Starting point expanded

Here's the whole section containing our germ sentence;
Warnings and Curses

God's relation to people includes not only blessings but also warnings, threatenings, and cursings. These are appropriate because of God's righteous reaction to sin. They anticipate and point forward to Christ in two distinct ways. First, Christ is the Lamb of God, the sin-bearer (John 1:29; 1 Pet. 2:24). He was innocent of sin, but became sin for us and bore the curse of God on the cross (2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:13). Every instance of the wrath of God against sin, and his punishments of sin, looks forward to the wrath that was poured out on Christ on the cross.

Second, Christ at his second coming wars against sin and exterminates it. The second coming and the consummation are the time when the final judgment against sin is executed. All earlier judgments against sin anticipate the final judgment. Christ during his earthly life anticipated this final judgment when he cast out demons and when he denounced the sins of the religious leaders.
Perhaps this needs an explanation how the two ways relate. The first way describes "every instance of the wrath of God" and therefore must include the second way. This is at least partly explained by remembering that Christ is God and therefore graciously absorbs his own wrath against sin on himself.
As Tim Keller has pointed out, forgiveness always involves suffering by the forgiver.
Is it possible to even conceive of a higher, more glorious love than this? Could we have ever know the depth and freedom of God's love without the cross? Could there have been the Cross without the fall?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone