by Alan Langstaff
From time to time I write a letter that is somewhat controversial and results in many responses coming back to me. Today I suspect is another one of those letters. I want to write about “The Other Side of Jesus.” I welcome your replies.
BACKGROUND
Many of us grow up in Sunday School where we were taught the delightful little song:
“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild
Look upon a little child
Pity my simplicity
Suffer me to come to thee”
Or perhaps it was this one:
“Jesus loves me
This I know
For the Bible tells me so
Little ones to Him belong
They are weak but He is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me
Yes, Jesus loves me
Yes, Jesus loves me
The Bible tells me so.”
These are wonderful songs and they contain wonderful truths about God that Jesus loves me… the Bible tells me so…
…but – there is another side of Jesus besides what these songs contain.
EVIL IN THE WORLD
Before I get to the Scripture let me share my own recent experience. For some weeks and even for several months, I have been so aware of the evil in the world; whether it be the killing of innocent children and babies, the results of war in Ukraine where so many have been killed, or rape victims here in the USA and we could go on. In addition to all that to look at one’s own heart and realize what is still there.
I have been conscious of the evil in the world all around us more than any time I can remember.
So, with this in mind, I have gone back to Paul’s book of Romans. At the beginning of Romans, there is an often quoted verse in chapter 2 verse 4 – “that the goodness of God leads you to repentance” (NKJV).
This kind of fits with the “gentle Jesus” line of the song. Yes – Jesus loves me. God is so good!
Many people forget that the verse is set in Paul’s writings about “God’s wrath on unrighteousness” and “God’s righteous judgment.”
So, what am I saying? Simply this you have to see “the other side of Jesus.” Jesus shows us not only the goodness of God shown supremely in His love, but we all need to see what Paul writes in Romans chapter 11, in the midst of his teaching on Israel, where he describes the need to be conscious of both the goodness of God but also the severity of God.
TO BE FEARED
Now concerning the “other side of Jesus” we need to note that Jesus was often severe in his teaching and actions. He was not just presenting a love message alone.
For example, Jesus said more about “hell” than anyone else in the whole Bible and yet many people in church will never hear a message or a reference to hell from the pulpit. Maybe we have got a little imbalanced in the presentation of Jesus, only giving the love message (as per John 3:16) and never referring to all that Jesus taught and said.
Think for a moment about the story of Jesus cleansing the Temple. He made a whip and used it to drive out the animals and presumably people who would have tried to stop him as well. Gentle Jesus using a whip!
Read the Gospel stories and you will be surprised at what Jesus did and what He said which in many cases was somewhat severe.
John Piper, the well-known theologian and teacher who was the Pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis for 33 years has an article adapted from his book “All that Jesus Commanded” that deals with the descriptions that Jesus uses about “hell.”
“Jesus spoke of hell more than anyone else in the Bible. He referred to it as a place of “outer darkness” where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:12). In other words, all the joys that we associate with light will be withdrawn, and all the fears that we associate with darkness will be multiplied. And the result will be an intensity of misery that makes a person grind his teeth in order to bear it.
Jesus also refers to hell as a “fiery furnace” where law-breakers will be thrown at the end of the age when he returns. “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 13:41–42). He calls it “the hell of fire” (Matt. 5:22), “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41), “unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43), “eternal punishment” (Matt. 25:46).
This last description—“eternal punishment”—is especially heartrending and fearful because it is contrasted with “eternal life.” “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” In this contrast we hear the tragedy of loss as well as suffering and endlessness. Just as “eternal life” will be a never-ending experience of pleasure in God’s presence, so “eternal punishment” will be a neverending experience of misery under God’s wrath (John 3:36; 5:24).”
There too he has a section on “God is to be feared and God is to be trusted.”
“How does Jesus mean for us to experience these two truths about God—he is to be feared, and he is to be trusted? It won’t do to simply say that “fear of God” means “reverence for God” rather than “being afraid of him.” That does not fit with the words, “Fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12:5). Of course, it is true that we should reverence God, that is, stand in awe of his holiness and power and wisdom. But there is also a real fear of him that can coexist with sweet peace and trust in him.
