I am sitting here watching a tick walk across my keyboard. I am assuming he got here via my dog who sits by me as I write. I have a choice. I can take it outside and release it back to the wild or I can dispatch it via a large variety of options of murder. I am reminded of the famous fire and brimstone sermon by the Massachusetts pioneer preacher Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” The famous line is “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked.” I have this abhorrent power over this tick. He knows it not but he is doomed.
Wow, how grateful I am that Jonathan Edwards could not have been more wrong about God. He does not abhor us. Quite to the contrary Paul wrote, “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” Romans 5:10.
If Jonathan Edwards had been correct there would be no Gospel just bad news. What concerns me is I know some Christians whose theology is very little different from Edwards. They seem to think God is watching to catch them doing something wrong lest they be saved. It is true that God is watching but just for the opposite reason. He wants to catch us surrendering to Jesus. If there is any way to squeeze us in He will find it. He is a savior quite unlike me with the tick who is now history.
Written by Roger Bothwell on June 21, 2013
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