Monday, March 2, 2020

Jennifer C. Lane on "Judgment and the Winepress"


In a recent volume, Jennifer C. Lane (BYU-Hawaii) had an insightful discussion of Jesus “treading the winepress” of God’s wrath against sin (which, of necessity, would require the atonement being propitiatory, not merely expiatory) and our free-will ability to accept or reject the Gospel and other important soteriological issues:

Judgment and the Winepress

Both Isaiah and the book of Revelation connect the winepress with the wrath of God. We sometimes see that wrath pointed against us, but let’s look more closely at the language in Revelation 19. Here we see Christ coming to rule and reign. He is “clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God” (19:13). Verse 15 points to his right to judge and rule: “and out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron.” But it also stresses that “he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.”

Recognizing the winepress was “the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God” is a critical point that we sometimes overlook. The consequences of our sins result in what scripture describes as the “wrath of God.” To use another image, this winepress is the bitter cup that should have been ours, but Christ drank it for us. At the temple at Bountiful, directly after announcing himself as Jesus Christ, “the light and the life of the world.” Christ tells the people: “I have drunk out of that bitter coup which the Father hath given me, and have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world, in the which I have suffered the will of the Father in all things from the beginning” (3 Nephi 11:11). Drinking this cup of wrath for us, “treading the winepress alone,” this is what he is offering to take from us.  His willingness to tread the winepress, to drink the bitter cup, also shapes the meaning of the cup that he gives us to drink.

Christ takes the cup of wrath, the cup of indignation. By drinking the bitter cup of the consequences of all that we have done to offend God, Christ frees us from what should have been our fate. He partakes of the consequences of our life and offers us instead the chance to partake of his life, to enjoy his unity with the Father and the fullness of his Spirit. The bitterness of all that we have chosen did not just disappear. He drank that bitter cup in our place. What Christ has done in treading the winepress as he suffered for our sins puts us in a relationship with him that we cannot ignore.

And so, as we read the passages about Christ treading the winepress alone, hopefully we can see the price that he paid in treading “the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God” (Revelation 19:15). He doesn’t just want us to feel sorry for him. He wants us to know that his life is so deep that, like the legend of the pelican, he shed his blood to give us life. He wants us to know that his life is so deep that he would do anything to keep us from receiving the eternal consequences of our choices. “Thus saith thy Lord the Lord, and thy God that pleadeth the cause of his people, Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again” (Isiah 51:22). As he treads the winepress alone, he is pleading with us to accept his suffering on our behalf. That is what he wants for us more than anything else. He wants us to “no more drink” the cup of trembling and the cup of God’s wrath.

How could he more fully communicate his desire to redeem us? “I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me” (Isaiah 63:3). None could be with him because he did this for all us. As Abinadi testified, “Thus all mankind were lost; and behold, they would have been endlessly lost were it not that God redeemed his people from their lost and fallen state” (Mosiah 16:4). The redemption price was paid, and Christ will return in a red robe so that we will know what he suffered on our behalf in that winepress. But, as a prophet of God, Abinadi also testified that even the redemption of Christ cannot overpower human agency (see Mosiah 16:5). He has trodden “the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God,” but we must let him take out of our hand the cup of trembling. We must let go of the cup of wrath and accept instead the blood of the covenant.

If we do not choose faith, repentance, and making and keeping covenants, we are instead choosing to persist in our “own carnal nature, and [go] on in the ways of sin and rebellion against God.” Of those who make this choice, Abinadi warns that they “[remain] in [their] fallen state and the devil hath all power over [them]. Therefore [they are] as though there was no redemption made, being an enemy of God; and also is the devil an enemy to God” (Mosiah 16:5). Perhaps this is why judgment imagery is interwoven with the imagery of Christ treading the winepress alone. How we respond to his suffering on our behalf becomes our judgment. Without choosing to receive his gift with our faith and repentance, coming unto him on the covenant path, we will someday know that he will redeem us, but we did not want to be redeemed. He offers to take away the cup of wrath and replace it with the cup of his blood, his life, his fullness. We decide. We will receive that we are willing to receive. (Jennifer C. Lane, Finding Christ in the Covenant Path: Ancient Insights for Modern Life [Provo and Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center and Deseret Book, 2020], 126-28)

Further Reading