Tolle Lege: Spectacular Sins

I hate watered down answers to the problem of pain, they do not sustain.  I hate it when Christians feel ashamed of the greatness of God, the sovereignty of God, the wisdom of God, and the goodness of God in the midst of catastrophe.  When God is made less of in an attempt to make us feel better in our pain the bandage will soon fall off and the deadly wound will be revealed to not have been healed.  This book is no such answer.  It gives strength to suffer not by making less of God, but much of God.

At the all-important pivot of human history, the worst sin ever committed served to show the greatest glory of Christ and obtain the sin-conquering gift of God’s grace. God did not just overcome evil at the cross. He made evil serve the overcoming of evil. He made evil commit suicide in doing its worst evil.

Evil is anything and everything opposed to the fullest display of the glory of Christ. That’s the meaning of evil. In the death of Christ, the powers of darkness did their best to destroy the glory of the Son of God. This is the apex of evil. But instead they found themselves quoting the script of ancient prophecy and acting the part assigned by God. Precisely in putting Christ to death, they put his glory on display—the very glory that they aimed to destroy. The apex of evil achieved the apex of the glory of Christ. The glory of grace.

My aim is to show that sin and evil, no matter how spectacular, never nullify the decisive, Christ-exalting purposes of God. No, my aim is more than that. These spectacular sins do not just fail to nullify God’s purpose to glorify Christ, they succeed, by God’s unfathomable providence, in making his gracious purpose come to pass. This truth is the steel God offers to put in the spine of his people as they face the worst calamities. There will be tenderness in due time. But if the back of our faith is broken because we think God is evil or absent, who will welcome him when he comes with caresses?