Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Hinge of the Controversy: Divine Justice and the Satisfaction of Christ | John Owen

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The Hinge of the Controversy: Divine Justice and the Satisfaction of Christ | John Owen · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  So usually demolishing a building is really loud.
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  Oh yeah, very loud. Right.
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  You bring in the Wrecking Ball, you smash the windows, tear off
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  the roof, and the whole thing comes crashing down in this huge
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  cloud of dust. It is a spectacle.
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  Everyone on the street can see what is happening.
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  Right. It draws a crowd.
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  Yeah, but the most dangerous demolition experts, they do not
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  need a Wrecking Ball. They just quietly walk into the
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  basement, find one specific unassuming structural beam, and
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  remove it. And leave everything else alone.
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  Precisely. They leave the walls alone, they
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  leave the roof alone, but because they understood the
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  precise load bearing mechanics of that building, the whole
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  house collapses in total silence.
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  That is a great way to picture it.
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  Back in the 17th century, a thinker named Says Sinus walked
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  right into the basement of the Christian faith to remove one
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  unassuming beam. And that beam was the concept of
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  God's justice. Yeah, he went right for the
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  foundation. He sure did, and if theologian
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  John Owen had not caught him in the act, the necessity of the
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  cross would have come crashing down.
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  So welcome to Reformed Thinking. This is a custom tailored deep
• 1:08
  dive designed specifically for your curious mind, taking you
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  straight to the core of a massive historical text.
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  We are investigating a piece of writing by John Owen titled A
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  Dissertation on Divine Justice. It really is a brilliant piece
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  of historical theology. I mean, John Owen was a 17th
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  century academic, the Vice Chancellor of Oxford University.
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  Just a massive intellect. Absolutely massive.
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  Right. And he is writing this
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  dissertation to defend a very specific concept, which is God's
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  punitory justice, that is the attribute of God that requires
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  the punishment of sin. Right, the absolute requirement.
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  Yeah, and he is defending it against Fausto Satsini, who is,
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  you know, generally known by his Latinized name, Sassinus.
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  Now Sassinus is the guy down in the basement.
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  Sneaking around with a wrench. Spot on.
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  He is making a highly calculated argument that God's justice is
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  optional. He suggests that God can punish
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  sin if he wants to, but he absolutely does not have to.
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  It is a choice, like picking what to have for dinner.
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  We really need to set the stakes right away for you, the
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  listener, because I mean, this is not some abstract ivory tower
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  debate over dictionary definitions.
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  No, not at. All so Sinus is trying to prove
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  that God's justice is optional for one very specific reason.
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  He wants to disprove the necessity of Christ's
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  satisfaction for sin. That is the whole goal.
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  Yeah, and that word satisfaction trips people up today because,
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  you know, when we hear it, we think of customer service or
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  eating a good meal. Right, like being satisfied with
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  a product. Yeah, but in this theological
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  and historical context, what does that word actually mean?
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  Well, it is a legal and financial term.
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  Think about a debt. If you owe, say, $1,000,000 to
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  the bank, the bank requires satisfaction.
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  They want their money. Right.
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  The debt must be paid. If someone else steps in and
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  pays the million dollars on your behalf, the bank's requirement
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  is satisfied. That makes sense.
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  So in theology, Christ's satisfaction refers to Jesus
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  taking on the legal debt of human sin and paying the penalty
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  on the cross. It fulfills the legal
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  requirement of God's justice. And so Sinus wants to dismantle
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  this entire idea. He really does.
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  He wants to prove that God is not like a bank requiring a
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  payment. He wants to prove God can just
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  cancel the debt with a wave of his hand, which makes the cross
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  totally unnecessary. So if justice is just a choice,
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  the cross becomes an unnecessary tragedy.
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  Precisely. John Owen, on the other hand, is
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  defending the absolute, undeniable necessity of that
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  satisfaction. He is doing that by proving that
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  justice is an inherent part of who God is.
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  If God is inherently just, the debt must be paid.
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  That is the core conflict right there.
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  Both men understand they are fighting over the central axis
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  of the Christian faith. The stakes could not be higher.
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  Yeah, Owen is writing this dissertation to show that
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  Sassanas quiet attempt to remove that one beam will literally
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  bond the entire house down. So our goal today is to examine
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  the rigorous defense Owen builds to reinforce that structure.
