‘In Christ alone’ (Stuart Townend and Keith Getty) is a fine Christian song.

But what about the words that stick in the throats of many:-

Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied.

Please don’t tell me you won’t sing these words because you unwilling to think or speak of God’s wrath, and wish to sing only of his love.  The song as a whole does a great job in exploring the various dimensions of Christ’s death and resurrection.  If there is any such thing as divine wrath (and there is!), then we should not balk at its being mentioned, from time to time, in our worship songs.

But I see two problems with these words.

First, the doctrine of propitiation, which these words are intended to express, is a disputed doctrine among evangelical Christians.  In our public praise and worship, we should stick, as far as possible, to those doctrines that we can all affirm.  At the very least, no congregation should be asked to sing these words until it has been taught (and convinced!) about the doctrine of propitiation.  (Some of the uncertainties around wrath, propitiation, and penal substitution are discussed here, by Ian Paul).  I myself am very content to affirm the doctrine of propitiation, but it needs to be carefully safeguarded from the thought that the Saviour’s love is in any way pitted against the Father’s wrath.

Second, if the doctrines of propitiation and satisfaction are to be included in what we are asked to sing, then the job needs to be done well.

To be sure, replacing the disputed lines with…

Till on that cross as Jesus died
The love of God was magnified

…, as some have requested, is unsatisfactory, because it changes the subject.  The song has already celebrated the love of God; the writers wanted to look at the cross from a slightly different angle, not just give us the same again.  It is this very richness that makes ‘In Christ Alone’ such a great song (the disputed words excepted).

The problem, then, is not in the word ‘wrath’, but in the word ‘satisfied’.

‘Satisfaction for sin’ is a venerable enough concept in Christian theology and piety.  The Book of Common Prayer, for example, has us pray:

‘All glory be to thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that thou, of thy tender mercy, didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption; who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world…’

But the BCP does not talk, as the song does, of ‘satisfying the wrath of God’.  It talks about ‘satisfaction for the sins of the whole world’.  This conveys the thought that the debt accruing from the sins of the whole world have been ‘paid in full’.

No: my point is that it wasn’t just God’s wrath that was satisfied on the cross.  It was his entire nature.

The words…

Till on that cross as Jesus died
God’s wrath and love were satisfied.

…would get us closer to where we need to be.  I’m not saying it would get us all the way, but it would be better.

Stephen Holmes has argued that the expression under debate is a grammatical absurdity.  The verb ‘to satisfy’ implies some obligation to be fulfilled.  In atonement theology, we can speak of justice being satisfied by paying a debt, or suffering a penalty.  But ‘wrath’ cannot be construed as an obligation: it is an attitude.  It can be appeased or averted, but not ‘satisfied’.

The claim that, at the cross, God’s justice was satisfied, and so his wrath was averted, may or may not be correct.  But at least it makes sense.