Sample Chapters

INTRODUCTION

This is a book about God’s wrath.  It’s not a popular topic.  When I told my wife I intended to write a book about wrath she laughed—“Yeah , like everyone’s going to want to read that!”  Point taken.  Still, as followers of Christ, shouldn’t the reality of God’s wrath be at least as prominent in our minds as it is in Scripture?  And make no mistake about it.  God’s wrath is prominent in Scripture.  In his classic work on God’s attributes, Arthur Pink reminds us, “A study of the concordance will show that there are more references in Scripture to the anger, fury, and wrath of God, than there are to His love and tenderness” (emphasis his).[1]  Why, then, do we hear so few sermons preached on the subject of God’s wrath?  Why are many self-professed Bible-believing churches removing all reference to divine judgment from their doctrinal statements?  More personal, why do so many of us struggle, and too often fail, to verbalize the threat of divine judgment when we share Jesus with the lost?

I came to Christ—repenting and entrusting myself to Jesus as Savior—because I feared God’s wrath.  I was afraid of going to hell.  In spite of this, I struggle to share the reality of wrath with others in need of the same salvation I’ve embraced.  I remember Dan.  Enjoying a rare day off from our Air Force navigator training class, we decided to head for the Sierras to do some serious hiking.  Dan, an unbeliever, had been the object of my prayers for a week.  “Lord,” I prayed, “open up a clear opportunity for me to share Christ with Dan.”  We parked the car at the trailhead and climbed the switchbacks through the trees.  When the trail ended above timberline, we scrambled up a boulder field to reach the top.  It was on that mountain peak God answered my prayers in a powerful way.  As we ate granola, emptied our canteens, and gazed at the hazy valley below, Dan said, “I’ve been reading the book of Revelation and it scares me.”  He asked, “Do you think the world will end the way it says?”  Here it was!  The opportunity I’d prayed for.

I wish I could tell you that I told Dan that the Bible is true and the divine wrath Revelation speaks of is certain to come.  I wish I could say that I shared the good news about Jesus and the salvation God offers through faith in him.  But I can’t.  While this was the moment I’d prayed for, nothing came out of my mouth.  My heart raced, my stomach sank, a giant lump formed in my throat—but God forgive me—nothing came out of my mouth.

Almost 50 years have passed since I sat on that mountaintop with Dan.  I’ve often asked myself why.  Why couldn’t I—why didn’t I—share the good news about Jesus when God so clearly opened the door?  The answer?  I was embarrassed by God’s wrath.  Dan’s question concerned God’s “great white throne” judgment where we find multitudes of people being cast into the lake of fire.[2]  Struggling myself to understand why a loving God so violently reacts to sin, I almost felt the need to apologize for my Savior.

As a pastor, I have now studied, taught, and preached God’s word for more than forty years. [3]  I have come to understand the necessity for—and the righteousness of—divine wrath.  That said, I still find myself wrestling against the impulse to go silent when faithfulness calls me to share the realities of wrath.  I don’t think I’m alone.  This makes me wonder.  Why do we so often find ourselves reticent to preach, teach, and share what the Bible so clearly reveals about divine judgment?  Isn’t the knowledge of God’s wrath essential to understanding our need for God’s grace?  Why do we so easily speak of the latter, but not the former.

Perhaps one reason is our fear of being identified with spiritual abusers.  Some preach wrath in ways that misrepresent God’s character and discounts the reality of his grace.  They preach hell with a gleam in their eye—seemingly happy so many will “burn” there.  Others wield the biblical truth about wrath like a club.  They use it to intimidate, manipulate or control their hearers.  As a result, God is slandered and the gospel is misrepresented.  Who wants to be a part of that?