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  We really need to look at the mechanics of the arguments.
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  We are not just looking at what they said, we want to unpack why
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  they said it and how their logic.
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  Works, I agree. OK, so let us unpack this motive
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  a bit more. We should start by looking at
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  the load bearing wall itself. Why is so sinus attacking the
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  concept of divine justice in the first place?
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  Well, he has a very clear agenda.
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  He does, based on our sources, so Sinus does not hide his
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  intentions at all. He vehemently opposes the idea
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  of punitory or punishing justice because he understands it is the
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  hinge of the entire controversy regarding Christ the Savior.
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  He is remarkably open about his strategy.
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  Yeah, he's almost shocking how transparent he is.
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  It really is so. Sinus was part of a rationalist
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  movement in the 16th and 17th centuries.
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  He looked at the established doctrines of the Church,
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  especially the Trinity and the Atonement, and he just decided
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  they did not make logical sense to his human mind.
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  He thought he knew better. Pretty much.
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  But he knows that if you attack the cross directly, you face an
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  uphill battle. You are going up against
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  centuries of established Christian doctrine and, you
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  know, very clear biblical texts. You cannot just erase the
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  crucifixion from the Bible. Right, so he goes for the
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  logical prerequisite of the cross.
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  He realizes that the only reason a substitute, a savior, is
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  required in the 1st place is if there is an unavoidable demand
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  for a penalty. So he looks for the root cause,
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  Yeah. If God simply must punish sin
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  because of His nature, then a Savior is absolutely required to
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  bear that punishment on behalf of humanity.
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  So. So scientists decides to target
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  that must he targets the absolute requirement.
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  That is his whole game plan. Our sources point out a very
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  striking quote from So Sinus here.
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  He actually glories in his perceived victory.
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  He says that if he can just get rid of this specific attribute
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  of God, then what he calls the human fiction of Jesus Christ
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  satisfaction will be thoroughly detected and totally vanish.
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  Calling the cross a human fiction is quite a bold
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  statement. It is a staggering claim.
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  I mean, by calling it a human fiction, he means it is just a
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  theological invention. Right, something made-up by men.
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  Yeah, he thinks early church thinkers essentially made-up
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  this legal framework of a debt needing payment.
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  He assumes that by making justice an optional preference
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  rather than a necessary attribute, he has totally
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  dismantled his opponents strong tower.
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  He really thinks he has outsmarted everyone.
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  He thinks he's has completely bypassed the need for an
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  atonement. But what is super striking is
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  how much John Owen actually agrees with Socinus on the
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  stakes of this argument. They are on the same page about
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  what is at risk. Yeah, Owen notes that if Pine
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  Tory justice belongs essentially to God, no one, not even someone
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  with a genius as artful and fertile as Socinus, could devise
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  a way for sinners to attain salvation without a proper
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  satisfaction. They're basically looking at the
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  exact same logical equation, just from opposite sides.
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  If justice is essential, the cross is necessary.
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  If justice is optional, the cross is a fiction.
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  It is a binary outcome. And Owen actually gives the
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  sinus credit for his intellect here, which is interesting.
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  He does. He acknowledges that Sosinus is
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  a clever thinker. But Owen argues that the truth
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  of Christ bearing our sins is abundantly clear.
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  It rests on the revealed will of God.
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  Owen makes a really strong point there.
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  He says that even if God had kept the reasons for the cross
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  hidden in his infinite wisdom, humanity would still be
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  obligated to accept it based purely on God's authority.
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  That brings up a really fascinating point about how we
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  approach divine revelation. Owen is basically saying that
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  God does not owe us a comprehensive explanation for
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  his methods. He is God after all.
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  Right. The fact that Christ bore our
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  sins is a revealed truth, a strong pillar of faith that just
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  cannot be surrendered. Even if we do not get all the
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  mechanics. Yeah, but however, since God has
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  graciously revealed the mechanisms behind this truth,
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  since He has shown us that His justice requires satisfaction,
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  we have an obligation to defend that understanding.
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  We have to protect what he has shown US.
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  Spot on. Owen refuses to surrender even a
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  single inch of this truth to adversaries like So Sinus.
