07 The Wrath of the Lamb

Chapter 7 THE WRATH OF THE LAMB Recordare, Jesu pie, Quod sura causa tuae viae, Ne me perdas ilia die.

Me remember. Saviour — one, For whose soul Thy course was run, Lest I be that day undone. The idea of the element of wrath existing in the character of God is most unwelcome to many minds, and still more unwelcome is the thought that it should be an attribute of the gentle Christ. But Christ came to reveal God, the whole God — not an incomplete and limited deity. Hence we should expect to find not one side but all sides of God represented in Him. Thus, the real question is not, whether wrath exists in Christ, but whether it is an attribute in God. Now we accept the fact that it is so, not merely on the ground of scriptural statements, not merely on that of actual experience, but for the reason that in every complete and strong moral character the attribute of wrath must exist. Few essential elements of human nature have been so distorted and perverted as this, and so generally associated with sin. But this does not prove that sin is necessarily connected with anger. There is a righteous indignation, however rarely it may be seen in man — an indignation which is a passion in behalf of order, truth, righteousness, purity ; not a heat of revenge springing from personal grudge, but a quality essential to a perfect nature, and this we find in God the Father and in Jesus Christ the Lamb of God. It is impossible to define this feeling. We may state its effects, but the feeling is an ultimate one incapable of analysis. To complete our picture of the Lamb of God the shadows must be inserted as well as the light. But we do not mean to enter into the large and difficult questions connected with the future of the wicked. We merely touch upon those lights thrown upon that future by the expression which heads the chapter, " The wrath of the Lamb."

I The wrath of the Lamb is primarily the wrath of a rejected Redeemer. It is indignation not so much against sin as such, but against the sin that refuses to accept and trust Christ.

Every careful reader of Christ’s life must have observed that sin did not affect Him with the shudder and recoil that we should have expected. We should have imagined that one who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity and cannot bear to look upon evil, would have turned with horror and shrinking from the manifestations of the power of sin that met Him on every hand. But, instead of that, we find that He speaks of sin calmly. We find that He sits with publicans and sinners as their guest, and exposes Himself to the taunts of those who call Him a glutton and a wine-bibber, the friend of publicans and sinners. A writer on the life of Christ has attempted to explain Christ’s attitude when the woman taken in adultery was brought before Him, as caused by shame. When He cast his eyes down to the ground and wrote upon it, and did not lift them until the people were all gone. His cheeks, it is supposed, were suffused with the blush of shame. Many readers may have perceived the unsatisfactoriness of this without being able to give a reason for their feeling. The reason may be here. We might, any of us, have blushed at such a sight, but our blush would have been a confession of the solidarity of the race — of our share in our sister’s sin. But He knew no sin, and, knowing no sin, knew no shame. Where shame exists sin exists. He was pure from sin, and so He looked upon our sins, not with the consciousness of one who has been or may be guilty of the same misdeeds, but as God has looked and does look.

Very different is His attitude towards one particular sin on which the conscience of the great majority scarcely speaks at all — the sin of unbelief. There are many who would be struck with shame and terror if they had committed any other great sin who are never visited by one pang at the thought that they are committing this. But to Christ it was the sin of sins. He marveled at it, we are told. It seemed to Him the most astonishing and unreasonable thing in the universe — the one unreasonable, indeed — for although there are thousands of excuses for it, reasons there are none — excuses enough to build a wall between the soul and its Saviour, but no reason. The one inexplicable thing in the universe is neither God, nor hell, nor sorrow, nor sin — it is unbelief. That men should look at Him and not trust Him — that men dying for want of love, and peace, and hope, and rest, should refuse to put out a finger to grasp them when they are all put within their reach — this is the real wonder of the universe. That men should believe that they are to die and face judgment and eternity — should know that they need salvation, and that Christ is the Saviour, and yet do nothing — that is the one thing that moves the marvel of Christ ; and it was that which moved His tears. He wept over the city that refused to be gathered. It moved His anger — this hardness of men’s hearts. His breast was shaken with wonder, and sorrow, and pity, and anger at the sin of sins — unbelief. A homely illustration may help to make His feeling clearer. If we had within our power a remedy which could heal every disease to which flesh is heir, I suppose we should not look much at the diseases, but urge the taking of the remedy. We should not care to listen to the varied tales of pain and sorrow poured into our ears ; we should say, it is enough that here is a remedy to meet every need. And if it were conceivable that any should refuse the remedy, that refusal would seem to us so strange and so terrible that we should have no power to think of anything besides. That may be how it seemed to Christ; He knew that He could heal all the world’s disease and meet all the world’s need ; and the wonder of wonders and the pain of pains was that needy, dying men should refuse Him. So the sin for which the Lamb will judge and visit with His wrath will be primarily the sin of unbelief, the sin of rejecting Him in His great salvation. " Could the despisers of Christ’s love be well pleasing to God, love would declare its own work superfluous." This comes home specially to all who have heard the message of the Gospel. Whatever light there may be in the future for those who have never heard, there is darkness for those who, having heard, have rejected and disbelieved ; and the darkness comes because they refused. " The sin rendering the individual absolutely bad can only be the personal guilt of rejecting Christ, in which, of course, rejection of good itself is included, and therefore acquiescence in all other possible sin."

