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)