascinating story.

It's also fascinating to see how the church did initially stand against him. I have, of course, all of this in the book, but we must hurry on. And this is where I want to go very quickly.

Take your time, brother. Let's go to Nurnberg. Here are 21 Nazis on trial. And there are 15 Protestants and six Catholics.

Yes. And there is a chaplain there. Oh, Larry, this is so fascinating.

I can't tell the story, though, because it takes too much time. There is a chaplain there who basically believed the gospel and he held meetings for these Nazis and was shocked to discover that most of them could quote the Lord's Prayer. Most of them knew Christian doctrine.

In other words, these people grew up, of all things, in the church. Yes. So here is the issue, and this relates to law. The question was, by whose laws should they be tried? By American law? By British law?

How shall they be tried? Well, isn't that an interesting thing, because, you see, they argued we aren't lawbreakers. We're just obeying the law. We're obeying the law of our country and the law of our flag.

So there was an American attorney by the name of Robert Jackson who gave a speech. And what he argued was that there is a law above the law. There is such a thing as transcendent law, which actually affects and should be recognized by all cultures at all times.

Yes. And if we had the time, we would show that actually you have to believe in God to believe in such transcendent law, because it cannot arise from the individual countries, because countries have different laws, and certainly Nazi Germany had its own laws. It's a fascinating chapter in how you just methodically lay out the intentionality of creating laws that allow for control. And coming back to his closing argument, so to speak, that it isn't that you're not a citizen of the UK or a citizen of Germany that's important. There is a law that transcends it. Exactly.

Well done. And in the book, what I do is I quote a number of verses from the Old Testament regarding law and regarding justice. And I'm going to read only one that comes to us from Isaiah 59, because this, I think, is critical. Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away, for truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter.

What God is saying is this, that justice has to be based on truth. Let's back off and look at our own culture for just a moment, okay? Okay. You have all kinds of views as to what is just. You have marriage justice, which is, of course, same-sex marriage. You have reproductive justice, which is abortion. You have environmental justice, which is the Green New Deal. You have all of these different kinds of justice.

You have economic justice, which is socialism. So, unless laws are based on truth, it can go, justice can go in any direction. In the book of Judges, you remember, it says, each did what was right in their own eyes.

We could translate each did that which was just in their own eyes. Now, what I do in the rest of the chapter is I trace a little bit about law in America through Blackstone and others, and how dangerous it is if the law ever becomes weaponized in a way that it is applied inconsistently. And if you were to take the verses that I quote in the book, you would discover that the thing that just jumps out at you is over and over again. God is saying, don't give the rich preference. Don't, you know, despise the widow. Be just to her.

Treat her like you would anyone else. God is always saying that fairness is based on equal treatment under the law. Now, that's difficult to do in a fallen world, but that should be our goal. We want to get to chapter 11, but it's a fascinating read, particularly for anyone who's interested in how legislation is promulgated, and in particular, if you look at the nomenclature – that is, what is the end result of what it's trying to achieve. And I love that you've underscored this.

Just because something's lawful doesn't make it right. That's right. And we really need to hear that. All right. It's to chapter 11, Larry. It's the last major chapter in the book.

Give us the title. Let's do that. Returning to the God of wrath and grace, not unconditional love. Hmmm. Wrath and grace? Wrath and grace.

Now, here's the thing. You don't have to listen to a lot of preaching today to hear over and over again that God loves us unconditionally. And I take issue with that.

Okay. In John 3 16, God loved the world he sent his son. But that love is not unconditional in the sense that somebody says, well, I'm sleeping with my girlfriend, but God loves me unconditionally, so he accepts all that I do unconditionally. So we have created a situation in which God loves us unconditionally. Is that a misunderstanding of grace?

It is, I think. We're going to get to grace in a moment. But in my book, what I do is I quote various passages of scripture. We have to hear those passages. I mean, God says I'm angry with the wicked every day, and he says some very harsh things about wicked people.

Sure doesn't sound like unconditional love to me. So what I do in this chapter, Larry, as you well know, having read it, I take a deep dive into a subject that we don't hear much about, and that is the wrath of God. And I discover that Jesus said, he who believes on me has everlasting life. He who does not obey the Son shall not see life. But the wrath of God abides on him. And when I read the book of Romans, it says in chapter 1, now the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness, and it lists all those sins that we know about that we emphasize, but we are born as children of wrath of all things. What we must understand, Larry, is that God hates sin in a way that you and I cannot comprehend.

He hates it with a vengeance. And for us, sin oftentimes is not that big a deal. And that's why in this chapter, as I want to emphasize, I take that deep dive into the human heart. Now, if there's someone listening who at this point is very discouraged, keep listening, my friend, because we are going to get to grace, and we'll see the beauty of grace against the backdrop of sin. But I want to linger here about the sin in the human heart for just a moment. The fact is that you and I are capable of any evil that has ever been committed, given the right circumstances, given the right context.

In Cologne, Germany, there is a monument, or I should say that there's a museum to Nazism, and it has mirrors. What it's saying is this, that when you see this evil, remember it could have been you. Believe it or not, Solzhenitsyn said that. He said, under different circumstances, I could be among the evil people that we talk about.