II The wrath of the Lamb must be a wrath that can be justified. It is not like so much of the anger of this world, unreasonable, hasty, and vindictive. It is the wrath of the Lamb, most gentle, most pitiful, most merciful, most longsuffering. Some have said that the wrath of the Lamb must be terrible because it is love turned to anger. There is no fire, it has been said, like the sheen of a dead affection ; no enemy like one that has once been a friend. " To be wroth with one we love doth work like madness in the brain," But while this is true of men, we cannot affirm it in the same way about Christ, because this very excess of resentment and passion is often an infirmity and a sin. We may say that in Christ, as the flame of love is purer and stronger, so the flame of anger may be ; but we cannot say that anything in His anger is passionate or vindictive. The truth pressed on us is that we shall have no defender when the Lamb ceases to plead for us. No one is so abundant in the resources of mercy and patience, and when His resources are exhausted, on whose shall we fall back ? One of the greatest difficulties in connection with future punishment has been how to understand the happiness of the blessed in connection with the misery of the lost. How can we be glad in heaven while they are punished in hell? Now, whatever the punishment of sin may be, this at least is certain, that it will be a punishment that will meet with the complete acquiescence of the whole moral universe. That is the meaning of such texts as "Again they said Alleluiah, and her smoke rose up for ever and ever." That seems terrible, but how much more awful if they did not acquiesce ; how much more awful if the lost went to their doom with the sympathy of the blessed? Nor would it be enough if the blessed merely resigned themselves to the will of God in this dispensation. The only solution that can be borne is that the justice and righteousness of God in the punishment of the lost are so completely vindicated, that the blessed will suffer them to go to their doom without one tear or pang.

Here we touch on a dark and perplexed subject. But are there not indications even in this confused existence which help us to understand it? Are those really the most merciful who refuse to condemn sin and crime? Are there not crimes that move a man to thank God that Prophet is ordained of old? Do not even the most merciful feel sometimes a joy in the thought that the cruel, the brutal, and the wicked have been brought to their punishment and their doom? What is thought of the moral state of a country where murder and outrage prevail unchecked by public opinion, and where those convicted of the most brutal crimes perish with the sympathy of their fellows? Is this not held rightly to show that the land has been demoralized, that conscience has been stupefied or deadened, and is it not regarded as showing the necessity for moral awakening, so that crime shall be looked on in its true light? When those who have power and wealth given to them use the power to crush and oppress the weak, who does not heave a sigh of relief when the long tyranny of such a life is ended? Who does not rejoice that the strong one has met with the stronger at last? When the purest and noblest feeling of the soul is perverted into a vile and cancerous passion, destroying the objects on which it feeds, who will protest when retribution comes to the seducer ? Is there not such a thing to be seen on earth as even the most blind and faithful love opening its eyes and turning away — father and mother saying at last, " Every spark of divine light has gone out, and I can love no more." And may it not, must it not be supposed that there will be a similar acquiescence in God’s judgment at the last? That the judgment, whatever it may be, will not shock, revolt, and confound the moral sense, but will carry with it the full acquiescence of every pure and righteous spirit? In saying this we by no means assent to the monstrous doctrine — ultimately subversive of all religion — that our consciences here give us no real knowledge of good and evil. Nor do we deny that there are theories of future punishment to which the conscience could never in any future consent. What we affirm is that the punishment of the wicked, be it what it may, will commend itself to the conscience of the righteous, and will be recognized even by themselves as just. The lost soul " has been under an infinitely beneficent system of trial. Everything he has known of God has assumed the benign form of a dissuasion from sin ; his experience has generated countless motives to obedience ; his steps have been thronged by them as by pleading spirits ; but for his guilt his conscience alone would have been an ever present song of God’s love to him ; if he has had Christian training the disclosures of redemption have opened upon him the most intense system of allurements to believers known in the universe ; the teachings of wise men, the prayers of good men, the visions of inspired men, and the ministrations of angels, have stretched a cordon of holy sympathies around him ; the cross of Christ has blocked his way to destruction more impassably than by a flaming sword ; intercession in heaven has been made for him with hands uplifted in which were the prints of the nails ; the Holy Spirit has striven to turn him back by all the devices which infinite ingenuity could frame at the bidding of infinite compassion ; his history has been one long struggle against obstacles to the suicide of his soul ; he has sought out, and discovered, and selected, and seized upon, and made sure of his own way, over and around and through them to the world of despair. He has done it — he, and not another. Such is every lost life. Is it any marvel that a lost soul is speechless?"

