Coffee Cup Theology

Rejoicing In Who God Is

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by

Brance
in

The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance;
he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked. (Psalm 58:10)

This is not a popular sentiment. It strikes us as wrong somehow. Yet here it is, in scripture.

The context of the entire psalm makes clear this is God’s vengeance against the wicked. Even so, how can the righteous rejoice in someone else’s destruction?

First, notice that the righteous only “sees the vengeance”, he doesn’t act it. He doesn’t seek vengeance for himself. He has no part in carrying out acts of vengeance himself. So this is not a spirit of revenge, getting back at people who have wronged you. This is something else.

What I think it is, is the righteous rejoicing in God. Too often, we want God to be less than he is. We like God as a loving, gentle, forgiving, generous God. But we have a problem with his wrath, his justice, his punishing the wicked. This is why there is such a widespread rejection of the doctrine of hell, even among those who call themselves Christians. We don’t like to think of God’s justice. Or if we do, we want to reshape it into something we’re comfortable with.

If we are going to worship and delight in God, then we need to delight in him as he is. If we only delight in the attributes of God that we find acceptable, we aren’t delighting in God for who he really is, and are only worshiping a God of our own imagining, not the one true God as he has revealed himself in scripture.

If we are truly worshiping God, we will delight in his justice and holy wrath, as much as we delight in his love.

“But,” you say, “God is love.” Yes he is. 1 John 4:8 tells us this clearly. But too often we think this means that God can’t punish the wicked. That he can’t hate sin. That he can’t execute justice. We make two mistakes in regards to God’s love.

First, we understand love to be mutually exclusive with justice. We think, “If God is love, then he can’t, or won’t, or doesn’t want to punish anyone.” Yet Jesus told the Pharisees that they wrongly neglected both the “justice and the love of God” (Luke 11:42). Romans 12:9 tells us that genuine love abhors what is evil. God’s love is so glorious because he is just and punishes evil. If there were no punishment of evil, there would be no glory in pardon.

Our second mistake is that, having incorrectly understood (or redefined) love, we elevate this lesser love to be God. Scripture doesn’t say that love is God, but that God is love. Instead of worshiping God, who has the attribute of love, we worship our idea of love, and judge God by it. Love is not THE defining characteristic of God, holiness is. God is love, yes, scripture says so. Scripture also says that God is holy, holy, holy.

Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty (Revelation 4:8)

God is holy. This is his defining characteristic. His love is holy, his justice is holy, his mercy is holy, his wrath is holy.

If we reject God’s justice, wrath, vengeance (to use the language of our text), then we are rejecting God himself.

This rejection of God as one who justly punishes the wicked, is not new to us in 21st century America. In the 19th century, in England, Charles Spurgeon wrote this,

There is nothing in Scripture of that sympathy with God’s enemies which modern traitors are so fond of parading as the finest species of benevolence.

The problem often stems from our own pride practicing minimization. We minimize our own sin, not wishing to acknowledge the depth and extent of human wickedness. And we minimize God’s holiness, not wanting to acknowledge the heights of his purity and perfection. The gulf between the two humbles us, and we would reject that humbling thinking ourselves to be not that bad, and God not that grand. But denying reality doesn’t change it.

If we would worship God as he is, as he has revealed himself to be, and not as we would make him to be in our imagination, then we would delight and rejoice in all his attributes, including his holy vengeance against human wickedness.

The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance;
he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked. (Psalm 58:10)

That is what is happening in this verse. The righteous rejoice to see God’s vengeance, because they rejoice to see God display anything of himself. God’s justice displayed is as much a cause of rejoicing as his mercy displayed, because it is God himself that is treasured.

The question is this: Do I rejoice when God acts? Or do I only rejoice when God acts like I want him to act?

If it is the latter, then we would make God a genie subject to us, and we would take God’s place, dictating to him what is right and wrong. It is God who determines what is good and right and true. If I take that upon myself, I make myself to be god. If I humble myself, submit to God as God, then I will delight in him as he is. His justice will be no impediment to my joy, but a cause for it, because it reveals to me my greatest treasure, God himself!

