Michael Ots' evening sermon

This evenings sermon by Michael Ots, evangelist at Lansdowne Baptist Church seems to me to be so important that I reproduce it here as much as I can from memory.

Richard Dawkins has suggested that a God who kills his own son to pay for the wrong things that others have done is a malicious, sadomasochistic and repellent pervert. Jeffrey John, the Anglican priest who was disappointed for his hopes of a bishopric because of his homosexuality has railed against the notion of substitutionary atonement. Even Steve Chalke, supposedly an evangelical, has disowned this precious gospel. How can this charge be answered?

In part the problem arises because of the illustration that have been used to explain the gospel. Illustrations like the story of a signalman who sees his own son playing on the railway lines as the express thunders towards him. He has the option of throwing the points so that the train misses his child but enters a siding that will cause the train to crash with the loss of many lives. Although this gives the idea of one dying for many, it portrays God as someone trapped into a corner, having to act in an unprepared way at the last minute. Or like the illustration in the Bridge on the River Kwai of the discovery of a missing spade. The camp commander says that unless the thief steps forward, all the prisoners will be shot. The chaplain steps forward, an innocent man dying for many. Later it transpires that there has been a miscount; no spade is missing. But that story portrays God as as cruel and malicious as a commander of a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Or the story of the judge who sentences a prisoner, but then comes down from the bench and stands in the dock himself to be taken away to serve the sentence. But that picture is false because no such provision exists in any judicial system.

It is a problem because people misunderstand the gospel.
1. They do not realise the willingness of Jesus. No-one takes my life from me. I lay it down. The cross was not imposed on him. He knew about it from the beginning of time. It was his eternal plan.
2. They do not understand the attitude of the Father. God hates sin. How could be leave sin unpunished? He does not hate his son. He loves his son. God punishes sin; his son interposes himself between the punnishment and the sinners.
3. They do not understand the Trinity. Who does understand it? There are not three gods. There is only one God. I and my father are one, said Jesus. The punishment of the cross was not just the blood and pain that Mel Gibson showed us; that was just a picture of it. The cry of dereliction, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" denotes the tearing apart of the godhead and it was suffered by father and son alike.
4. They do not understand the nature of forgiveness. Why doesn't God just forgive sinners? they ask. Suppose your little daughter was abducted and raped. You confront the perpetrator and they ask you to forgive him. Could you do it? And if you could what would it cost you? All forgiveness is costly. It costs God to forgive you.
5. They don't understand the results of the cross. "For the joy that was set before him (he) endured the cross, scorning its shame". What was that joy? It was the millions upon millions saved from perishing.

This bloody gospel is not a sadistic thing. It is not divine child abuse. Had there been any other way would not a just and loving God have taken it?