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  So let us try and make this dynamic really concrete for the
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  listener. Going back to that architectural
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  idea, think of punitory justice as a massive load bearing wall
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  right in the center of a house. OK, I am picturing it.
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  So Sinus is not coming in with a paintbrush to, you know,
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  redecorate the living room. He has a sledgehammer and he is
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  aiming right at that central pillar.
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  He wants structural collapse. Yeah, he knows that if he can
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  knock out the necessity of justice, the entire roof meeting
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  the necessity of the cross will just collapse under its own
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  weight. That is a perfect analogy.
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  So if so Sinus is so confident he has dismantled this wall,
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  what specifically is his strategy?
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  I mean, how does he explain the biblical descriptions of God
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  punishing sin? He cannot just cross those pages
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  out of his Bible. No, he cannot.
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  He has to deal with the actual text, and that leads us right
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  into the actual mechanics of SO sinus argument.
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  What does he do? Well, since he cannot ignore the
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  parts of the text that talk about God punishing people, he
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  invents a brand new categorization system.
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  A loophole. Yeah, pretty much.
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  This brings us to his critique of a previous writer named
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  Kovitis. Now Cavetus had argued in a
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  correspondence that justice and mercy are opposed to one
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  another. OK, how so?
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  You have mercy which pardons, and justice which punishes.
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  They pull in opposite directions so sinus jumps all over this.
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  He sees an opening. He really does.
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  He accuses Cavetes of improperly setting justice in opposition to
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  mercy, claiming that the biblical text contains no such
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  opposition. And from that critique, so
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  Spinus introduces this highly specific concept of A2 fold
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  justice. Right, the two rule books.
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  Yeah, he argues that God actually possesses 2 entirely
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  different kinds of justice. The first kind, according to
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  Sinus, is the justice God uses to destroy obstinate,
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  desperately wicked sinners. The ones who just will not turn
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  around. Yeah, these are the people who
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  persevere in wickedness and completely refuse to repent.
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  God uses the harsh justice on them.
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  Correct. And then so Sinus proposes a
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  second kind of justice. The second type is used for
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  sinners who are not entirely desperate.
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  You know, sinners whose repentance is actually expected.
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  So the slightly better sinners. According to him, yeah.
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  According to Sinus, this second kind of justice allows these
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  people to stand in God's presence, assuming God wills it.
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  He is trying to create a theological framework where
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  God's standard of justice flexes and bends depending on the
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  category of the center. That is precisely what he is
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  doing. So.
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  So scientist is basically arguing God operates like a
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  corrupt bouncer at a nightclub. I like where this is going.
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  Yeah, if he likes you or if he thinks you might behave well,
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  eventually he uses the VI key rule book and just waved you in,
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  totally ignoring the dress code. But if he does not like you, or
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  if you are stubborn, he pulls out the strict rule book and
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  throws you out into the street. That is a perfect way to
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  visualize it. So Sinus needs a flexible
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  standard. He needs God to have the ability
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  to say, you know you broke the rules, but I am going to look
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  the other way for you. Because if God can look the
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  other way, you do not need Jesus to pay the fine.
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  Spot on, but Owen steps in and completely rejects this whole
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  setup. Owen's rebuttal is that punitory
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  justice is 1 alone an individual.
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  It is not twofold at all. Not even a little bit.
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  The standard of justice does not change.
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  It is an unmoving baseline. OK but hold on if justice is a
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  strict unchanging standard but one guy goes to hell and the
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  other gets pardoned. I mean from the outside that
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  looks exactly like God playing favorite.
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  It does look like that initially.
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  Right. How does Owen defend that
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  without making God look like a hypocrite?
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  If the rule never changes, how do we end up with two completely
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  opposite results? That is the traps a sinus falls
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  into, and it is a very intuitive trap.
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  You see two different outcomes, so you naturally assume there
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  must be two different sets of rules it.
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  Seems like the only logical conclusion.
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  But Owen clarifies that the difference in the outcome does
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  not rely on a change in God's standard.
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  The difference lies in whether or not a substitute has
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  satisfied that standard. The substitute.
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  Yeah, God punishes the impenitent to all eternity
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  because He is just and because there is no sacrifice for their
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  sins, their sins remain entirely on their own account.
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  So the strict rule book applies to them directly.
