Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and today's episode might be a little bit of a doozy for some people. We are back into the flood narrative. We're gonna talk about Noah as the righteous remnant.
[00:00:30] We're gonna be doing a lot of great biblical theology things where we are gonna be tracing that theme. And by tracing that theme, we're gonna look at some meanings and intent in the narrative and scope of Scripture. And by doing that, we might be putting a little burs under some people's saddles with this kind of a topic today.
[00:00:52] I have some grounding I'm going to provide before we get into all of that with the thematic tracing because part of our question is going to be a pretty deep one. I don't know if you're familiar with this. I know a lot of you are, but some of you are not gonna be so familiar with a lot of the conversation in theological circles and popular biblical theology and things like that about the pushback against penal substitutionary atonement.
[00:01:22] I've tackled that topic a little bit here and there, but there's a lot of questions here and right now many Christians are wrestling with this topic. For the curious minded who are at least open to the idea of other alternative ideas other than penal substitutionary atonement, which I will probably from here on out call PSA.
[00:01:48] They're wondering if we do not explain the cross primarily, or even necessarily at all, through the lens of PSA, what do we do with wrath, with judgment, with sin bearing and the idea there, and sacrifice and substitution, such as the language of " for us."
[00:02:13] So we're gonna be addressing a little bit of this question here. It is basically a what if question. We're asking questions and looking for some critical thinking and some biblical studies.
[00:02:26] Today we're not really gonna tackle the substitutionary question. We're gonna primarily talk about the penal question, and a few episodes ago, I've already talked about the wrath of God and how that applies to the flood narrative. That is in episode number 1 72, if you haven't heard that one already.
[00:02:47] But our tactic here is to ask whether Scripture gives us a different frame for understanding all of these ideas than we usually see preached and taught.
[00:02:58] Now, I want to make it clear that this episode today is not a take down of PSA. I was having a conversation last week with somebody who just couldn't really understand that I was not, at that moment anyway, presenting an argument against PSA. Or even arguing for something else in particular. What I was doing in this particular conversation was encouraging questions and examination and more exegetical work.
[00:03:32] Now, this is so hard, especially in a question that is so rooted in our self-understanding as evangelical, primarily American, Christians. Now here, I am doing more than just trying to get you to do some exegesis. In this episode, I am making a firmly positive argument. I'm showing you a bit behind the curtain of what doing that exegesis might look like. This is a proposal of a different way of looking at things that is not PSA.
[00:04:07] Please know that these two things are not the same. In order to "take down" PSA, one needs to look at the theological and exegetical undergirding of that doctrine. We aren't doing that today for the simple fact that what we are doing is looking at an alternative. I am arguing *for* something not *against* something today.
[00:04:32] If you believe that that means we can hold both at the same time. Well, I would suggest that I still think we should not logically contradict ourselves. And people who hold to that full " mosaic of atonement" idea where literally all of the theories must be present and accounted for, I think you really need to look for contradictions and things that are unnecessary in that mosaic.
[00:05:00] Again, that's a lot of work, and I'm going to state this a couple of times because I want it really clear. This isn't taking down PSA today. I am offering some things to help see it in a different theological light. One that I believe is very contextual and very seated thematically in Scripture.
[00:05:21] Because to be fair, this is a question people have right now in the conversation. If we don't filter with PSA, then how do we understand things like wrathful judgment or penalty and substitution? Today we're gonna focus more on the wrathful judgment or penalty aspects.
[00:05:44] And this is not mere semantics. I don't really care what language you're going to use, whether you're going to use the word wrath or judgment or penalty or debt, as long as you're using it in a way that aligns with a PSA kind of a reading where Jesus took these things upon himself as our replacement substitute. That is the idea of PSA.
[00:06:11] You can kind of have different versions of that and people can go with more wrath or more debt language. I don't really care what language you're using as long as the conceptual frame is there. That's what's important. We're talking frame semantics, not mere semantics.
[00:06:31] In the next episode, we'll tackle a little bit more of the substitution, but do beware. There is so much more to this than I can possibly present in a few episodes, and that I believe has been examined to this point in evangelical theology. More peer reviewed scholarship really needs to happen here, I believe, especially in the realm of substitution.
[00:06:56] Again, not taking down PSA as if I could really do that anyway. You have to try and get people to put down something that they've held very tightly, and that is often integrated with their view of the gospel and what Jesus came to do and all of that kind of thing.
[00:07:14] That is a really big task, but that's not really my intent either, because my purpose is not to be against a particular position. My purpose is to say, what does the Bible say? That is what I'm trying to do here.
[00:07:30] I do want to mention with all of this conversation though and how it seems really antagonistic and people want to take down an idea. My position is we need to have it exegetical. We need to draw out the meaning of the text. And it just is simply the fact that atonement theories like PSA and others, those are really seated within evangelical historical theology.
[00:07:59] That is not to say they cannot stem from the text, but the way we understand it, the way we have it explained, the way we have it formulated, all of the analysis, all of that is coming later in time. And this means that if you are saying something like we have to have a mosaic of atonement theories, you are saying that from within the realm of later theology. If this is something you presumably need to have in order to understand Scripture, if this is part of your lens of interpretation, then that is a lens of systematic theology and not exegetical biblical theology.
[00:08:47] Again, those don't have to be totally different, but just like with evangelical critiques and disagreements with people like Dr. Heiser and his methodology, and that's really very similar to what I'm doing here. People are going to have an even way worse time with what I'm gonna present here or with characterizations that are not PSA.
[00:09:13] Think about all of the people who do not want to read a Scripture in context in the same way that Dr. Heiser did. And I keep running into the same problem in discussions about this with people pushing back and saying, well, we have to have all of these atonement theories.
