Advent 2014: And He Shall Be Called . . . Son of God

This past Sunday was the third Sunday in Advent. We’ve been looking at names, or designations, for the coming child. First was “Jesus,” so called because, as the angel explained, “he will save his people from their sins.” Next, was Christ (“Anointed”), indicating that the child is the long-awaited messiah who would inaugurate an eternal and blessed rule. For the third Sunday, we consider the extraordinary title “the Son of God.”

There are several ways we could go with this: a consideration of the Trinity, or the two natures of Christ, or how the label Son of God was used for earthly rulers but was of a different and superior order for Jesus. What catches my attention, however, is the coming together of the meaning of the names “Jesus” and “Son of God” in Paul’s language at the beginning of Romans 8: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus . . . For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh . . .”

The fact that the Son took on our human existence is integrally involved with his saving us from our sins. We’ve all been so profoundly and inherently affected by the failings of our first parents that we’ve been rendered incapable of meeting the demands of the law. This places us inescapably under God’s wrath. But with the arrival of the Son of God in the “likeness of sinful flesh,” there was one who could meet the law’s demands and thus break the power of the law, sin and death. By our faith union with him we share in that victory. And what a victory it is! Paul can emphatically say that there is “NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

And to add to this gracious outcome we are instructed by Paul that the Son’s taking the law, sin and death on, was so “the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Not only are we saved from condemnation, we are also saved from a life of futile striving in our own strength to meet the law’s demands. We now have the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us enabling us to pursue the righteousness and holiness to which we are called.

What an amazing reversal of outcomes. A Christmas gift worthy of thanksgiving and celebration!

Is God's Wrath Justified?

Last night we finished a look at Hosea in our weekly Bible Study. Chapter 13 ends with a very disturbing image:
"Though he may flourish among his brothers,
the east wind, the wind of the Lord, shall come,
rising from the wilderness,
and his fountain shall dry up;
his spring shall be parched;
it shall strip his treasury
of every precious thing.
Samaria shall bear her guilt,
because she has rebelled against her God;
they shall fall by the sword;
their little ones shall be dashed in pieces,
and their pregnant women ripped open" (Hosea 13:15-16)

This is God's pronouncement upon the nation he had created, redeemed, and nurtured. Because of their persistent and unrelenting lack of repentance they would experience his unrelenting wrath. Before we charge God with unjustified cruelty we must remember that God understands the concept of appropriate retributive justice. He is the one who specified that "if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe" (Exodus 21:23-25). This is the biblical version of the punishment fitting the crime and is intended to rein in the darker impulses of people.

Given this we can only assume that the punishment that awaits the Northern Kingdom of Israel at the hands of the brutal Assyrians is appropriate to the offense. The crime against his majesty demands punishment of majestic proportions.