Grace Thoughts
GraceLife Thoughts: Love and Wrath (Part 9)
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
I shared about the ‘everywhere’ promise in the last study. Everywhere we look in the Bible we find God’s love, even as we also find His wrath. As Jesus taught His disciples in Luke 24, everything He had taught them before His crucifixion was prophesied in the Old Testament. He ‘opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.’
Some people say they can see God’s love in the New Testament, but not in the Old. One of the early ‘church heresies’ was that the God of the Old Testament was not the same God the Apostle Paul described in his letters. Why? Because the God of the Old Testament was filled with wrath, anger, and meanness, while the God of the New Testament was loving, kind, and forgiving. That’s a ‘heresy’ because it’s not true. I’ll explain.
Bad God – Good God?
There was once a man named Marcion. He lived during the 2nd century AD. His father was a pastor of Sinope, but Marcion became a follower of a ‘Christian’ gnostic named Credo after moving to Rome. Credo is believed to have been a follower of Simon Magnus in the early 2nd century. He taught that the ‘God’ of the Old Testament was not the Father of Jesus Christ.
Without getting too deep into Marcion’s teachings, let me give you an overview. One of the reasons I want to do this is because this ancient heresy has found its way back into the teachings and beliefs of modern Christianity.
Marcion believed in a ‘Creator God’ and a ‘Supreme God.’ He quoted Isaiah 45:6-7 to describe the ‘Creator God’ – ‘I am the Lord, and there is none else; I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil.’ Marcion said that proved ‘this god is the author of evil.’ Marcion believed this ‘Creator God’ was harsh and judgmental. Marcion also believed that the ‘Christ’ (Messiah) Isaiah wrote about was a ‘different’ Christ than Jesus. Not only did Marcion teach a theology of two Gods, he also taught a theology of two Christs.
Based on what Jesus said in Luke 6:43-44 – ‘For an evil tree bringeth forth not good fruit; neither does a good tree bring forth evil fruit. For every tree is known by his own fruit’ – Marcion believed there must be another God who produced the good fruit of love and generosity. Marcion saw God the Father of Jesus Christ as being the ‘Supreme God’ who did good and was gentle in His behavior. Marcion did not believe the qualities of the ‘Creator God’ and the ‘Supreme God’ were compatible, so he believed and taught that there were two Gods. One was vengeful, full of wrath and anger, and jealous. The other, the Father of Jesus, was loving, kind, and good.
Marcion developed and taught his theology and it became known as Marcionism in the middle part of the 2nd century. The Roman Church reportedly accepted Marcion into fellowship for a time, but eventually excommunicated him because of his teachings. It’s no wonder since he rejected the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and many of the teachings of the Jewish apostles (e.g. Peter, James, John). Marcion believed that the teachings of the Apostle Paul were the only ones the Church should follow. Marcion’s ‘Bible’ included a ‘mutilated’ version of Luke’s Gospel, and ten of Paul’s letters. That was it.
As you can imagine, that did not sit well with the Church Fathers of the 2nd century AD. One influential Church Father, Tertullian, wrote a five-book series titled Adversus Marcionem (Against Marcion). Tertullian argued that God is both loving and just. I agree and hope this series is making that point clearly. If you’d like to read Tertullian’s series ‘Against Marcion, click on this link and look for Books I – V.
Two other early Church Fathers of the 2nd century you may want to read who wrote defenses against Marcion’s heresy include Justin Martyr and Irenaeus –
And there is Marcion, a man of Pontus, who is even at this day alive, and teaching his disciples to believe in some other god greater than the Creator. And he, by the aid of the devils, has caused many of every nation to speak blasphemies, and to deny that God is the maker of this universe, and to assert that some other being, greater than He, has done greater works. All who take their opinions from these men, are, as we before said, called Christians; just as also those who do not agree with the philosophers in their doctrines, have yet in common with them the name of philosophers given to them. And whether they perpetrate those fabulous and shameful deeds–the upsetting of the lamp, and promiscuous intercourse, and eating human flesh–we know not; but we do know that they are neither persecuted nor put to death by you, at least on account of their opinions. But I have a treatise against all the heresies that have existed already composed, which, if you wish to read it, I will give you.