[00:09:30] And I'm like, do we? Why? These are systematic articulations. We don't have to have them. And if you insist on having them as your lens for Scripture, then you are simply not doing this exegetical biblical theology in the way that Dr. Heiser and myself are doing it. And I'm just saying, it's up to you to look at this stuff.
[00:09:54] It's up to you to ask the questions for yourself. It's up to you to want to pursue the exegesis that exists within the biblical text and its context. And frankly, not everyone wants to do that. Some people think this is a terrible hermeneutic because they think we can't get to it. Or they think that canonical reception is more important than studying the Bible in its context. Or they give a priority to texts like the Masoretic text, which comes later.
[00:10:28] And honestly, all of that is fine because you know what God hasn't done? He hasn't come and sent us a bunch of visionary prophets who display signs and wonders to correct us all back. The church isn't an institution. The church, the body of Christ is clearly at work in the world in many forms and within many ideas of dogmatic persuasion.
[00:10:50] And so there's only a certain level of correction we can expect to come from something like biblical studies because of that. However, that is not to say that I don't think this stuff is incredibly important or that I think we shouldn't call out for correction. On the contrary, I firmly believe that the evangelical church suffers from an opposite problem from the other historical traditions we have in the world that worry more about anathematizing others and separation when we just can't agree.
[00:11:23] Rather than that problem of heresy and anathema, the evangelical problem is a "nice guy" problem. We all just wanna get along and we tend to push too much to secondary issues to the point that we cannot and do not work to correct each other in those things.
[00:11:43] Now, the opposite of being nice guys is not to be mean guys, but in my opinion, to get back to the exegetical study of Scripture in its context. Many evangelicals like to say they're doing that.
[00:11:57] Many evangelicals are doing that until the exegesis hits a theological position that we just don't want to give up or examine. And this is why Heiser was so instrumental in the American evangelical world. He did not wanna cause infighting or promote animosity or really even correction within theological camps within Christiandom. But I will go a little bit further, and I will say that if evangelicals are not taking the contextual study of Scripture seriously enough, then we've got problems in our theology. We will have problems with doctrine because our doctrine and our theology are built within the world of evangelical scholarship, which is not that context.
[00:12:46] That very fact alone means that we ought to take serious exegetical looks at passages and theology because evangelicals are using a hermeneutic that is not fully based on context. Again, that doesn't have to be problematic necessarily. I'm not saying we're wrong about everything.
[00:13:06] I actually think that would be nonsensical and there is just too much wide agreement and understanding. But it does mean we should look at things and it does mean we will find problems when we do look at it. Maybe we don't have to totally overturn things, but it will help us to reorient. And I don't think that has to be scary. But I understand why it might be.
[00:13:31] The supernatural context of Scripture, the Divine Council worldview, and that is also scary for some people. But it was never as gone as the rhetoric sometimes makes it out seem like it was. Good theology and good contextual understanding on some level has always been with us.
[00:13:53] But evangelicalism in particular has a tendency to really be its own thing. We're all in different camps. Some of us wanna stay in particular camps. Some of us want to be a little bit more ecumenical. I believe we can all learn from each other. That we're all right about some core things, but that we're also all wrong about some other things. And I happen to be quite biased, but I do think that core contextual study will work to bring people together.
[00:14:23] Alright, so all of that being said, as kind of a groundwork for why I think this really matters. Today, we are gonna be tracing a major biblical pattern, which is that of the righteous one who passes through judgment faithfully, who is vindicated by God and who becomes the means by which others are preserved, restored, or brought into new life. This is a whole theme in Scripture and obviously that culminates in Jesus Christ.
[00:14:55] And my argument is that Genesis seven gives us one of Scripture's earliest pictures of a righteous one preserved through judgment. In Genesis seven verse one tells us that Noah is righteous in this generation. He enters the Ark, and in that chapter, he's going to pass through the flood and become the means through which life continues.
[00:15:18] In this little mini series of episodes, I'm gonna show how the pattern grows through Joseph, Exodus, Rahab, Isaiah, the exile, the suffering servant, and finally into Jesus, the faithful Israelite and righteous representative who enters judgment, death, exile, and wrath for us, not merely as a replacement, punished instead of us. But as our representative, our champion, and our covenant head so that those in him share in his vindication and life.
[00:15:57] Okay, so I told you that is a lot, and I think this is part of the difficulty of the conversation that does surround PSA is because you do have to reorient yourself. And at least for me, I am not trying to use proof texts to show something. I don't think proof texts are necessarily terrible. But I believe that thematic studies are going to get us a firmer grounding. And I think if you're grounding your theology not in proof texts, but in the arc of those themes, the narrative patterns, then I think you're gonna get a more solid foundation that way.
[00:16:36] All right, so again, episode 1 72, I talked a little bit about wrath, and I hope today we'll get to this next question of what does God preserve through wrath? What does faithfulness look like in a generation under judgment? And why does that matter for how we understand Jesus?
[00:16:56] So just a brief reminder of what I said in episode number 1 72, I mentioned a parallel to the flood narrative with the Red Sea in the Exodus. The Red Sea is the means of deliverance for the people of God, but it's also the means of destruction for the Egyptians. I mentioned the exile and the historical upheaval that is against the arrogant and rebellious Israelites, but also the nations. And it's a pattern of purification. It's a pattern of vindication for those who do not deserve that wrath. And this is the pattern that goes on in Jesus as well.
[00:17:36] And so our starting point today is Genesis seven verse one, which says, quote, " Then the Lord said to Noah, go into the Ark you and all your household for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation." End quote.
[00:17:54] So we have Noah described as being righteous before. And I've talked about how that's not about biology. It's not even about sinlessness.