But there’s more to it than this.  Sometimes we avoid the subject of wrath in a misguided—and frankly ridiculous—effort to “protect” God’s reputation.  J.I. Packer wrote, “Clearly, the theme of God’s wrath is one about which the biblical writers feel no inhibitions whatever.  Why then should we?”[4]  In answer he explained, “The root cause of our unhappiness seems to be a disquieting suspicion that ideas of wrath are in one way or another unworthy of God” (emphasis his).[5]

Unfortunately, this suspicion that wrath is unworthy of God has infiltrated popular Christian thought.  Part of our problem is that—in our dealings with each other as fallen people—righteous hatred and sinless wrath are foreign to our experience.  We can’t imagine there might be such a thing.  In this world, every expression of human wrath is infused with some measure of self-centered irritation, injustice, spite—even cruelty.  Not so with God.  Packer reminds us, “God’s wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is.  It is, instead, a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil.”[6]  Divine wrath, then, is never a matter of an unhinged God throwing a cosmic temper tantrum.  On the contrary, wrath is God’s necessary, just, and righteous response to sin.  No apology needed.

There is a third reason our proclamation of divine wrath is often muted.  It has nothing to do with protecting God’s reputation, but rather our own.  This is the reason I refused to share the reality of wrath with Dan on that mountaintop so many years ago.  I like to be liked.  And, in this world, waxing eloquently about God’s wrath has never been a pathway to popularity.

Which brings me to the reason for this book.  My purpose in exploring the biblical reality of divine wrath is that we might come to embrace it not as something scandalous, but as a fundamental biblical truth essential to our proclamation of God’s gospel of grace.  In the opening chapter, we will see why minimizing divine wrath fatally hinders our witness to a lost and dying world.  In the chapters that follow, we will explore the reality of God’s wrath, the reason for wrath, the nature of wrath and, most importantly, the gracious satisfaction of God’s wrath on our behalf through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Finally, we will consider how we, as believers, should respond to wrath’s reality in our daily lives.  In all of this, we will discover why every Christian should—and ultimately will—celebrate God’s wrath as essential to the consummation of our salvation and the full revelation of God’s glory.

Before we proceed, let me offer a few words of caution.  While the primary focus of this book is divine wrath, we must remember that—while salvation is never less than deliverance from wrath—it encompasses far more.  Faith in the person and work of Christ rescues us from more than the penalty of sin (justification).  It also rescues us from the power of sin (sanctification) and, ultimately, the very presence of sin (glorification).  To define salvation only in terms of deliverance from wrath and hell is to lose sight of the infinite expanse of the grace God offers in Christ.

Second, we cannot address the reality of human depravity without referring to specific “sins”.  In doing so, we must remember that our sinful thoughts, words, and deeds are not the ultimate grounds for our condemnation.  Our essential guilt before God is not rooted in our violation of a list of rules.  Our depravity runs deeper than this.  Every individual “sin” we commit is ultimately the expression of our one great sin—the sin of rejecting God’s sovereign right to govern our lives as Creator, Owner, and Provider.  This is the one sin from which all other “sins” spring.  In the final analysis, it’s our failure to honor God as God[7] that makes us worthy of hell.

Finally, when considering the realities of God’s wrath we must never forget his grace.  In wrath, God remembers mercy. [8]  The full expression of his mercy is revealed in the person and work of Christ.  If at any point you decide to set this book aside, I pray you won’t do so without first reading chapter 8.  There you will discover that the wrath of God in no way diminishes his love.  It’s the love he demonstrated for us while we were still sinners when he sent Christ to die for our sins.[9]

That said, we’ll begin by considering why verbalizing the reality God’s wrath is essential to our witness for Christ.

 

Chapter 1

FATAL SUBTRACTION

One of my friends served as executive editor of a large preaching resource website.  Tens of thousands of pastors subscribe to their services.  The site posts sermons along with a constant stream of articles related to preaching and church leadership.  One Memorial Day, my friend deviated from his normal practice.  Instead of a regular article, he posted Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”  While out of the ordinary, he was not expecting his post to be controversial.  He couldn’t have been more wrong.  Assuming pastors would appreciate the opportunity to read what is perhaps the most famous American sermon ever preached, he was instead deluged by an avalanche of mocking, derisive comments.  Reacting to Edwards’ graphic depictions of divine wrath, one indignant pastor demanded, “Are you crazy?”

So, was he?  Did my friend prove himself to be a nut job by posting a well-known sermon preached by a man many consider to be the most eminent theologian birthed in America?  Admittedly, Edwards’ descriptions of wrath, death, and hell are horrifying.  There’s no question his vivid portrayal of God’s violent response to sin and sinners offends our modern sensibilities. But that raises a question.  Does our problem with Edwards’ sermon lie in an actual distortion of biblical truth?  Or do we take offense at his portrayal of wrath because violating “modern sensibilities” has become an unpardonable taboo?

