The other week I heard a local (B/CS) pastor say the following: "I am getting sick of this ‘new theology’ that proclaims that God sent Jesus to die on the cross only to fulfill ‘His glory’. I’m telling you today they are missing it! Jesus didn’t die on the cross to make God look bigger, He died on the cross because HE LOVED US." As you can imagine, I reached back for an extra something on my amen for that!
Curious that the pastor used the term ‘new theology’ when describing this. After pondering it through, and searching the scriptures, I’ve concluded that he is absolutely right - it is a new theology. The old theology, that of the apostles and Christ Himself, was that Jesus died on the cross because "God so loved the world" (John 3:16). And as the people of God rightly cry out in Psalm 79:9 "Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your Name; deliver us, and atone for our sins, for your name’s sake!", we arrive at the crucial question - does God ‘use’ love to arrive at His glory or is His glory His love itself?
This may sound like splitting theological hairs, but the logical conclusions of each leave us in profoundly different places with the very character of God. In the first, love is merely the card God plays to checkmate His opponent, sin and death, that he may arrive at his final and most basic motive, His own glory. I would suggest this completely misreads the heart of God, and in fact, the very definition of what ‘Glory’ means. The second conclusion, that God’s glory is His great love and that His love is His glory, gives us the understanding that God does not have love as a tool to use for His glory sake - but that He, in of Himself, is LOVE! (1 John 4:8) Therefore, any revealing of His glory is the revelation of who He in of Himself is, that is - Love. If the ultimate manifestation of God Almighty is at the cross, then the simple, yet profoundly glorious revelation is that God is love.
"And this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4:10)
"In this case the god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." (2 Cor. 4:4)
Jesus is the image of God, revealing the gospel of God, which is the gospel of glory. Jesus, being the fullness of the God-head bodily (Col. 2:9) is the revelation of the character of God. His sacrificial life and death reveal the most glorious but simple truth, that God is love!
Even a babe in Christ understands this, so why don’t some of our theologians?
I too have heard that “new theology” preached on many occasions and every time I hear it I can’t help but feel like that really wasn’t what the preacher meant to say. And if only I could sit down with him then maybe he would tell me that I heard wrong or just didn’t understand.
I feel like the “glory conclusion” is a theology that is arrived at by a process of dedcutive reasoning in the scriptures. It is an attempt to make the praxis of God as logical as we possbily can. Rather than just saying that “God is love” and that He saves us because He loves us, it is taken a step further.
You are very right when you say that the difference between these two theologies will lead us to two very different views concerning the character of God.
blessings to you and Jenny.
Peace,