The key is that God himself is the one who removes his wrath from us. Our peace does not come from our removing the God of wrath from our thinking, but from his removing his wrath from us. He has done that by sending Jesus to die in our place so that, for everyone who believes in Jesus, God’s wrath is taken away. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” Jesus said, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up [on the cross to die], that whoever believes in him may have eternal life [not wrath]. . . . Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:14–15, 36).”
(John Piper, Crossway.org)
SUMMARY
Now seeking to put all this together and in turn, remember “the other side of Jesus” we can note the following:
1) Many times you are required to hold together two opposite points of view. In this comes the love and mercy of God against the righteousness and judgment of God.
2) We have to hold to the songs we taught children – “Gentle Jesus” and “Jesus Loves Me” together with the teaching of Jesus on God’s ultimate day of judgment.
3) As we near the end of the age and I believe the soon return of Christ we need to remember “the other side of Jesus” that involves righteousness and judgment awaits us all.
Also if we are a pastor or a preacher we need to be sure we preach the whole counsel of God including “righteousness and judgment.”
MY OWN EXPERIENCE
As I have shared a number of times I was brought up in church. I knew all about Jesus and God’s love but I did not know Jesus personally and I did not have a born-again experience. Whilst at University a fellow student, a Salvation Army young person, persuaded me to go to some evangelistic services with a Scottish preacher giving the message. He preached the hottest hell-fire sermon I have ever heard and that night I made the choice for Jesus and chose heaven over hell.
It took a message like that to confront me about my eternal destination. Jesus became real to me and my life has never been the same.
How about you? Have you realized there is another side to Jesus?
Kairos Ministries 
In Revelation 14 we are warned about “the wrath of the Lamb” against sin and evil. In Matthew 25 we are told that the goats, who spent their days clinging to and following the devil and his angels, will be “rewarded” along with the devil and his angels — receiving their (the demons’) predetermined “inheritance” or “destiny” rather than what the Son of Man (Jesus) has, at great cost and mercy, procured for humankind instead. In other words, the Holy God hates — and must in the end judge — sin and evil…so that if people are stupid and stubborn enough to keep on holding fast to sin and evil (and thereby to the Evil One himself, along with his lies and self-delusion), then we receive “the second death” — spiritual death, the eternal state or contradiction of the good and true and beautiful — that is the inevitable consequence of utter defiance of God’s Good Will and grace always intended for us by His nature of love. Therefore Gehenna — Hell, named after the Valley of Hinnom where historically fire was continually maintained so as to keep on cleansing (but also consuming!) anything “unclean” there, from the pollutions of pagan child sacrifice to the dangers of disease from physical garbage deposited there “outside of the gates” of the City of Jerusalem — comes about for humans as well The fires were always burning not because the Overseer is sadistic: the Overseer is God Himself, not Satan, who will be the chief victim of Hell — but to give assurance that the Holy City will remain immune and protected from any future incursion of or influence from sin or evil in the future. Seen in this light, the holiness of God is primarily the integrity of His love and total sovereignty over the darkness of spiritual hatred of the good that He is proffering to His children. Jesus then shows us this heart-beat of the Father…but really, this is not “another ‘side’ ” of our Lord (the “left-hand of God”, as Luther put it!), but rather the outworking of His love on the one hand and His accepting of free choices on the part of children who want to “go their own way” rather than BE His children (or Jesus’ own eternal brothers and sisters) on the other hand. The original sin (insanity, really) was the idea that “you can be your own gods, deciding for yourselves what is ‘good’ and what is ‘evil’….” No, we can’t. If we take that road, we end up on the garbage heap with the Tempter himself, becoming what C. S. Lewis called an “Ex-Man” no longer capable of repentance or salvation. Or, as English classicist John Milton once wrote, “The doors of Hell are locked from within, not to keep men captive but to keep God out….” Those who hate holiness cannot tolerate love in its ultimate purity: the presence of God, for the self-damned, would be even greater torment than living forever in the self-imposed lies of Hell itself.