Consider the sermon.  Does Edwards find no support in Scripture when he declares that unrepentant sinners are abhorrent to God and subject to infinite wrath?[10]  Regarding death’s immanence, is he unnecessarily alarmist when he warns, “It is no security to wicked men for one moment, that there are no visible means of death at hand.  …Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will not bear their weight…?[11]  Doesn’t the Bible affirm the truth of Edwards’ metaphor?[12]  Is it right to accuse Edwards of slandering God’s character when he describes hell as “the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God”[13] when Jesus essentially does the same?[14]  And while many do damage by preaching divine wrath without reference to grace, was this Edwards’ sin?  When he preached wrath, wasn’t his stated aim to make “use of this awful subject…for awakening unconverted persons”?[15]  Did he not invite his hearers to consider their “extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open, and stands in calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners; a day when many are flocking to him, and pressing into the kingdom of God”?[16]  In the end, does Edwards not plead with his hearers to “awake and fly from the wrath to come”?[17]

I wonder.  Could the ridicule my friend endured from pastors when he posted “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” say more about the state of the modern Church than some presumed deficiency in Edwards’ theology?  Has divine wrath become the elephant in God’s room—an obvious issue no one wants to talk about?  As one author observed, “Most preachers…today treat the biblical doctrine of the wrath of God very much as the Victorians treated sex.  It is there, but it must never be alluded to because it is in an undefined way shameful…”[18]  But is divine wrath shameful?  Does God’s fierce response to unredeemed sin make him a monster?  Are his severe judgments unworthy of mention in our preaching, teaching, and witness to the lost?

These are questions we must answer prior to embarking on our study of divine wrath’s reality, necessity, nature, and yes, celebration.  I believe embracing God’s severity is essential to understanding salvation and to the effective preaching of Christ as Savior.  In this chapter, I will argue that our failure—as churches and believers—to testify to the threat of God’s wrath is a fatal subtraction that strips the gospel of its relevance—and ultimately, its power to save.  While one can argue that Edwards’ hyper-graphic depictions of wrath might prove ineffective today, the sobering truth that all who live and die without Christ will suffer eternal condemnation must be declared.  Only then will we be able to say with Paul, “I did not shrink back from declaring…the whole counsel of God.” [19]

I know that, for many, the claim that the disappearance of wrath is fatal to our proclamation of the gospel is a hard sell.  Before rejecting the notion, however, consider the following claims:

TO DISMISS GOD’S WRATH IS TO TRIFLE WITH SCRIPTURE

A God of wrath is not the product of our imagination.  Our self-made gods are softer, gentler gods.  Seldom do they threaten us with judgment, death, or hell.  Ultimately, the notion that God condemns unrepentant sinners is rooted in Scripture.  In our next chapter we’ll see that the Bible clearly reveals wrath’s reality.[20]  Nonetheless, when wrath is in view, a growing number of pastors, churches, and professing believers reject a straightforward reading of God’s Word.  Governed by the assurance that God is love,[21] many reason Scripture’s violent depictions of wrath cannot be taken literally.  One writer asserts that doing so would make us guilty of practicing an idolatrous form of “Biblicism” rooted in a “flat reading of Scripture.”[22]  Instead, he suggests we should understand Scripture’s graphic portrayals of God’s wrath as “biblical metaphor” used “to describe the very real consequences we suffer from trying to go through life against the grain of love.”[23]

It’s true that Scripture sometimes uses metaphor when describing the pains of divine judgment.  Still, on its face, the claim that every biblical account of wrath should be interpreted metaphorically seems dubious.  How can we call the world-wide flood of Genesis, the raining down of fire on Sodom, and the plagues suffered by Israel in the wilderness “metaphor” when both Jesus and his apostles affirm their historicity? [24]  And dare we presume that biblical warnings about final judgment—and the existence of a literal place called hell—represent no more than the self-imposed consequences of living life against the grain of God’s love?  Are we safe to disregard Scripture’s persistent promise that a day is coming when Jesus will actively and judicially condemn unrepentant sinners to eternal punishment? [25] The thought of dismissing such grave warnings with the wave of a metaphorical hand makes me shudder.  While many do so, I believe their interpretive approach is flawed.

