“The Father is Angry. Jesus is the Nice One.” | Myths We Live By — Week 1
Have you ever felt like Jesus was protecting you from God? Like the Father was the stern judge in the background, and Jesus was the one keeping him at bay?
You’re not alone. That picture of God is everywhere — in hymns, in how we explain the gospel to children, and sometimes in our own quiet anxiety about whether God can really be trusted.
But here’s the problem: that’s not one God. That’s two.
In this first week of our series Myths We Live By, we dig into one of the most widespread misbeliefs in the church — that God the Father is the wrathful judge and Jesus came to change his mind about us. Drawing on John 14:1–14, where Jesus tells Philip “whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” we unpack what it actually means that Jesus is the exact image of the invisible God.
What we find dismantles the myth completely. Jesus didn’t die on the cross to change God’s mind about us. He died to change our minds about God.
This sermon draws on the work of Brian Zahnd (Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God), Gregory Boyd (Cross Vision, Repenting of Religion), and N.T. Wright (The Challenge of Jesus, Simply Jesus).