[00:18:05] But Genesis seven verse one is a bit of a culmination from chapter six. It gathers up all of these ideas that we already have from the previous chapter. The earth is corrupt. The earth is filled with violence. All flesh has corrupted its way. God announces judgment.
[00:18:24] Noah is righteous, he is blameless in his generation. Noah walks with God. Noah obeys what God commands. And so there's an important contrast. God sees two things. He sees the corruption of the world and he sees the righteousness of Noah. The same God who sees violence also sees faithfulness. Again, this is not sinless perfection, but these three ideas with Noah should be read together. He is righteous, blameless or complete or whole, and he walked with God.
[00:19:01] The walking with God also is really important factor here because when we trace this theme forward, we get to a place like Genesis 18 verse 19, where Abraham is chosen so that he may command his children and household after him to keep the way of Yahweh by doing righteousness and justice. So even though we don't have the word justice assigned to Noah, we have these ideas that are often stacked in Scripture where we have righteousness and justice, and they are put together. They're paired.
[00:19:37] This shows the way of Yahweh is not merely ritual correctness or private belief or sinlessness, but it includes a practiced life of righteousness and justice. So what does that mean? How does the Bible present these ideas? Well, there are a whole slew of passages we could go through, and I'll just mention a few of them here.
[00:20:00] Psalm 89, verse 14 says that righteousness and justice are the foundation of God's throne. And so that's kind of a good theological baseline, we might say. God's rule is founded on these two ideas. They describe the moral order of God's kingship.
[00:20:20] Isaiah five, verse seven says that God looked for justice, but he saw bloodshed. He looked for righteousness, but he heard a cry. And so here the opposite of righteousness and justice is the idea of bloodshed, oppression, violence, social disorder. And so that connects us directly back into Genesis six.
[00:20:45] And then we could look at Amos chapter five verse 24, which asks justice to roll down like waters and righteousness to be an overflowing stream. Obvious these are paired together. This is a picture of a world where right order is flowing continually.
[00:21:04] Then we have Jeremiah 22 verse three. Do justice and righteousness and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. Then we have the ideas of doing no wrong, not doing violence to the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, and not shedding innocent blood.
[00:21:24] This is helpful because it defines justice and righteousness in concrete social terms. We have deliverance and protection and non-violence, care for their vulnerable and refusal of bloodshed. Again, connecting back to Genesis six and connecting forward into the end of the flood as well with the bloodshed and the image of God.
[00:21:49] Another important passage is Isaiah chapter one, verses 16 and 17. Cease to do evil. Learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause.
[00:22:05] Remember, we're doing frame semantics and so we're asking what ideas coalesce together to form this concept of justice. It is not just about punishing the guilty. It includes correcting oppression, defending the vulnerable, seeking the good, and restoring right order.
[00:22:26] Proverbs chapter 21, verse three says to do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to Yahweh than sacrifice. This helps to prevent reducing righteousness to ritual or cultic activity. And righteous life is ethically ordered toward God and neighbor. Two directions.
[00:22:48] Now, how does this help us today? Well, when we hear the word justice, we tend to think of retributive punishment. Where there is a crime, somebody is guilty, they earn a penalty and a punishment must be meted out.
[00:23:07] This is certainly a dimension of justice. Scripture does include judgment, accountability, recompense, and punishment. But biblical justice is broader. It includes setting wrongs right, opposing violence, protecting life, restoring relationships, vindicating the oppressed, ordering the community according to God's purposes, creating conditions for faithful life. All of these ideas are wrapped up here.
[00:23:40] So we could make a distinction. Retributive justice is where we have wrongdoing that is answered with deserved consequence. That is what we have in the biblical picture, as well as in our minds. But also we have restorative or rectifying justice. What has been disordered is being set right.
[00:24:03] We can include an idea like covenantal justice, where relationships are brought into faithful alignment with God's purposes. And the idea of vindicating justice. The faithful and the oppressed are shown to be in the right in relation to the ones who are oppressing them. So biblical justice can and does include punishment, but it's not exhausted by punishment.
[00:24:31] And there are continual cries for people to come back and repent and turn to God, and they will be forgiven. They will not be punished in a retributive way because they will be forgiven if they turn and repent.
[00:24:49] Now we go back and apply this to Genesis six and seven. The world's problem is not merely that individual sinners have accumulated a guilt debt.
[00:24:58] The world is ruined by violence and corruption. God's judgment, is a response to this creation order crisis. And Noah's righteousness is his alignment with God's life preserving justice amid that crisis. If people had repented and been in alignment with Noah, we would presume, even though it doesn't say, we could presume that those people would also be saved with Noah.
[00:25:26] Though we aren't told that there's anybody else who's going to do that. But we are told that Noah is righteous in his generation. And there seems to be a presumption that nobody else is because they are not who God sees.
[00:25:42] So we have God's wrath, even though we don't have the word wrath in this passage in the flood. But the ideas are all here. The judgment is here, and we see that judgment being tied to God's justice all over the place in Scripture. And God's justice is tied to God's intention to preserve and restore life.
[00:26:05] And so Noah's righteousness aligns with that divine intention.
[00:26:09] Noah is righteous in this generation because he lives in contrast to a generation that is defined by violence and corruption. Now, when we move over into Jesus and what Jesus has done, Jesus is the righteous one, not merely because he is legally innocent and he never sinned, but he embodies the righteousness of God.
[00:26:33] He embodies God's justice through his faithful obedience, through his nonviolent suffering, his covenant fidelity, his identification with the people as our covenant head. He confronts evil. He vindicates the oppressed. He restores life and provides living water and is the source of the new creation.
[00:26:56] That all helps to explain why the theme of righteous one through judgment is broader than, an innocent person gets punished instead of guilty people.