III The wrath of the Lamb is a personal infliction. Some have sought to relieve the difficulties connected with this question, by saying that future punishment is simply a self-executing law of the universe, the inevitable consequence following upon transgression. But to accept such a doctrine would be to withdraw the punishment of sin from the conscience of the sinner. Punishment would then simply work upon fear, and on nothing beside ; and righteousness would come to be nothing more than selfish prudence. Now, on the other hand, the Bible view represents sin and righteousness as a relation between persons. Duty is more than the recognition of a naked law ; when we commit sin we wrong others, and we wrong a power which bound us not to wrong them. The punishment of sin is to come face to face with that living power and be judged by it at last. In the whole discipline of our life, Christ strives to bring us face to face with Himself. Wherever we meet with even the least of His brethren, we meet with Him. He is sick, sad, unvisited. He shivers unclothed, He languishes in prison, He is the stranger that knocks at our door. It is He whom we persecute, when we lift our hands against His truth. He feels afresh, as the old hymn says, "what every member bears." When we reject His messenger, we reject Himself He meets us at every turn of our life, and the thought of Him is inseparably bound up with the familiar objects and actions of our existence. He is the way, the truth, the life, the bread, the water, the door, the shepherd, the star, the sun. To everything He has attached some association of Himself, that we may, as it were, live face to face with Him ; and so whenever we commit sin we deal with Him, and we grow at last into the meaning of this old agony of confession — "Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned."

Scripture teaches that a day is coming when the whole account of the universe shall be summed up, and when all shall receive the due reward of their deeds. The world’s history is not of itself sufficient to be the world’s judgment, Christ will sit upon the great white throne upon that day, the central figure to which all eyes turn. We shall come face to face yet more unmistakably with Him with whom we have been dealing all our life. We shall see Him there as Judge whom we knew of old as Saviour, and He will judge every one of us according to our works. What will give its power to the judgment will be that He judges — He who died for us. The intense moral effort that it costs a God of infinite love to deal thus with the sinner, will give the judgment its power over the conscience and the heart. We shall come face to face with Him who wept over Jerusalem, and the eyes that were once as fountains of water will be as a flame of fire. It is a terrible thing to be ground in pieces by the law, but much more terrible to fall into the hands of the living Christ. So much we may affirm; but many questions rise to which we can give no answer. There are awful breadths of promise and doom which our Lord has not seen good to light up, and into which our search is vain. This much is clear, that "the New Testament is a very severe as well as a very hopeful book. It takes a very severe view of the world, and of the ways and conduct of men. And certainly our Lord’s own teaching is not the least stern part of it. Look at it carefully and you will find how large a proportion the language of rebuke and warning bears to the language of consolation and promise ; the one is as grave, as anxious, as alarming, as the other is gracious beyond all our hopes. ... Of the closing retribution our Lord has used words and figures which have graven themselves deep in the memory and imagination of mankind — the eternal punishment, the fire that never shall be quenched, the worm that dieth not, the place of torment prepared for the devil and his angels. What could our Saviour mean us to understand by all this ? Surely He did not mean simply to frighten us. Surely He meant us to take His words as true. We may put aside the New Testament altogether ; but if we profess to be guided by it, " is there anything but ’a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation ’ for obstinate, impenitent, unforgiven sin, sin without excuse and without change."* So He turns round to us as of old when we put our questions, and says, " Take heed to yourselves." Our own personal and separate interest let us at least make sure of. He is the Lamb ; none perish that,’put their trust in Him. Let us trust Him for ourselves — for what we know, for what we do not know. Through all the awful hazards of the future He will lead us if we cling to Him. Passing the time of our sojourning here in fear, we shall be kept by the ’power of God; and at the last He will shew us His salvation. When earth and sea shall empty all Their graves of great and small ; When earth wrapped in a fiery flood Shall no more hide her blood ; When mysteries shall be revealed, All secrets be unsealed ;

Then Awful Judge, most Awful God, Then cause to bud Thy rod. To bloom with blossoms, and to give Almonds; yea, bid us live.

I plead myself with Thee; I plead Thee in our utter need ;

Jesus, most Merciful of men Show mercy on us then ;

Lord God of Mercy and of Men, Show mercy on us then.