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  Precisely, they bear the full weight of it.
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  Now for the other group, God leads them to repentance and
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  pardons them. But, and this is the really
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  crucial distinction Owen makes, God does not pardon them by
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  suspending his justice. He does not ignore the dress
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  code. Right.
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  He does not pull out a lenient VIP rulebook.
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  He pardons them because his singular, unchanging standard of
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  justice was completely satisfied by Christ.
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  The penalty was actually paid. The penalty was paid in full.
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  The standard was upheld to the letter.
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  The difference is the intervention of Christ paying
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  the debt, not a fluctuation in God's sense of justice.
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  That makes total sense. So INA sees two different
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  results and assumes two different types of justice.
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  Yeah, he gets the cause and effect all wrong.
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  Owen says no, there is one type of justice, but for one group,
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  the requirement of that justice was met by a proxy.
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  A legal stand in. Right, like if my friend and I
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  both get $1000 speeding tickets and my friend's dad pays his
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  ticket but I have to pay my own, The traffic court it did not
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  change its. Rules.
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  No, the law is still the law. The fine was the exact same for
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  both of us. The law was upheld.
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  The only difference is who wrote the check.
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  That is a really helpful analogy.
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  So scientist is so eager to exclude Christ writing that
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  check that he has to invent this complicated twofold justice
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  completely out of thin air. Yeah, he's grasping at straws.
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  And Owen points out, there is not the most distant mention of
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  this twofold justice in the sacred writings anywhere.
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  Not at all. Furthermore, Owen points
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  straight to the book of Romans to back this up, specifically
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  chapter 3 verses 24 and 25 to just solidify this argument.
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  What do those verses say? They clearly state that the
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  foundation for how God deals with sinners is laid in the
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  blood of Christ. God can be just, meaning
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  maintaining His singular standard while also pardoning
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  the Sinner. Because the justice.
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  Was satisfied? Yeah, precisely because it was
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  satisfied. The text actually says God did
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  this to declare his righteousness.
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  Oh wow, not to hide it. Right.
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  He did not bypass his righteousness to forgive, he
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  actively demonstrated it on the cross by ignoring this
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  mechanism. So Sinus builds his entire
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  premise on a massive theological mistake.
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  OK, so Owen completely blocks So Sinus's attempt to claim God has
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  two different rulebooks. It is a total shutdown.
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  But so Sinus is nothing if not persistent.
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  If he cannot prove the rules are different, he decides to attack
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  the language of the text itself. He pivots hard.
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  He really does. He pivots from a legal argument
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  to an emotional one, since Owen systematically shuts down the
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  idea that God has two different standards.
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  So Sinus shifts to talking about the emotional vocabulary used to
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  describe God. This is a really classic shift
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  in argumentation. When the logical structure
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  fails, you go straight for a semantic argument.
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  You argue about definitions. Yeah, so Sinus looks at the
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  biblical text and says, well, let us examine the specific
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  words being used here. He claims that the word justice
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  is never actually opposed to mercy in the text.
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  So what does he think opposes it?
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  He argues that the concepts that oppose mercy are always called
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  severity, anger, fury or vengeance.
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  He is basically conducting a massive word study to find a
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  loophole. He is flipping through the
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  concordance looking for a way out.
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  Right. And from this vocabulary, so a
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  scientist concludes that when God punishes Finn, it does not
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  come from an inherent structural attribute called justice.
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  He thinks it is just a feeling. Yeah, he argues.
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  It comes from these emotions. It comes from anger and
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  severity. Therefore, punishing sin is just
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  an emotional reaction, not a fixed legal necessity.
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  Owen calls this a huge blunder. First of all, he points out that
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  it is just factually incorrect to say the text never uses
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  justice when describing punishment.
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  The Bible does that all the time.
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  It does. God is frequently said to be
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  just specifically when he is judging or punishing.
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  But more substantially, Owen has to clarify the theological
• 16:19
  nature of God's anger. Which is super important.
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  It is, he introduces, a really brilliant philosophical
• 16:25
  distinction regarding how we interpret these emotional terms
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  when they are applied to the divine nature.
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  Let us examine that distinction carefully, because you know,
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  when we hear words like anger or fury, we immediately picture
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  human emotions. Of course we do.
