Gordo, thanks for this post, which follows on well from Tony’s An Offensive God.

A few thoughts.

1. Yes I have often been tempted to drop the explicit judgment bits in evangelism.

For example, when I first had to take funerals, I dropped the line of the prayer book which talked about the “certainty of our own coming death and judgment”. Of course, the way we speak about judgment and hell will vary from time to place, and I don’t think a funeral is normally the place for a fully orbed exposition of this topic.

But it was a gutless failure of my nerve as an inexperienced pastor. I never omit the line now, though I am still tempted to go soft in other contexts.

2. It is right that we should rejoice in God’s judgment of sin.  Your post and Tony’s make that clear. It is good that the totally moral and pure God will judge sinners such that all evil is removed form his new creation, and wrongs are righted. And it’s good that he does it rather than us.

3. And yet it was right that in a comment on Tony’s post that you quoted Jude 22-23 and said,

I suppose our current celebrations over the fall of God’s enemies is, before the Lord’s return, tempered by a sense of mercy and fear

I have to say I think there is a danger in some of our macho, new reformed circles of being gung ho about judgment and hell.

The tone sometimes seems to lack the compassion of Jesus grieving and longing over lost Jerusalem…

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. [Matt 23:37, NIV]

Remember this comes straight after his most sustained and damning diatribe against the scribes and Pharisees. He left no doubt the unrepentant would be judged and that it would be terrible. 

And yet there was no hint of triumphalism. And he was immediately full of compassion.

I am worried by the lack of compassion we sometimes hear when people rediscover the importance of confidence in the goodness and reality of God’s judgment.

4. Do you think it makes any difference that the psalms of David are ultimately the psalms of Jesus?
When I read David’s words, I sometimes think he has no right to claim all that he claimed of himself. For example, in Psalm 26 when he proclaims his complete innocence and blamelessness. The psalms of sinful David can really only be truly prayed by Jesus, to whom all the psalms pointed.

Hebrews 10 reveals that only Jesus can truly and perfectly say what David did in Psalm 40, that he had come to do God’s will.

So my pondering is whether only sinless Jesus can truly exult in the coming judgment of God, as in Psalm 53, and whether, sinful like David, we need just a little reticence in how we claim the psalms for ourselves.

I find the doctrine of judgement comforting insofar as it means the inevitable and complete punishment of those enormities that we can never punish adequately in this world.  What, for example, could we have done to Pol Pot in this life that could go near to punishing him for the sufferings he brought on others?  Only God’s wrath can deal sufficiently with his evil.
But when it comes to me, to my family and friends, I do not feel comforted.  And I think that’s about the right balance.

<i>But when it comes to me, to my family and friends, I do not feel comforted.  And I think that’s about the right balance.</i>

Ellen, I would love to agree with you, and in fact, I think I do.

But just this morning I finally made it to Psalm 55, and was again slapped upside the head (metaphorically speaking! we wouldn’t want to get too literalistic here!) by verse 15:

<i>Let death steal over them;
let them go down to Sheol alive;
for evil is in their dwelling place and in their heart.</i>

Mainly because the desire for judgement upon “them” so clearly included David’s friend, mentioned in the previous two verses:

<i>13 But it is you, a man, my equal,
my companion, my familiar friend.
14 We used to take sweet counsel together;
within God’s house we walked in the throng.</i>

I don’t know how I could pray for judgement like that. But, David clearly did. And so (following Sandy’s reasoning) does Jesus.

Gordo, quite right about Peter Jensen; and he has written on the importance of the topic of judgment and the seriousness of sin in his column in Southern Cross a number of times.

Can I ask, if we agree about the concern for those who soft-pedal judgment and fail to see that we can rejoice in God’s goodness even in that, then do you see any reason for concern for those who are gung ho about proclaiming judgment without a tone of compassion. Or am I perhaps reacting to a problem that is scarcely there?

Also can I ask you to say what your view of the psalms is, vis-a-vis David’s statements on innocence etc?

Good on you for putting pebbles in our shoes.

<i>Also can I ask you to say what your view of the psalms is, vis-a-vis David’s statements on innocence etc?</i>

Sandy, you’ve asked a couple of questions. My answer to this one is that whenever David claims innocence, he is telling the truth.

I will try to get back to you soon about the other things you asked.