And lest we forget, the greatest display of God’s wrath toward human sin, was also the greatest display of God’s love toward humans. At the cross, God’s love and justice were twined together for our salvation. If we would reject his wrath, we would reject the work of Christ on the cross, and hence, reject God’s love as well. And we would be left with nothing…

Comments

6 responses to “Rejoicing In Who God Is”

  1. KC Bob Avatar
    KC Bob

    Not sure that I am understanding Brance. I do not think that you are saying that we should rejoice when bad things happen to people (like earthquake or tsunami victims). So maybe you could give an example of a contemporary act of God’s vengeance that you believe that Christians should rejoice in?

    Reply
  2. Brance Avatar
    Brance

    Hi Bob. No, I am not saying we should rejoice in any other person’s harm, no matter how it occurred.

    What I am saying, is that we should rejoice in God for who he is. The act isn’t important, other than in its showing us God.

    As I suggested in the article, the primary display of God’s vengeance in which we should rejoice, is his vengeance against our own sins, when he poured out his wrath on Christ at the cross, at great cost to himself, and with great mercy and love toward us. That should be foremost in our minds when we think of God’s vengeance toward sin.

    Secondly, when we see something like a natural disaster take place, in which people are hurt or killed, we do not rejoice in their suffering, unless it leads them to repentance and salvation, in which there would be great cause for rejoicing. And we should not look at a disaster of this sort primarily through the lens of it being a punishment for their sin, but rather through the lens of God’s mercy for me if I am spared, because I deserve death for my sin (See Luke 13:1-5).

    Third, we can look with faith toward the coming judgment of the world, at which time God will judge the living and the dead. Again we should not look with rejoicing on the fate of the wicked, but rather with rejoicing because God is glorified in the display of his justice.

    Finally, since you ask for a “contemporary act of God’s vengeance” in which believers should rejoice, I would simply point you to Romans 13, where we are told that governing authorities derive their authority from God for the express purpose of carrying “out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” And we can rejoice that God is a good God who has established societies of law, with governing authorities to preserve peace and maintain order, and in the punishment of the wicked by the government, God is therefore glorified and we can rejoice.

    Again, the reason we rejoice is not that the wicked perish, but that God is just and glorified in the execution of his justice. The context points us in this direction with verse 11.

    “The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance;
    he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.
    Mankind will say, ‘Surely there is a reward for the righteous;
    surely there is a God who judges on earth.’”

    I’ll end with a couple quotes in regard to this verse:

    “When the just man seeth the vengeance and rejoiceth, it is not of malice, but of benevolence, either hoping that the wicked may by punishment be amended, or loving God’s justice above men’s persons, not being displeased with the punishment of the wicked, because it proceedeth from the Lord.” – Nicholas Gibbens (1601)

    “When the wicked are taken away by a divine stroke, by the hand of justice, and God hath the glory of his justice, the righteous rejoice at it.” – William Greenhill (1677)

    “[The righteous] shall be refreshed at the end of his journey, he shall wipe off all the dust of the way, and end its weariness by entering into that strange, that divine joy over sin destroyed, justice honoured, the law magnified, vengeance taken for the insult done to Godhead, the triumph of the Holy One over the unholy. It is not merely the time when that joy begins – it is also the occasion and cause of that day’s rapturous delight.” – Andrew A. Bonar (1864)

    Reply
    1. KC Bob Avatar
      KC Bob

      I am able to refute what you have written Brance but do not believe that it would be a good use of our time to discuss this further. I once held views very similar to you but now simply see the scriptures differently. Sometimes that happens as we mature in Christ. Even so, I believe that we probably have more in common than you think that we do – we both love the Lord Jesus Christ, love the scriptures,and love each other. And that ain’t bad. 🙂

      Reply
    2. KC Bob Avatar
      KC Bob

      I just left a comment and it did not appear. Did you get it?