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  We picture someone losing their temper, their face turning red,
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  their heart rate spiking. We picture a boss yelling at an
• 16:45
  employee or a driver having terrible road rage.
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  A complete loss of composure. Yeah, but Olin argues that God
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  does not have troubled affections.
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  That term troubled affections is so key here.
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  Think about what human anger actually is.
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  In reality it is reactive. It is a knee jerk thing.
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  Yeah, it is a fluctuation in our state of being.
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  It is often accompanied by a loss of control or a sudden
• 17:10
  spike in adrenaline. Right, our blood pressure goes
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  up. Exactly.
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  But classical theology, which Owen defends heavily here,
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  maintains the doctrine of divine impassability.
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  That is a big word. What does impassability mean?
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  It means God is perfect and entirely unchanging.
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  He does not suffer emotional fluctuations.
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  He does not have bad days. He does not get stressed out by
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  what we do. He's never caught off guard.
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  Spot on. Therefore, words like anger and
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  fury do not describe God's internal emotional reality in
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  the way they describe ours. So what are those words actually
• 17:43
  doing in the text? I mean, if God is not actually
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  losing his temper and throwing lightning bolts in a fit of
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  rage, why use words like fury and vengeance at all?
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  That is the big question. Owen explains that these words
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  describe the effects of God's corrective justice in a way that
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  finite human beings can comprehend.
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  It is an accommodation for us. Yeah, we call this speaking
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  analogically because we're finite.
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  We need analogies to understand the infinite.
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  I mean language we can grasp. Right.
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  When a human acts out of severe anger, the result is very often
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  punishment or destruction. So when God applies his perfect,
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  unchanging justice and the result is punishment or
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  destruction, the text uses the human concept of anger to
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  describe the receiving end of that justice.
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  I want to use a modern analogy to explain this, because getting
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  past our human ideas of anger is just crucial to understanding
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  Owen. Go for it.
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  Think about a computer firewall or an automated immune system.
• 18:39
  When a destructive virus enters a computer network, the security
• 18:42
  software instantly isolates and deletes it aggressively.
• 18:45
  Just wipes it out. Right, but the software is not
• 18:48
  angry at the virus. It does not have a temper.
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  It is simply executing its core programming to protect the
• 18:54
  system. It is just doing what it was
• 18:56
  made to do. Yeah, we might look at how fast
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  and brutally the virus was deleted and call the software
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  ruthless or severe, but those are just our human words for
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  it's perfect, unchanging defense mechanism.
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  That makes a lot of sense. Is so Sinus basically confusing
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  the destructive outcome with a human temper tantrum?
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  That is right on the money. So Sinus sees the harsh penalty
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  and just assumes God must be acting out of a personal
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  emotional outburst. He projects human weakness onto
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  God. Yes, he assumes the sentence is
• 19:26
  driven by volatile fury. But Owen is saying no.
• 19:29
  God is acting purely out of justice.
• 19:31
  He is executing the programming of his perfect moral nature.
• 19:35
  It is cool calculated perfection.
• 19:37
  Right. God does not punish sins because
• 19:39
  he is angry in a human emotional sense.
• 19:42
  He punishes them because he is essentially just.
• 19:44
  The standard demands it. Yeah, the anger is merely our
• 19:47
  human conceptualization of what it feels like to face that
• 19:50
  perfect justice when we have broken the law.
• 19:52
  It is a massive category error on Sinus's part.
• 19:56
  He is taking analogical language meant to help humans understand
• 19:59
  the severity of the penalty, and he is trying to reverse engineer
• 20:03
  it to claim God's justice is just a fluctuating emotional
• 20:07
  state. He completely misreads the
• 20:09
  intent of the text. And you can see why he wants to
• 20:11
  do this. He wants punishment to be an
• 20:13
  emotional reaction so that it can be optional.
• 20:16
  Because emotions pass. Right, you can choose to calm
• 20:19
  down. You can take a deep breath,
• 20:20
  count to 10, and just decide not to act on your anger.
• 20:24
  But you cannot choose to ignore a fundamental requirement of a
• 20:27
  perfect legal standard. That is it.
• 20:29
  If it is an emotion, God can just get over it.
• 20:32
  If it is justice, it has to be satisfied.
• 20:35
  The bank still wants its money, even if the teller is in a good
• 20:38
  mood. Right.