This is so sobering. So the point that I emphasize is this, that our view of sin determines our view of grace. The reason that grace is so superficial for many people is that they have never really seen their sin. Now I think I have time to do this, but in the book I quote the message of Jonathan Edwards. He preached America's most famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Larry, I have to tell you that there are people in our seminaries who tell their students to read this sermon so that they might learn how not to preach. Are you going to read a few lines? I'm going to read a few lines, and I'm going to suggest that we should look at this, and I don't want to preach this message the way it is preached, but Jonathan Edwards has a point.

And for those who have never heard it, let me give a few lines to you, and then we're going to talk about grace. There is nothing that keeps wicked men any one moment out of hell but the mere pleasure of God. They deserve to be cast into hell so that divine justice never stands in the way. It makes no objection against God using his power at any moment to destroy them. Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they won't bear their weight and those places are not seen. And then it goes on from there.

People say, how harsh. Yes, okay, I get that. But at the end of the sermon, he talks about grace. This is the opportunity for you to believe the gospel. And the point of this chapter is this, that we will never see grace as amazing unless we understand the nature of sin. It is when sin becomes bitter that grace becomes sweet. And we have a lot of people who are praying to accept Jesus as Savior, and then afterwards there's no evidence that they have believed.

And I've thought about that. I think one of the reasons is because they've never really seen their need of a Savior. They thought that believing in Jesus is a nice idea, he will help them.

They don't understand that it's not just a matter of Jesus throwing us a life preserver and then say, hang on and I'll pull you to shore. The gospel is Jesus getting into the water with us, scooping us up out of our sin, which we don't fully see, but what is there, and he takes us to the Father. And now I want to emphasize the fact of grace and unconditional love. I do believe that unconditional love is true of those who are saved. John 17, Jesus prays, thou hast loved them even as thou hast loved me. So that is unconditional love. But for the unsaved out there to think that they have God on the hook because he loves them unconditionally is very deceptive. Paul says they're abusers of grace, but this is so illuminating that you can't begin to appreciate, to appropriate grace independent of understanding God's wrath.

Exactly. Boy, you have just summarized this chapter. And I want to emphasize a story that relates, you know, we were talking about Nazism in this program a few moments ago.

All right, come with me to Nurnberg. Here is this chaplain who believes the gospel. He was sent there by America. Of course, he was a man who was a German.

There is a story that has been written about this that I quote in the book. And he believes, now get ready for this, Larry. He believes that six, if not seven, of these Nazis repented of their sins and believed the gospel.

Let's take Rybakov, Hitler's foreign minister. Before he died, and I'm paraphrasing, but he said this, I commit my soul to the Lord Jesus Christ who died for me and whose blood was shed on my behalf. And the last words before he was hung, he was the first one to be hung. He said to this chaplain, I'll see you again. Now that's the scandal of grace. We read this and we say it's not supposed to be that way.

If anybody deserves hell, it's these people. But that's why grace is amazing. Amen.

And it's a scandal. I want to emphasize as we conclude, I'll see if I can quote it, one of my favorite songs. Marvelous grace of our loving Lord, grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt. Yonder on Calvary's mount out poured. There where the blood of the lamb was spilled. Grace, grace, marvelous grace.

And on the song goes emphasizing that grace is truly marvelous because our sin is so horrendous. I wish we could have continued this discussion because there's much more in this chapter and much more in the book that I've written entitled The Eclipse of God. And what I want to emphasize is that for a gift of any amount, we're making this book available for you. Then of course, when you have this resource, you can read it again and again, you can underline it, you can share it with your friends.

If ever there is a message that this nation needs, it is that we return to the God of the Bible and not the God of our personal preferences. So for a gift of any amount, this book can be yours. Here's what you do. Go to RTWoffer.com. RTWoffer, of course that's all one word.

RTWoffer.com or pick up the phone right now and call us at 1-888-218-9337. The title of the book, The Eclipse of God. And thank you so much for standing with us. We here at Running to Win are deeply appreciative. We do not take your prayers and your gifts for granted. This is not the ministry of a man, of a church, or an organization.

This ministry belongs to God and the shareholders, so to speak, are the people who listen, the people who pray, the people who get involved. Remember the title of the book, The Eclipse of God, our nation's disastrous search for a more inclusive deity. I trust that your heart has been challenged and warmed even as we have been discussing these vital issues to help us to understand that God is God.

We aren't. God doesn't wait for the news. Through his hand of providence, of course, he makes the news. And not only that, be encouraged my friend because, believe it or not, as we face a very uncertain future, God has already lived our tomorrows. So if our lives are in his hands, we are secure all the way to the finish line. Pastor Erwin Lutzer, along with Pastor Larry McCarthy, with the last of five interviews on Erwin Lutzer's book, The Eclipse of God, our nation's disastrous search for a more inclusive deity. Next time on Running to Win, we begin a series on slandering Jesus, lies being told about the man who claimed to be the Son of God.

Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. This is the last day for us to make The Eclipse of God book available. It's our thank you for your gift of any amount to support Running to Win. Call us at 1-888-218-9337. That's 1-888-218-9337. Online, go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com. Or write to Running to Win, Moody Church, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.