We’ve already noted Arthur Pink’s observation that there are more biblical references to the anger, fury, and wrath of God, than to His love and tenderness.  In light of this—and my own initial revulsion at the thought of God’s violent wrath—I find it impossible to dismiss the reality of divine judgment as manifested in his Word.  Doing so, would require me to elevate my personal preferences, opinions, and desires above the plain statements of Scripture.

I believe Tony Jones does exactly this in his book, Did God Kill Jesus?.  Rejecting the notion that God actively punishes sin—and that Jesus died to bear the wrath we were due—Jones suggests we need not take Scripture at face value when interpreting the meaning of Christ’s cross.  Having dismissed the claim that Jesus died to satisfy God’s wrath for the sake of our salvation he writes, “The authors of the New Testament say many things on the topic of Jesus’ death…Thus we will have to weigh the biblical evidence, but we’ll also have to run it through the gauntlet of our reason.” (emphasis mine).[26]  Continuing he adds, “we can reliably count on our own experience of Jesus to complement what we find in the Bible” (emphasis mine).[27]

Do you see the problem?  We are fallen, sinful creatures.  Left to ourselves, we are easily deceived.  Jeremiah speaks to our condition when he warns, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it.”[28]  In light of our fallenness, we are in no position to deny or soften the Bible’s plain teaching about wrath by “running it through the gauntlet of our reason”.  Nor can we rely on our own “experience of Jesus” as a means by which we can safely ignore Scripture’s proclamation of present and coming judgment.  In the end, our eternal safety rests in our embrace of the plain teaching of Scripture—including its sobering revelation of wrath.  To do otherwise is to make the gospel moot.  If we cannot believe the Bible when it clearly speaks of God’s wrath, on what basis can we believe it when it speaks of God’s grace?  If Scripture is truly “God-breathed”[29] we cannot treat it like a smorgasbord of beliefs and propositions from when we are free to pick and choose.  Either the Bible is true in everything it says, or it can’t be trusted in anything it says.  If the Bible is wrong about God’s wrath, the gospel itself is suspect.

But denying the reality of wrath not only undermines the gospel at the point of Scripture’s reliability.  It also undermines the gospel by distorting the essential nature of God:

TO DISMISS GOD’S WRATH IS TO DISTORT GOD’S CHARACTER

Again, many believers, teachers, and preachers define the essential character of God only in terms of his love.  The Bible doesn’t.  The apostle Paul calls every believer to acknowledge both the kindness and severity of God.[30]  In Exodus 34:6-7, the Lord proclaims himself to be “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love…”  Yet, in the same breath he assures us that he “will by no means clear the guilty”.

From this we understand that, while God is love,[31] he is not only love.  When we ignore this, we misrepresent him.  At the same time God is love, he is also holy, righteous, sovereign, omniscient, just, and more.  As we will see in chapter four, no single attribute of God can be expressed in isolation from all his attributes together, God’s response to human rebellion is never governed solely by love—especially when “love” is wrongly defined as laxity towards sin.  As we will see, the God who is love isn’t soft on sin.  He can’t be.  Because of all God is, he must ultimately right every wrong and punish every sin.  A God who will not judge sin would be hapless and indulgent—unconcerned about justice; deaf to the cries of those brutalized by evil; unwilling, or unable, to purge his Creation of human rebellion.  This is not the God of Scripture.  To tolerate sin is to approve of it.  To approve of sin is to participate in it.[32]  And to participate in sin is impossible for the Holy One of Israel.[33]  J.I Packer reminds us, “Would a God who took as much pleasure in evil as he did in good be a good God?  Would a God who did not react adversely to evil in his world be morally perfect?  Surely not.” [34]

In the end, those who dismiss divine wrath on the basis that “God is love” distort his character by disregarding his other attributes—including righteousness, holiness, and justice.  Once these divine perfections are set aside, a third reason ignoring wrath proves fatal to the gospel is sure to follow:

TO DISMISS GOD’S WRATH IS TO DENY THE GRAVITY OF SIN

No one can respond to the gospel—God’s offer of forgiveness and new life in Christ—without first recognizing the gravity of their sin and their desperate need for a Savior.[35] Tragically, few in our world take sin seriously.  On the contrary, sin is often celebrated.  Even glorified.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the realm of human sexuality.