[00:27:07] We need to reframe that in this kind of an idea where the faithful representative enters the judged condition. He remains aligned with God's justice. He is vindicated by God and becomes the source of restored life for those in him because he is our covenant head.
[00:27:27] Okay? So again, Noah is not righteous in a vacuum. He is righteous in this generation that he lived in. In a world where violence has become normal, the flood is a judgment on violence and corruption. But Genesis seven begins by highlighting the faithful one whom God sees and preserves. This is absolutely core, even though it might sound really obvious. Noah doesn't escape the judged world. He passes through that judgment. He's not just taken up into heaven. He actually experiences the judgment.
[00:28:04] And this is why the Ark is not merely a boat. It is a preservation space that is tied to the idea of sacred space. Again, these are all proto ideas that lead to further ideas in Scripture.
[00:28:20] Okay, so then we move through the chapter of Genesis seven. We get to verse 16, where Yahweh shuts Noah in. And I'll probably talk more about this theme later because this is a really interesting one as well. But protective action here does not mean that deserved wrath is being averted because Noah is not under that wrath in a deserving way.
[00:28:46] And I bring that out, which might be obvious, but I'd bring it out because it's gonna matter for the Passover and Exodus and how the lamb of the Passover is not a picture of penal judgment against the Israelites who are eating the lamb. It is a picture of preservation. It is a picture of protection.
[00:29:07] That does not mean it is a picture of penal judgment against the people where the lamb is being a substitute. There's absolutely nothing in the book of Exodus that says that the Israelites are under God's wrath. But they do need to be under God's protection.
[00:29:25] And the same ideas are showing up here with Noah. Noah obeys. He enters. The animals enter. Noah's household enters. And then Yahweh shuts him in. Noah's the one who builds the Ark, but Yahweh shuts the door.
[00:29:41] This door and refuge theme should be brought out a little bit more in a different episode because it gives us a really firm foundation of a broader biblical pattern where God gives warning, God provides refuge, the faithful enter.
[00:29:57] There is a boundary that is established between retributive judgment and preservation. And the righteous one, and those with him are carried through, just like we see in Genesis 7 21 through 23. The judgment falls on all flesh, but the Ark preserves the remnant, and that remnant is connected to Noah, the covenant head, the household head. So life continues through the righteous one that God has preserved.
[00:30:27] Okay, so now let's talk about the righteous remnant pattern. But I wanna clarify here that I'm not talking about a modern system of remnant theology. You might hear that in places, and it is tied to Scripture. Absolutely. We can talk about remnant theology all day long, but some theological systems are going to get really particular about what they mean about that.
[00:30:54] So I am using this concept in a biblical theological sense where there is a pattern of the faithful one or the faithful few preserved through judgment so that life and promise continues.
[00:31:09] There is a definite biblical theme here, but sometimes remnant theology in modern or systematic use can refer to a doctrine of the faithful end time people of God. And I'm not saying that can't be part of our picture, but modern remnant theology may be used to identify the true church or the faithful minority, or a purified people who remain loyal when the broader religious world has all compromised themselves.
[00:31:41] And so the remnant in these systems can become a fairly closely defined ecclesiological or eschatological category where we have the contrast of the faithful versus all of you wicked people over there. I'm not identifying a modern remnant group. I'm not making claims about churches and denominations and movements or theological tribes of the remnant. Not arguing for a full end of times remnant doctrine where we're sure that all of Christiandom is going to fall away and that there's only going to be a few preserved through the end times.
[00:32:19] I'm not using Noah to create an us versus compromised Christianity framework. Okay? I'm not trying to turn the idea of being a remnant into a badge of superior identity.
[00:32:32] Now, all of that may actually happen, I don't know. But what we do know is that there is a recurring biblical pattern where a world, a people, a city, a generation, is under judgment. There's a righteous or faithful few. Within that judged setting, they end up suffering through that judgment. But there is divine preservation and vindication and life and promise and restoration have a hope at the end. And so Noah gives us this really early example of that pattern.
[00:33:05] And it matters because we shouldn't use Jesus as a mascot of a modern remnant group. But he is the faithful Israelite. He is the righteous representative. He is the one who embodies Israel's vocation and carries the story through judgment into vindication. And so those who are in Christ share in him, not by becoming a self congratulating remnant identity, but by participating in the suffering of his faithful death, his vindicated life, and his new creation mission.
[00:33:38] It's not really a beautiful picture of being raptured out of suffering. Part of being in Christ as the remnant is a picture of terrible suffering sometimes. And that's not the kind of remnant theology that people tend to go towards here. Usually it's in relation to the rapture, where, oh, we will be delivered from the terrible things that will happen.
[00:34:07] That is not the picture of remnant theology. Yes, they are preserved, but they're gonna suffer through it, and they're going to have consequences because of the judgment that falls upon the people all around them.
[00:34:21] Well, let's go into the prophets and actually look at this a little bit more. I'm gonna go into Isaiah chapter 26. Verses 20 through 21 say, quote, " Come my people. Enter your chambers and shut your doors behind you. Hide yourselves for a little while until the fury has passed by. For behold, Yahweh is coming out from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity, and the earth will disclose the bloodshed on it and will no more cover its slain." End quote.
[00:34:57] So here we have a very clear picture of people hiding away from the wrath as it falls upon the wicked. This is one of the strongest verbal and thematic links to what we have going on in Genesis six and seven. It includes words like, come, enter. We have chambers, or inner rooms or a refuge. We have the shutting of doors. Hiding for a little while. Fury or wrath passing by. Yahweh coming in judgment.