      Reply
  3. KC Bob Avatar
    KC Bob

    My main confusion is your interpretation of the verse you quote from Psalm 58. Hard to imagine anyone with a heart for God rejoicing when they see vengeance being executed. Of course you really did not give any contemporary examples of God’s vengeance (except a reference to civil authorities which I am assuming that you only mean ones that are not communist, nazi or evil dictatorships) that you believe that Christians should rejoice in. So I am still left struggling with regard to how you believe that Christians should rejoice when they see the blood of the wicked.

    But in looking at Psalm 58 in whole it seems that David is speaking of the political enemies of the tribe of Israel. I am sure that he had many days when he bathed his feet in the blood that he spilled with his sword. And I imagine that he did rejoice in the shedding of blood on the battlefield. That said, this is probably not a psalm to use when teaching believers how they should live. Our response to our enemies (unlike David’s bad response) is to love them, turn the other cheek and to go the extra mile.

    Regarding God’s wrath being poured on Jesus on the cross, that is simply one view that became popular when a Roman Catholic bishop named Anselm made it orthodox around the eleventh century. Before that (in the first millennium) the ransom theory and the Christus Victor view were more mainstream. I see some merit in all three when we look at these three theories as metaphors. Of course, most metaphors fall apart when they are taken too far.

    Reply
  4. Brance Avatar
    Brance

    1. My interpretation of that psalm is shared by the men I quoted above, along with Spurgeon who I quoted in the article. This is not “my” interpretation, but one widely held by those within the reformed tradition (by that I mean mainly protestants since the reformation).

    2. David wrote it. He rejoiced. He was a man after God’s own heart. (See #6 below.)

    3. I gave plenty of contemporary examples, governments the world over punish criminals all the time. Take your pick. Natural disasters don’t occur apart from God’s sovereignty, so if someone suffers harm or death from such, God meant it. It was no accident.

    4. I meant ALL governments. There is no exception clause in Romans 13.

    “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” (Romans 13:1 ESV)

    Paul wrote that under the authority of the Roman Empire, which would later execute him. You could call it an “evil dictatorship” and Paul says it was instituted by God. Rome existed because God said so, and for no other reason. As did Hitler, Stalin, and anyone else you want to name.

    5. Yes, David was speaking as king of Israel, and God no longer deals with his people as a geo-political nation. That is true. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use the psalm.

    “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16–17 ESV)

    That includes Psalm 58.

    6. You’ve completely misunderstood David if you think A) his response was bad, B) he was rejoicing over his enemies. He was rejoicing in God’s justice. It wasn’t personal revenge, it was God’s retribution against the wicked. We can always rejoice in that! (See the first quote, in my previous comment, by Nicholas Gibbens)

    7. Origen was wrong. There was no ransom paid to Satan. He is no position to blackmail God and demand a ransom. The only ransom paid was to God himself. He is the offended party. It is his wrath against sin that must be dealt with.

    “Against you, you only, have I sinned
    and done what is evil in your sight,
    so that you may be justified in your words
    and blameless in your judgment.” (Psalms 51:4 ESV)

    “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:23–26 ESV)

    God requires the payment by Christ, as our substitute, to maintain his justice. He is just and the justifier. Justice and grace. Wrath and love.

    “it was the will of the LORD to crush him;
    he has put him to grief;” (Isaiah 53:10 ESV)

    “In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:10 ESV)

    This is no metaphor.

    Anselm was correct about this. Rome may have twisted his words in ways he never intended to apply them to a weekly repetition of the atoning work of Christ in the Mass, but that doesn’t negate his actual words.

    Bob, you and I obviously disagree in some major ways. We disagree about fundamental doctrinal issues, the sovereignty of God in all things (including the salvation of man), the nature of the atonement, the existence and nature of hell, possibly even the nature and authority of Scripture itself. Debates on these matters have raged for centuries and we are not likely to settle them here.

    Reply

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