• 20:39
  So having failed to prove that justice is twofold, and having
• 20:43
  failed to reduce punishment to just an emotional outburst, so
• 20:46
  Sinus tries one last philosophical maneuver.
• 20:49
  He is running out of options. He is, he decides to redefine
• 20:52
  the very concept of justice. Just change the dictionary
• 20:55
  definition. Yeah, he tries to redefine it as
• 20:58
  a broad, generic preference for doing good, rather than a strict
• 21:02
  requirement to punish evil. This moves us right into his
• 21:06
  arguments concerning universal justice versus particular
• 21:09
  justice. The sources outline this
• 21:12
  transition very clearly. It is a big shift in his
• 21:15
  approach. So Sinus argues that whenever
• 21:17
  the term universal justice is used in the text, it just means
• 21:20
  the infinite rectitude or equity of God's nature.
• 21:24
  What does he actually mean by rectitude?
• 21:26
  Rectitude basically means straightness or moral
• 21:28
  uprightness. It just means doing what is
• 21:31
  right. Okay, sounds good so far.
• 21:33
  Yeah, but according to Suicinus, this rectitude primarily means
• 21:36
  doing good to the wretched, despised race of mankind and
• 21:40
  making them partakers of His glory.
• 21:43
  Notice what he is doing here. He is defining universal justice
• 21:46
  almost entirely in terms of benevolence.
• 21:48
  He is making justice mean being nice.
• 21:51
  Yeah, he is acquitting justice with doing nice things for
• 21:54
  unworthy people. And from this premise, he
• 21:56
  reaches his ultimate conclusion. He claims that punitory justice,
• 22:00
  you know, the specific drive to punish sin, is not a virtue
• 22:04
  inherent in God at all. He claims it is just an effect
• 22:07
  of God's will. This is a huge philosophical
• 22:10
  distinction, He is saying. Punishing sinners is accidental
• 22:14
  rather than proper to God's nature.
• 22:17
  Accidental like a mistake. No, and that is important to
• 22:20
  clarify by accidental in the 17th century philosophical
• 22:25
  context. He does not mean a mistake like
• 22:27
  tripping over a rug or spilling a glass of water.
• 22:30
  OK, what does he mean then? He means it is a secondary
• 22:32
  characteristic. Think about water.
• 22:35
  The essence of water is that it is wet.
• 22:37
  That is a property of its nature.
• 22:38
  It has to be wet to be water, right?
• 22:41
  But water can also be cold or hot.
• 22:43
  The temperature is an accidental property.
• 22:45
  It is a condition that can change without altering the
• 22:48
  basic fact that it is water. Whether it is ice or steam, it
• 22:51
  is still H2L. Yes.
• 22:53
  So Sinus is arguing that punishing sin is like the
• 22:56
  temperature of the water. It is a choice God makes based
• 22:59
  on His will, not a fundamental property of His being.
• 23:02
  Owen's counter argument here is incredibly sharp, he tells us.
• 23:06
  Sinus that you cannot use the existence of universal justice
• 23:10
  to negate particular justice. He calls out the logical
• 23:13
  fallacy. Yeah, Owen agrees that God has
• 23:16
  infinite universal rectitude. Of course he does.
• 23:19
  But he argues that particular justice, the actual act of
• 23:22
  punishing sin, is what he calls an egress of that universal
• 23:26
  rectitude. An egress, an outward
• 23:28
  expression. Yes, exactly.
• 23:30
  It is the necessary outward expression of God's perfect
• 23:32
  internal rectitude whenever sin enters the picture.
• 23:35
  It is the reaction. Right.
• 23:37
  Think of it like a perfectly straight ruler.
• 23:39
  That straightness is its universal nature.
• 23:41
  If you place a crooked, bent piece of wire next to it, the
• 23:44
  straight ruler immediately exposes the crookedness.
• 23:47
  Because of the contrast. Yeah, exposing the crookedness
• 23:50
  is the particular action, but it's just a natural, unavoidable
• 23:53
  consequence of the ruler's universal straightness.
• 23:56
  The ruler is not trying to be mean to the wire.
• 23:58
  No, punishing sin is the necessary reaction of perfect
• 24:02
  rectitude encountering moral evil.