[00:35:29] The earth is disclosing bloodshed in the process here in Isaiah 26. There's judgment against iniquity and there's a temporary concealment of God's people until that judgment has passed. So this is an especially useful chapter for our theme because it combines several of these ideas of wrath, refuge, judgment, bloodshed, concealment, preservation, and the faithful people hidden.
[00:35:57] The wider context of this chapter in Isaiah is a song of trust and hope. The whole chapter contrasts a couple of different things. The secure city of God and the downfall of the proud city, the righteous path, the waiting for Yahweh, the longing for God's judgments to teach righteousness, God bringing peace, and there is a resurrection hope.
[00:36:23] But within all of that, there's a call to hide until the wrath passes. A lot of people who are promoting things like PSA will say that when God looks at us, he doesn't see us. He sees Jesus because Jesus takes our place and we aren't seen by God. That's not what Isaiah 26 is saying. I'm not gonna read the whole chapter, but we have a really interesting progression through the whole thing. The first part of the chapter, the strong city salvation has walls and bulwarks, the righteous nation that keeps faith can go into the strong city.
[00:37:00] And so we have the entry refuge gate imagery here. The righteous people will enter the secure city that God provides. A little bit further into the chapter in verses seven through nine, we have a path of the righteous. And when God's judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. So again, judgment connected to righteousness, connected to learning and being righteous through that judgment.
[00:37:31] Our resurrection hope happens just before the verses I read earlier in verse 19. Your dead shall live, their bodies shall rise. And this is right before the enter the chambers command. So this makes it especially rich for that Christ and resurrection connection.
[00:37:50] The call to enter the chambers in verse 20 comes after the hope of resurrection and before God judges bloodshed in verse 21.
[00:38:01] So we go back into Genesis seven. Noah is told to enter the Ark he enters with his household. Yahweh shuts him in. Judgment falls, bloodshed violence as a reason for the judgment, obviously, and Noah is hidden or preserved inside the Ark while that judgment passes over the world. And life emerges afterward.
[00:38:23] The bloodshed theme is obviously very strong prior to the flood narrative starting in Genesis four and escalating up to the flood. The bloodshed is also not just something that happens, but it is a witness against iniquity. Bloodshed cannot and does not remain covered. The blood will cry from the ground itself.
[00:38:46] And this is also a theme in the book of Leviticus. If there is bloodshed, there is no atonement that can be made for those kinds of actions. No purification, no resolution. In the end, the land itself will spit out the inhabitants.
[00:39:05] And of course, we have the whole idea of wrath passing by, which is echoing the flood and echoes the Passover. During the Passover event, the Israelites remain inside of blood marked houses. The judgment passes through Egypt. And the angel passes over , and there is a protection and passing over of the households. and the boundary inside and outside becomes one of refuge versus retribution punishment.
[00:39:34] So in many places, the ideas of wrath or judgment and refuge belong intimately together. Even if God's wrath is going to pass through places where God's people are, that does not mean that God is targeting his people.
[00:39:51] One of my previous episodes about the cup of wrath also showed how the cup of wrath is given according to your desire. You are drinking it and you have caused the situation yourself. That doesn't mean it's not God's wrath. It doesn't mean God's not doing anything.
[00:40:09] But really the picture here is drinking up your own desire. God will give you over to that. We have that all over in Scripture as well. Romans one is a great place to look. And so these aren't strange ideas to most of us. And yet still in modern atonement conversations, people will hear wrath and they'll imagine only the ideas of punishment, penalty, divine anger directed at a guilty target. And we're all guilty, so therefore we are all under wrath.
[00:40:41] And I get that, especially within the realm of evangelical theology, which kind of sidelines the idea that people can be righteous at all. Which again, we have passages that seem to say, oh, no one's righteous. No one is righteous, not one. Right? We love to quote that in many evangelical churches.
[00:41:01] The problem with that is that throughout the Old Testament, we have people who are declared and described as being righteous all the time.
[00:41:10] This isn't a matter of contradiction. It's a matter of allowing the plethora of verses and passages to inform what the passages say that there is no one righteous. What can that mean in light of the fact that people really are righteous?
[00:41:26] But also within evangelical theology is a deep concern about, we aren't saved by works, right? And so the question becomes, if we are righteous, then golly, does that mean that we're saved by that righteousness, that we don't need God's protection?
[00:41:44] And the whole pattern I'm showing you right here is that no, that is absolutely not the case. It cannot be the case because the righteous, even though they are righteous and they are faithful, and they are this remnant that belongs to God, they're not saved simply because they're righteous. They're not saved because they did the right things. I mean, sure Noah had to build the Ark in order to be saved, but the building of the Ark did not save Noah. God preserved him through that. If somebody wicked had built an Ark, they wouldn't have been preserved through the waters.
[00:42:23] So the idea of righteousness is not about sinlessness. It's not about being perfect. It's not about not needing God. Because the righteous also need God's protection.
[00:42:36] The faithful do not control the judgment. They do not stop the suffering. They do not prevent themselves from going through the wrath. They do have to go through it. The faithful response to wrath and judgment, is not to save themselves, but to enter the refuge that God provides and to wait for him to set things right.
[00:42:59] Another thing to notice in this passage in Isaiah is that it says to hide for a little while. This is pretty significant because the judgment is going to be limited. The refuge is temporary. The preservation leads beyond it, and there is hope through the suffering. The suffering is not for forever.
[00:43:20] This connects deeply to the concept of exile, which is long and difficult and has a whole lot of suffering of the people, but it's not the final word. Restoration is going to follow the judgment and that faithful remnant, and it's essential for the people to faithfully wait through it.
[00:43:41] And so again, this is the hope that we have in Jesus. Jesus is the righteous one who enters the judged condition, who bears the world's violence, who is hidden in death, who passes through judgment, who is raised in vindication, and becomes the refuge for those who are in him. Union with Christ means that we are passing through death with him and sharing in his resurrection life.
