Who Is God? (An Abusive Father?) I

We all probably know stories of people who have experienced abuse, or at the very least have heard them. Perhaps you’ve experienced it yourself. If so, I mean in no way to open up any wounds with what I’m about to write. I also don’t mean to diminish what you or others have experienced. No one should have to be subjected to that kind of treatment. Being abused in any form is a terrible thing but it is a reality we cannot ignore in this broken world full of broken people.

With that said, I am going to discuss abuse in this week’s article. The reason I am going to discuss it has to do with a way in which I have come to believe that God’s character – who He is – has been maligned. I don’t think that it’s been done maliciously or even intentionally. I think it’s the result of a story about what happened at the cross and why Jesus died such a brutal death. It’s a story that many of us have heard since we first became a Christian, and as a result has become firmly implanted in our minds and accepted by many Christians. I even used to believe it myself, but I see this story in a very different light now than I once did.

You probably know the story. It goes something like this. Starting with when Adam and Eve ate that forbidden fruit, man had been in a state of rebellion against God. This rebellion manifested itself in all manners of ugly sins. Because of that, God was angry with mankind. Being a just and righteous God, this sinful rebellion had to be punished, and the punishment that was called for by God’s law was the death penalty. Man’s rebellion could not be allowed to continue without justice prevailing. If God didn’t punish this sinful behavior, He could not rightly be called a just God.

So how was God to punish our behavior without destroying all of humanity? His solution, so the story goes, was both a sign of His justice and His love. Instead of punishing us, He would punish someone in our place – a substitute! This substitute would have to be perfect, without any hint of fault or blemish. This would be absolutely necessary because this substitute would need to be someone who had lived in perfect obedience to God. Only this perfectly obedient substitute could appease the anger of our just God.

Where would God find this perfect substitute? Certainly not with any regular human being. We’ve all sinned and fallen short of His glory. So according to this story, God the Father and God the Son came up with the perfect plan. What if the Son became a man and therefore became that perfect substitute? Then the Father could put all the sins of man upon His Son and pour out His angry wrath by punishing His Son. That would then satisfy God’s wrath and His justice. By punishing His innocent Son, the Father’s anger towards us subsided. This now enabled God to deal with man on the basis of love. And that is why there is the angry, wrathful, vengeful God of the Old Testament and the merciful, compassionate, loving Father of the New Testament. Isn’t that wonderful?

That’s the story I often heard. You’ve probably heard that story too, or something very similar to it. Over the years, however, my understanding of what happened at the cross has changed significantly. Don’t get me wrong – there are many parts of the above story that I believe are correct. However, one of the parts that seems off to me is the idea that God the Father was punishing His Son for something he did not do. If ever there is a picture of abuse, perhaps this is it. How could a loving Father do that to His innocent Son? Wouldn’t that suggest that He is an abusive Father? It would be like me beating and whipping my son because the neighborhood kids had made me angry by egging our house, slashing our car tires, and torturing our dog, even though my son had absolutely nothing to do with it.

It has been suggested that my analogy comes up a little short because Jesus took this
punishment willingly. There is no question that Jesus was willing to die. As he said to his disciples concerning his life, “ No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” (John 10:18) The question is, however, was Jesus being punished by God?

I think a lot of people think so because of what a verse like Isaiah 53:5 says: “the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” Other verses in Isaiah 53 seem to suggest the same thing: “for the transgression of my people he was punished,” and “it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer.” (Isaiah 53:8, 10)

At first glance, it would appear that Isaiah is prophesying that God would punish His son. However, when you look more deeply, another picture comes into focus. What we start to see is that the view that God is punishing Jesus is a misperception on our part. For example, in Isaiah 53:4, we see that “we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.” The New English Translation puts it this way: “we thought he was being punished, attacked by God, and afflicted for something he had done.” The KJV, NASB, NKJV, and NLT all say something very similar.

The point is that we mistakenly thought that it was God who was punishing him, but that’s not what was really happening at all. So if God wasn’t punishing Jesus, who was? Isaiah doesn’t leave us hanging.  n his own words, he clearly states, “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” (Isaiah 53:3) In other words, it was man who punished him. Think about that. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, was punished by man, not by his own Father. It was man who betrayed him. It was man who despised him. It was man who planned to kill him. It was man who devised schemes against him. It was man who tried him in court under false pretenses. It was man who ordered his flogging. It was man who sentenced him to death, even though he knew he was innocent. It was man who punched him, spit on him, and punctured his head with a crown of thorns. It was man who whipped him mercilessly. It was man who mocked him. It was man who stripped him. It was man who nailed him to the cross. It was man who delighted in watching him suffer and die a horrible and shameful death.  

Let us not forget that Jesus and the Father are one. So when we think about what happened on the cross, let’s not put the blame on God the Father. Let’s not malign His character by portraying Him as an abusive Father. Instead let’s remember that God Himself, in Jesus Christ, took the brunt of all mankind’s hatred and was brutally beaten and killed as a result.

Why would He do it? Why would he allow mankind to treat him so unkindly? And what about all that wrath and anger He felt toward us because of our sins? The answers to those questions will have to wait until Part 2 next week. For now, let us get the image of God as an abusive Father out of our minds. He was not the one punishing His son on the cross. That is simply not who God is.