And, as we said before, the devils put forward Marcion of Pontus, who is even now teaching men to deny that God is the maker of all things in heaven and on earth, and that the Christ predicted by the prophets is His Son, and preaches another god besides the Creator of all, and likewise another son. And this man many have believed, as if he alone knew the truth, and laugh at us, though they have no proof of what they say, but are carried away irrationally as lambs by a wolf, and become the prey of atheistical doctrines, and of devils. For they who are called devils attempt nothing else than to seduce men from God who made them, and from Christ His first-begotten; and those who are unable to raise themselves above the earth they have riveted, and do now rivet, to things earthly, and to the works of their own hands; but those who devote themselves to the contemplation of things divine, they secretly beat back; and if they have not a wise sober-mindedness, and a pure and passionless life, they drive them into godlessness. Justin Martyr, First Apology
1. Cerdo was one who took his system from the followers of Simon, and came to live at Rome in the time of Hyginus, who held the ninth place in the episcopal succession from the apostles downwards. He taught that the God proclaimed by the law and the prophets was not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the former was known, but the latter unknown; while the one also was righteous, but the other benevolent.
2. Marcion of Pontus succeeded him, and developed his doctrine. In so doing, he advanced the most daring blasphemy against Him who is proclaimed as God by the law and the prophets, declaring Him to be the author of evils, to take delight in war, to be infirm of purpose, and even to be contrary to Himself. But Jesus being derived from that father who is above the God that made the world, and coming into Judaea in the times of Pontius Pilate the governor, who was the procurator of Tiberius Caesar, was manifested in the form of a man to those who were in Judaea, abolishing the prophets and the law, and all the works of that God who made the world, whom also he calls Cosmocrator. Besides this, he mutilates the Gospel which is according to Luke, removing all that is written respecting the generation of the Lord, and setting aside a great deal of the teaching of the Lord, in which the Lord is recorded as most dearly confessing that the Maker of this universe is His Father. He likewise persuaded his disciples that he himself was more worthy of credit than are those apostles who have handed down the Gospel to us, furnishing them not with the Gospel, but merely a fragment of it. In like manner, too, he dismembered the Epistles of Paul, removing all that is said by the apostle respecting that God who made the world, to the effect that He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and also those passages from the prophetical writings which the apostle quotes, in order to teach us that they announced beforehand the coming of the Lord.
3. Salvation will be the attainment only of those souls which had learned his doctrine; while the body, as having been taken from the earth, is incapable of sharing in salvation. In addition to his blasphemy against God Himself, he advanced this also, truly speaking as with the mouth of the devil, and saying all things in direct opposition to the truth,-that Cain, and those like him, and the Sodomites, and the Egyptians, and others like them, and, in fine, all the nations who walked in all sorts of abomination, were saved by the Lord, on His descending into Hades, and on their running unto Him, and that they welcomed Him into their kingdom. But the serpent which was in Marcion declared that Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and those other righteous men who sprang from the patriarch Abraham, with all the prophets, and those who were pleasing to God, did not partake in salvation. For since these men, he says, knew that their God was constantly tempting them, so now they suspected that He was tempting them, and did not run to Jesus, or believe His announcement: and for this reason he declared that their souls remained in Hades.
4. But since this man is the only one who has dared openly to mutilate the Scriptures, and unblushingly above all others to inveigh against God, I purpose specially to refute him, convicting him out of his own writings; and, with the help of God, I shall overthrow him out of those discourses of the Lord and the apostles, which are of authority with him, and of which he makes use. At present, however, I have simply been led to mention him, that thou mightest know that all those who in any way corrupt the truth, and injuriously affect the preaching of the Church, are the disciples and successors of Simon Magus of Samaria. Although they do not confess the name of their master, in order all the more to seduce others, yet they do teach his doctrines. They set forth, indeed, the name of Christ Jesus as a sort of lure, but in various ways they introduce the impieties of Simon; and thus they destroy multitudes, wickedly disseminating their own doctrines by the use of a good name, and, through means of its sweetness and beauty, extending to their hearers the bitter and malignant poison of the serpent, the great author of apostasy. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies
Modern Marcionism
I agree with the early Church Fathers that Marcion was a heretic and his teachings were dangerous. They were absolutely without any merit or basis in truth. So, how is it that many, and I mean many, in the modern Church are teaching the same thing as Marcion? That includes many pastors and teachers in what some might call ‘evangelical’ churches. We’ll look for answers to those questions in Part Ten of our study.
[Podcast version of this study coming soon.]
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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Founder & Director of GraceLife Ministries View all posts by gracelifethoughts
