A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life in a Year:
By the merits of Jesus Christ, sinners may escape the punishment due to them, but in reconciling sinners to Himself, in consistency with His essential attributes, God nevertheless displays His hatred for sin by punishing it in the death of His only Son. [Stephen Charnock (1628-1680)] uses vivid imagery to capture this all-important point of Christian theology:
“Not all the vials of judgments, that have, or shall be poured out upon the wicked world, nor the flaming furnace of a sinner’s conscience, nor the irreversible sentence pronounced against the rebellious devils, nor the groans of the damned creatures, give such a demonstration of God’s hatred of sin, as the wrath of God let loose upon his Son.”
As Psalm 22 was fulfilled perfectly in the death of Jesus Christ upon the cross, Charnock points out that verse 3 speaks of God’s holiness in the midst of Christ’s dying groans. “Justice indeed gave the stroke, but holiness ordered it.”
Reaffirming God’s hatred for sin as an evidence of His essential holiness, Charnock explains that the Father “would have the most excellent person, one next in order to himself, and equal to him in all the glorious perfections of his nature (Phil. ii. 6), die on a disgraceful cross, and be exposed to the flames of Divine wrath, rather than sin should live, and his holiness remain for ever disparaged by the violations of his law….God seems to lay aside the bowels of a father, and put on the garb of an irreconcilable enemy.”
(A Puritan Theology, p. 76-77)