• 24:04
  This brings up the massive theological distinction between
• 24:08
  God's will and God's nature. It is a crucial dividing line.
• 24:11
  It really is. If punishing sin is just a
• 24:14
  choice of His will, as the sinus claims, then God could simply
• 24:17
  choose to ignore sin entirely. You could just brush it.
• 24:20
  Off he could decide one day, you know, I will not punish that.
• 24:23
  I am feeling generous today. But if it is a property of his
• 24:27
  nature, as Owen argues, then God cannot ignore sin without
• 24:31
  violating his own perfection. He would have to deny himself
• 24:35
  right. If God were to ignore sin, he
• 24:37
  would literally cease to be perfectly just.
• 24:40
  He would be like a straight ruler deciding to bend itself
• 24:44
  just to accommodate the crooked wire.
• 24:46
  And again, Owen returns right to Romans 3.24 and 25 to anchor
• 24:51
  this philosophical point in the text.
• 24:53
  He wants to show it as biblical. He always goes back to the text.
• 24:56
  He points out that Christ was set forth as a propitiation
• 25:00
  specifically to declare God's righteousness for the remission
• 25:02
  of sins. We should probably unpack that
• 25:04
  word propitiation. Definitely is another heavy
• 25:07
  piece of theological jargon. Yeah, propitiation basically
• 25:10
  means an action designed to soothe or satisfy wrath and
• 25:13
  restore favor. It fixes the breach.
• 25:15
  Right. In this context, it means
• 25:17
  Christ's sacrifice absorbed the penalty of the broken law,
• 25:20
  completely satisfying the demands of justice so that God
• 25:23
  could actually show favor to humanity.
• 25:26
  So the cross is the proof. The cross is the absolute proof
• 25:29
  that God's justice is a matter of his nature.
• 25:32
  Think about it logically. If justice were merely a matter
• 25:35
  of will, if God could have just forgiven sin by making a choice
• 25:39
  to forget about it, the cross would be an entirely unnecessary
• 25:43
  tragedy. A horrible mistake.
• 25:45
  Yeah, why would God subject Christ to that level of
• 25:48
  suffering if he could have just flipped the switch and pardoned
• 25:51
  everyone? You would not have.
• 25:52
  Exactly. The fact that Christ had to die
• 25:55
  demonstrates that God's perfect nature demanded a legal
• 25:58
  resolution to the problem of sin.
• 26:00
  I do have a probing question about the implications of this
• 26:03
  distinction, though, because you know, when modern people hear
• 26:06
  this, they bristle a bit. It can sound very rigid to
• 26:08
  modern ears. It does.
• 26:10
  If Owen is right and justice is an absolute requirement of God's
• 26:14
  nature, does this mean God's hands are tied?
• 26:17
  That is of the common objection. Yeah.
• 26:19
  Is God somehow constrained by his own nature so that he is
• 26:23
  forced to demand a penalty? It almost sounds like justice is
• 26:27
  a higher power, a force greater than God that he has to submit
• 26:31
  to. Does that not make God less
• 26:33
  sovereign? This is perhaps the most common
• 26:36
  misunderstanding of Owen's position, and it is a really
• 26:39
  brilliant question. How does Owen handle it?
• 26:41
  Well, people assume that having an unchanging nature is a
• 26:44
  restriction. We love flexibility in our
• 26:47
  culture. We want to keep our options
• 26:48
  open. Right.
• 26:49
  We think freedom means the ability to do whatever we want
• 26:52
  whenever we want, changing our minds on a whim.
• 26:55
  But we have to reframe how we think about constraint when
• 26:57
  we're talking about a perfect being.
• 26:59
  OK, so. Acting consistently with perfect
• 27:02
  righteousness is not a limitation, it is the very
• 27:05
  definition of divine perfection. So it is not an external rule he
• 27:09
  has to follow. It is not a boss looking over
• 27:11
  his shoulder. No, it is who he is.
• 27:14
  Think of a perfectly truthful person.
• 27:16
  A truthful person is not constrained or forced to tell
• 27:19
  the truth. They tell the truth because it
• 27:21
  is in their character to do so. Lying would be contrary to their
• 27:24
  nature. Right.
• 27:25
  In the same way, God is not submitting to some external
• 27:28
  love, justice that sits above him in the universe.
