Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News, by Brian Zahnd
The title of Brian Zhand’s book says it all. As sinners, we are not in the hands of an angry God, as Jonathan Edward’s well-known sermon with its Calvinist doctrine of divine appeasement states. Rather, as sinners, we are in the hands of a loving God. A God with a heart like the loving father in Jesus’s parable of The Prodigal Son.
The message of the cross is not that of an angry, monstrous God who is appeased by the horrifying and bloody death of his son. No, the message of the cross is the ultimate demonstration of God’s love. “The cross is not a picture of payment; the cross is a picture of forgiveness. Good Friday is not about divine wrath; Good Friday is about divine love,” writes Zhand. This book is a must-read for all whose image of God has been tainted by the teaching that the cross is the demonstration of God’s wrath instead of what it really is — the message of God’s great love for the world.
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