[00:44:07] As I'm sure you can hear, this is going to connect directly into many New Testament passages.
[00:44:13] In fact, let's look at Colossians chapter three. I won't read this whole section, but I'll just point out a few different things that absolutely seem to be calling back to passages like Isaiah 26. Colossians three. We have been raised with Christ. We are seated at the right hand of God. We have died. Our life is hidden with Christ in God. And we are to put to death what is earthly, and it lists a bunch of sins, including idolatry.
[00:44:44] All of these ideas harken back to the exile and the sins there, because on account of these sins that he just mentioned, the wrath of God is coming. The wrath of God is not being averted because you are hidden in Christ. The wrath of God is coming, but Christ is the one in whom we have protection.
[00:45:05] We have put off the old self, we have put on the new self and so on, right? So this is a picture of union with Christ, not Christ telling us that, well, now you don't have to suffer. Part of being in Christ is that Christ goes ahead of us, suffers with us, and we will be vindicated and we have hope at the end.
[00:45:25] Alright, so what about the whole idea of the exile? There's so many places we can go to in the prophets during the exile that talk about wrath and corporate judgment and the faithful who suffer within it.
[00:45:38] I'll just mention a few here. We have Jeremiah chapter 25, verses 15 to 29. This is the cup of wrath passage. Yahweh gives it to Jerusalem, to Judah, to the surrounding nations and all the kingdoms of the world. This is a picture of historical judgment. This isn't God just zapping people from heaven with his lightning bolts, right? We know that the exile happened as part of this judgment.
[00:46:07] Jeremiah 49 verse 12 is a crucial piece to look at here. If those who did not deserve to drink the cup must drink it, will you go unpunished? So this is pointing to the fact that even if you think you're getting away with something, you're not gonna get away with it because look, even people who don't deserve to drink the cup of wrath, still drink it.
[00:46:31] Again, a picture of everyone drinking the same cup but not getting really the same results in the end. That's kind of the point of the wrath. Noah and everybody else on earth went through the flood. But not everybody got the same results by going through the flood.
[00:46:50] Lamentations three. Another passage to look at for this. Of course, it is a poetic experience. But it's a poetic experience of suffering under wrath, affliction, darkness, bitterness, brokenness, grief. Yet also hope. The steadfast love of Yahweh never ceases.
[00:47:10] The whole story of Daniel is a great place to look. Faithful living under exile's conditions. They're tested by imperial power. They suffer because they are part of the exiled people, but they're vindicated through that faithfulness.
[00:47:26] Ezekiel 14, another passage to look at because here we have Noah. We have Daniel. And we have Job, who are all named as righteous exemplars. Man, that's a whole theme right there.
[00:47:41] A couple of other passages I will mention that we can't quite get to today. Two Kings 24 and 25, which is about the historical fall of Jerusalem and the exile. We have Jeremiah 29, the faithful life in exile where they are to seek the welfare of Babylon. Psalm 1 37, grief and disorientation in exile. Isaiah 40, comfort after judgment and the exile's end is announced. Isaiah 53, obviously a really big passage for the whole PSA question. The servant carries and bears the conditions and the sins of the people toward restoration. Now, is he doing that as a substitute? Is he doing that fairly? Who is the one who is even afflicting the servant?
[00:48:33] Those are all really good questions that we're not gonna get into today.
[00:48:38] I've had people ask me why the exile matters in this question, because this is not a picture that most Christians are paying that much attention to. The prophets, especially the minor prophets, are hardly ever read in church. They're not preached from. They're not really understood in general.
[00:48:55] And so this is a really fair question. Because we don't read enough of that material, we instinctively tend to discuss wrath almost exclusively in terms of individual guilt, deserved punishment, penalty, debt, legal substitution and things like that. But this exile picture is one of Scripture's clearest and largest examples of divine wrath.
[00:49:23] And so it's not a minor metaphor or a historical footnote. It is a central judgment event. And in exile, the wrath is historical. It's corporate, it's covenantal, it's political, it's societal, it's social, it is based on the land and creation, and is bound up with worship, justice, violence, bloodshed, a whole slew of ideas, right?
[00:49:50] And so again, wrath is not God being angry. It is not even God meteing out judgment to every individual person who deserves it.
[00:50:01] It is God's covenantal judgment against a people whose life has become disordered by rebellion and violence, and it's primarily aimed at the leaders and the people who are perpetuating that. It is not aimed at those who are being oppressed and who are being abused and used by those leaders. And yet they suffer too.
[00:50:23] The exile is judgment against idolatry, injustice, which includes things like corrupt courts, economic oppression, exploitation. It is against violence and bloodshed, which is associated with oppression and exploitation. It is a covenant betrayal where they are refusing the way of Yahweh.
[00:50:47] Even if they're not directly worshiping idols, they're worshiping Yahweh in syncretic ways along with idolatry. So there's the false worship and people seem to be thinking that as long as we're offering sacrifices, we will get off the hook. And God's like, no, no, no. That is not how this works. There's a clear corruption of leadership with the kings, the priests, the prophets and the people. And a deep failure to protect the vulnerable.
[00:51:17] So if we want a biblical picture of wrath, we can't imagine just individuals standing before a penalty. We have to reckon with the exile, the people, the land, the whole covenant order collapsing under judgment because of this oppression and injustice. It's not just happening because of individual sins but genuine covenantal collapse.
[00:51:42] We really have a hard time with this idea of judgment in a corporate way. It seems unfair to us, and I'm not saying this erases individual responsibility or the seriousness of sins, because the prophets still confront all sorts of specific sins and they're holding people accountable. But individuals can be faithful or unfaithful within that judged community, and that judgment is not experienced as isolated individual sentencing.
