God’s wrath is revealed to all outside the garden (that is, outside the sphere of divine grace and promise) through his creaturely masks. Indeed, God’s “invisible attributes [i.e., including his holiness and wrath], namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20, Emphasis added).[1]
Nevertheless, God established a new word of promise in the form of the protoevangelium in Genesis 3:15. The grace of the protoevangelium took on an even more definite form in the corporate life and history of Israel through the promise God attached to Abraham’s “seed” (Gen. 22:18). This effective Word of promise pushed the history of Israel inexorably along to its fulfillment in the person of the Messiah, even in the face of human opposition. Nevertheless, the movement of the divine Word toward its final fulfillment could often appear as a failure even as it succeeded. When Moses pronounced the divine Word “Let my people go,” it appeared ineffective to both the Egyptians and Israelites. Indeed, Pharaoh was apparently unmoved by the pronouncement of the divine deed-word and, in turn, increased Israel’s labor (Exod. 5). Nevertheless, it was through Pharaoh’s very obstinacy that God worked his redemption and was finally able to bring a plague so horrific that Egypt expelled Israel.[2] God likewise told Isaiah to speak a word of repentance to Israel that they would ignore, thereby ensuring their suffering in Babylon (Isa. 6:9-13). But Israel’s destruction was be the occasion for their true repentance, something that would prepare them for the grace of restoration and the coming of the Messiah (Isa. 40). Finally, God’s Word of redemption found ultimate fulfillment in the opposition and murder of Jesus by his opponents. By killing God himself, Jesus’ enemies brought about the fulfillment of the very Word of God that they sought to thwart. As Luther’s theology of the cross shows, God works under the form of his opposite.
God fulfills his Word under the outward appearance of it having failed.
Likewise, throughout the history of Israel, God’s pattern of attaching his dual words of condemnation and grace to created masks continued. By doing so, the Lord bid his covenant people to flee from the word of condemnation to that of grace. Although Jacob is attacked by God in the night, he demands the name of the shadowy attacker and thereby hearkened back to the promise of blessing that God had made to him at Bethel (Gen. 32:22-32).[3] Moses is also attacked by God on his return to Egypt but flees to the promise of grace found in circumcision of his son (Exod. 4:24-26).[4] God threatened with death those who came near Mt. Sinai, the mountain where he gave his law (Exod. 19:10-13), but promised forgiveness and a share in his personal holiness to those who approached him through the sacramental channels of the Tabernacle/Temple at Mt. Zion.[5]
This pattern of fleeing from condemnation to grace also continued in the life of Christ. In the crucifixion, God designated Jesus and the sacraments of the New Testament, which flowed from his side (Jn. 19:34) on the hillock of Golgotha, as the new place of grace. Likewise, he designated the Temple mount and works connected with it as a place of condemnation (Gal. 4:25-6). In his resurrection, Jesus insisted that the women flee his tomb (the place of death and condemnation) and instructed them to tell his disciples to meet him in Galilee. In Galilee, Jesus told the disciples look for him now not in the tomb, but in the word and sacrament ministry of the Church (Mt. 28:8-10, v. 16-20).
[1] Steven Paulson, Lutheran Theology (New York: T & T Clark International, 2011), 70-4.
[2] Steven Paulson, Luther’s Outlaw God: Hiddenness, Evil, and Predestination, vol. 1 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2018), 229-43
[3] LW 6:122-55.
[4] Paulson, Luther’s Outlaw God: Hiddenness, Evil, and Predestination, vol. 1, 17-8.
[5] See good description in: John Kleinig, Leviticus (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2003).
From the draft manuscript for Jack D. Kilcrease, Justification by Word (Lexham Press, forthcoming).
Image: Gustave Doré, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 1855.