• 27:31
  He is acting in perfect harmony with His own infinite goodness.
• 27:36
  That is a big difference. It is huge.
• 27:38
  To suggest that God should be able to act against his own
• 27:41
  perfect justice is to suggest that God should have the freedom
• 27:44
  to be imperfect, which is absurd, and that is a logical
• 27:47
  contradiction. His inability to ignore sin is
• 27:51
  actually the guarantee of his absolute moral purity.
• 27:54
  That reframes the entire debate. I mean, so Sinus thought he was
• 27:58
  defending God's freedom and mercy by making justice a matter
• 28:01
  of choice. He thought he was doing God a
• 28:03
  favor. He really did.
• 28:05
  But Owen reveals that by making justice optional, so Sinus was
• 28:08
  actually degrading the perfection of God's nature.
• 28:10
  He was making God legally inconsistent.
• 28:13
  He was making God look like a flaky judge.
• 28:15
  Right. So let us distill the core
• 28:17
  takeaways from this whole deep dive because we have covered a
• 28:20
  massive amount of theological ground today.
• 28:22
  We really have. We started with so sinus down in
• 28:24
  the basement trying to pull out the load bearing pillar of
• 28:27
  divine justice so that the necessity of Christ's cross
• 28:31
  would just collapse. And we saw how John Owen
• 28:33
  reinforced that pillar from every possible angle.
• 28:36
  He brought in the steel reinforcements.
• 28:38
  He did. He demonstrated that justice is
• 28:40
  not twofold, with different standards for different people.
• 28:43
  The law remains the law. The standard does not bend.
• 28:46
  Right. He showed that biblical language
• 28:49
  about anger describes the unchanging application of
• 28:52
  justice against evil, not a fluctuating emotional reaction
• 28:55
  or a loss of temper. God.
• 28:56
  Is not having a tantrum. No, and he established that
• 28:59
  punishing sin is not an accidental choice of God's will,
• 29:03
  but the necessary expression of his perfect nature.
• 29:06
  For John Owen, punitory justice is not a secondary, optional
• 29:10
  setting that God can toggle on and off depending on his mood.
• 29:14
  It is an essential attribute of his very being.
• 29:16
  It is who he is. And because it is essential,
• 29:19
  Christ's satisfaction is the only possible way this perfect
• 29:22
  justice and perfect mercy can meet.
• 29:24
  The cross is the only solution. Yeah, the cross is not a human
• 29:29
  fiction like so Sinus claimed. It is the absolute center of
• 29:33
  reality. It is the place where the
• 29:35
  immovable requirement of justice was met by infinite mercy.
• 29:39
  Understanding the absolute necessity of God's justice
• 29:41
  drastically elevates the magnitude of the pardon.
• 29:44
  It really changes how you see it.
• 29:45
  It does. When we realize that forgiveness
• 29:48
  could not be achieved by God simply brushing sin under the
• 29:51
  rug or changing the rules, we start to actually grasp the
• 29:55
  actual cost involved. It was not a cheap pardon.
• 29:57
  Not at all. And that is precisely why this
• 30:00
  historical debate matters to you right now.
• 30:02
  It is so easy to view forgiveness as a casual
• 30:05
  dismissal of wrongdoing. You know, divine.
• 30:08
  Hey, do not worry about it. A free pass.
• 30:10
  Right. But Owen shows us that
• 30:12
  forgiveness is a legally secure reality, purchased at an
• 30:15
  unimaginable cost. God's justice was not bypassed,
• 30:19
  It was fully met. Every single requirement.
• 30:21
  Which leaves us with a specific lingering question for you to
• 30:24
  ponder long after this audio finishes.
• 30:26
  Something to think about. If God's justice is an
• 30:29
  unchangeable part of his nature, how does that shift the way you
• 30:32
  view the smaller daily injustices in the world around
• 30:37
  you? That is a great question.
• 30:39
  Does knowing there is an absolute, unavoidable standard
• 30:42
  of justice waiting at the end of all things change how you react
• 30:46
  when you are wrong today? It certainly gives you
• 30:48
  perspective. It really does.
• 30:50
  We want to thank you for joining us for this session of reform
• 30:52
  thinking. We will catch you on the next
• 30:54
  deep dive.