[00:52:14] When Babylon comes, the whole city falls. The temple is destroyed, the land is devastated. Families are displaced. Both of the righteous and unrighteous alike experience the catastrophe. The faithful don't get a private exemption from the national collapse, even though we might kind of feel like they do because, if they just hide themselves away, they will be spared.
[00:52:37] To a point, that's probably true, but they're still suffering. They're still under the judgment. Not even the prophets were exempt simply because they were faithful.
[00:52:47] All of that is really important because sometimes we go to an equation that is too simplistic. Wrath is each individual receiving exactly and only the personal punishment they deserve in isolation from everyone else. But the exile and the prophets all over the place show this really complex picture that seems very unfair to us. And we don't like it because for us, judgment and justice are primarily an individual thing and everybody gets what they deserve.
[00:53:18] But again, call back to these passages where we have Noah, Daniel, and Job all mentioned. What do they have in common?
[00:53:28] Well, let's talk about Daniel for just a moment. He is obviously the epitome of the faithful one in exile who is tested and vindicated. Daniel and his friends are exiles in Babylon. They're given Babylonian education, even names and food, and they must navigate this faithfulness under this really strange environment that they're in. They refuse idolatry. They're thrown into the fiery furnace. God preserves them through that furnace and they're vindicated before the king.
[00:54:02] After this, Daniel remains faithful in prayer. He's accused by hostile officials. He's condemned under an unjust law. He goes down into the lion's den and again preserved through the night, vindicated before the king. He suffers under this foreign empire. He is tested by that foreign empire, but he is repeatedly vindicated by God through that.
[00:54:26] Daniel six with the lion's den is a really good picture here. We have a lot of resonance with Daniel and Jesus in the New Testament. The righteous one. The false accusation, unjust condemnation, descent into a pit surrounded by beasts. What about Psalm 22 and Jesus' quote about that, right? They're sealed by a stone. There's a night of apparent death, but morning deliverance, public vindication, and a decree honoring God. That's a whole package here.
[00:55:02] A lot of times I think we tend to kind of say, oh, this is a prophecy of Jesus. In a way, yes, because it is a typology that leads to what Jesus is going through. But there is this biblical grammar, this biblical pattern, the faithful sufferer in exile. Tested. Descends. And is vindicated. The faithful one is not spared, but instead lives within the judged condition of the people and bears witness to the kingdom of God through that.
[00:55:38] Let's go on a little bit in Ezekiel 14, although there's so much we could say about this chapter. This is a really cool chapter in Ezekiel. I'll just read here starting in verse 14. Quote, " Even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness declares the Lord God. If I cause wild beasts to pass through the land and they ravage it and it be made desolate so that no one may pass through because of the beasts, even if these three men were in it, as I live declares the Lord God, they would deliver neither sons nor daughters. They alone would be delivered, but the land would be desolate.
[00:56:24] " Or if I bring a sword upon that land and say, let a sword pass through the land, and I cut off from it man and beast, though these three men were in it, as I live declares the Lord God, they would deliver neither sons nor daughters, but they alone would be delivered. Were if I send a pestilence into the land and pour out my wrath upon it with blood to cut off from it man and beast. Even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live declares the Lord God, they would deliver neither son nor daughter. They would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness.
[00:57:00] " For thus says the Lord God. How much more when I send upon Jerusalem by four disastrous acts of judgment, sword, famine, wild beasts, and pestilence to cut off from it man and beast but behold, some survivors will be left in it. Sons and daughters who will be brought out. Behold, when they come out to you and you see their ways and their deeds, you will be consoled for the disaster that I have brought upon Jerusalem. For all that I have brought upon it. They will console you when you see their ways and their deeds and you shall know that I have not done without cause all that I have done in it declares the Lord God." End quote.
[00:57:41] Okay, so we have Noah, Daniel and Job, and they are seen as this epitome of example. Even if these three men were here, their children wouldn't be saved, but they would be.
[00:57:56] So here's my question. Is this a picture of them saving themselves? I don't think anyone would say really that Noah, Daniel, or Job, that any of them saved themselves simply because they were righteous. So please put aside the idea that being righteous is meaning something like saving yourself or being saved by works. That is just not the picture we have here. But it is a picture that if you are righteous, you are in the protected and preserved remnant.
[00:58:33] That is not some sort of prosperity gospel because the righteous remnant is going to suffer. That's not prosperity, right? But it is a hope in the end.
[00:58:47] Let's go ahead and start wrapping this up. Exile and wrath are more than retribution. It includes retribution. Israel broke their covenant. The prophets announced the consequences and the judgment happens because of real sin. But it's more than retributive action against the people who sinned.
[00:59:09] Wrath and exile in judgment is a collapse of a disordered covenant world. The removal from the land, the loss of the temple. They're under dominion by foreign powers. It is a place of grief and shame and deathlike existence among the nations for those who survive. The whole thing is a corporate consequence. And this is also the setting in which God promises restoration.
[00:59:36] So when we talk about biblical wrath, we need categories beyond, someone has to be punished so that God can forgive. That is just not what we have in the exile. Nobody is explaining the exile like that, and this is why we have a great disconnect between the concept of the exile and the idea of wrath and judgment, even though this is the prime example of it.
[01:00:03] So yes, we do have a covenant curse. We have alienation, we have displacement, bondage under hostile powers, corporate devastation. People who are purified through the setting, the faithful are suffering, but there is a hope for return in vindication after judgment. If that is not a picture of what's happening in Christ and us in Christ, then I don't know what to say.
[01:00:30] So that whole story should be the preparation we have in mind for the coming of Jesus. So once exile becomes part of our framework here, Jesus's death and resurrection can be seen through a different lens than PSA.
[01:00:45] Jesus enters Israel's exile story by coming to a people who are still under foreign dominion. He announces kingdom restoration. He gathers the lost sheep of Israel. He identifies with sinners. He confronts oppressive powers. He is rejected by his own leaders. He suffers under Roman execution. He bears the curse in some form, and we can talk about that a little bit more later, perhaps. He descends into the pit. He is raised and vindicated. Jesus is not guilty in the way that Israel is guilty, but he enters the condition of the judged people as their faithful representative.
[01:01:28] He bears the burden of the people's sin. He bears their shame. He bears the curse in some form. He goes into death, which is a picture of exile, and he does so to bring us through it. He is not standing in for guilty individuals in an abstract courtroom. He enters the exilic condition of his people and carries it through the death into resurrection.
[01:01:53] So I get it. When we talk about non PSA explanations for things, I understand that people are gonna worry about things like, if Jesus isn't punished instead of us, then what happens to wrath? Is it ignored? Is sin minimized? Is judgment denied? But this picture of the exile is gonna help us to answer that question.
[01:02:16] Wrath is real. It's gonna happen. Sin has devastating consequences, but it's not just about punishment for the wicked because the faithful can suffer within those same consequences. But God will bring restoration through faithful suffering and vindication.
[01:02:36] So here we have a reframe to the question. It's not how can God punish somebody instead of forgiving them. But how does God bring his people through judgment, exile, curse, and death into restored life? It's not about a mechanism or a punishment transfer, but it is a real reality that we have.
[01:03:01] Okay, so bringing all of that back into the connection with Noah. Noah righteous in his generation lives in a world filled with violence. He passes through judgment. He is preserved and emerges into a renewed world. Same pattern with the exile. Faithful people living among the judged people. They suffer the condition of judgment.
[01:03:25] But they have a hope for restoration and they await vindication and return. This is ultimately fulfilled in Jesus, who is the righteous one who enters that judged condition, passes through death, vindicated in resurrection, and brings us into restored life with him because he is our covenant head, not the replacement substitute for our punishment.
[01:03:51] Noah gives the early pattern. The exile gives all of the depth and the gore , and shows just how wide ranging the consequences of that wrath upon the people are. And Jesus brings the pattern to its climax.
[01:04:08] Again, I know I'm being slightly repetitive here, but just wanna make sure this conclusion gets through. The faithful remnant can pass through wrath without being the guilty cause of that wrath, without it being deserved.
[01:04:23] Now that's going to open up more questions for us, isn't it?
[01:04:27] What about the fact that we do sin and that we do put ourselves under the consequence of the law and the need of punishment? And I would say that we even have some sort of debt and penalty. A non PSA reading doesn't have to sideline any of that. What we have though is the idea of forgiveness.
[01:04:54] PSA readings do not allow the concept of forgiveness. They just don't. The idea of forgiveness is that the offended party is going to absorb a cost, perhaps, because of what the offender has done. But a cost is not the same as paying a penalty, right? It's a different idea. It's a different conceptual domain. If something has to be punished in order to be forgiven, that is simply not forgiveness.
[01:05:30] And so here's my call to you when you're like, well, I don't understand how we can read these verses that I think clearly show PSA. I'm suggesting to you there's other ways to read them, and I'm trying to open that door for you to go and explore that yourself.
[01:05:47] I'm opening the doors here. And this isn't to defeat ideas that I don't like. This is to try and be faithful exegetes of the text. That's what I'm after here. I don't want our theology to come from hundreds of years after the Bible was written. I want our theology to come from the context of the Bible itself.
[01:06:13] Okay, so today we talked a little bit about the P aspect of PSA, right? Do we actually have to have a penalty that gets paid or can we see things in judgment and wrath a little bit differently? And I hope that I've helped you see a different picture of that.
[01:06:33] We need to be able to look at how Scripture teaches what judgment and wrath actually look like, and it is a historical reality. Next, we can ask how Jesus suffers "for us." What does that mean? That is a big question, and we will be getting into that next.
[01:06:52] But hopefully these patterns of Scripture and these verses I've brought out, of which there are many, many more, I hope that's kinda shown you a different way to orient and frame things.
[01:07:05] We're not denying punishment, we're not denying wrath, but we're looking at the frame of it. It is not just a penalty, but it is a judgment against violent disorder, covenant collapse, bloodshed, and corruption. And that falls upon the faithful as well. But they pass under that, under God's provision and protection, which is going to be essential to what we're gonna look at next time.
[01:07:32] So our next question is going to be, if the faithful can pass through judgment, what does it mean when a righteous one suffers for others? This is the substitutionary angle we'll tackle next. That question is gonna take us to Joseph, who suffers because of his brothers and is sent ahead to preserve life. We'll talk about the Passover and the Exodus. We'll talk about Rahab and the suffering servant, and obviously we will talk about Jesus, the righteous representative who enters judgment and is vindicated for the life of those in him.
[01:08:13] Alright, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and I hope you're looking forward to the next one. If you do have questions, please feel free to reach out. You can reach me through my website at genesis march the spot.com. You can always find me on Facebook. or you can come and join me in my biblical theology community, On This Rock. Lots of really interesting questions here and lots of depth that we can talk about.
[01:08:42] And by the way, in my biblical theology community, we are also currently going through the book Lamb of the Free, which is all about these kinds of ideas.
[01:08:52] But I will wrap up for today and I will thank you all for listening to the episodes and for sharing them with others. A big shout out to my Patreon, PayPal, and community supporters. You guys absolutely rock, and I am so grateful that you are supporting me and helping me. But that is it for this week, and I wish you all a blessed week and we will see you later.