Sex is a life-producing gift God gives to build families and deepen the bond between husbands and wives.  According to God’s design, sex is to be enjoyed only within marriage—which the Bible defines as a life-long covenant relationship between one biological man and one biological woman.[36]  To engage in sexual activity outside the bond of biblical marriage is to rebel against God and his revealed will.  This makes one worthy of wrath.  Today, of course, it seems few believes this.  In defiance of our Creator, we insist on our “right” to have sex with whoever we want whenever we want.  At the same time, we demand that our chosen “lifestyle” be, not just affirmed, but celebrated.  In our hook-up, shack-up, “everyone’s doing it” world, few give thought to the Bible’s warning, “…God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”[37]

Of course, our dismissal of sin’s gravity extends far beyond impure sexual thoughts and practices.  In our polarized world, the Bible also condemns the weaponizing of our tongues.  Jesus warns, “whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”[38]  If that sounds extreme, it shouldn’t.  James reminds us, “The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness.  The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.”[39]  Slander does violence.  Lying and gossip destroy.  Verbal abuse leaves wounds that linger for a lifetime.  In spite of this, few accept the notion that the words we speak are more than enough to send us each to hell. [40]

To these sins we could add idolatry, theft, greed, materialism, drunkenness, and infinitely more.[41]  All these rebellious acts, thoughts, and attitudes separate us from God and threaten us with condemnation—a condemnation made certain when we fail to recognize the gravity of our sin.  Left to ourselves, we habitually justify self and rationalize sin.  We compare ourselves with ourselves never accounting for our obligation to God.  The primary corrective for such arrogance is the compassionate, yet direct, proclamation of divine wrath.  We must come to know that the gravity of human sin is ultimately revealed by God’s response to it.  Ignoring wrath’s reality blinds us to our desperate condition.  Who seeks a Savior before they know they need one?  Who cries out like the tax collector in Jesus’ parable, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” until they understand the eternal consequence of their rebellion?

Of course, it’s impossible to dismiss the gravity of sin without at the same time devaluing the magnitude of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.  Here, then, is a fourth reason denying wrath proves fatal to our witness:

TO DISMISS GOD’S WRATH IS TO DIMINISH CHRIST’S SACRIFICE 

Jesus, who is God become human, died on the cross to pay the full penalty for our sin.[42] Having lived the perfect human life, God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”[43]  The Bible teaches that Christ’s death makes forgiveness and new life possible because Jesus forever absorbed the divine wrath we deserved.[44]  He died our death that we might live.  He suffered our hell that we might have heaven.  Regarding the magnitude of this sacrifice Christ made on our behalf Packer reflects:

“On the cross Jesus lost all good that he had before: all sense of the Father’s presence and love, all sense of physical, mental and spiritual well-being, all enjoyment of God and of created things, all ease and solace of friendship, were taken from him, and in their place was nothing but loneliness, pain, a killing sense of human malice and callousness, and a horror of great spiritual darkness.  The physical pain, though great…was yet only a small part of the story; Jesus’ chief sufferings were mental and spiritual, and what was packed into less than four hundred minutes was an eternity of agony—agony such that each minute was an eternity in itself…”[45]

How deep does our appreciation for Christ’s saving sacrifice run?  I confess.  My appreciation for the sacrifice Jesus made for me on that cross is pitifully shallow.  The reason, I think, is simple.  It’s because my comprehension of the infinite wrath I deserve is pitifully shallow.  In other words, our sense of wonder at the sacrifice Jesus made for us will be proportional to our grasp of the hellish agony he absorbed in our place.  To deny the severity of divine wrath is to dull our capacity to comprehend the magnitude of the infinite sacrifice God in Christ made for us on the cross while we were still sinners.[46]

CONCLUSION

            The disappearance of divine wrath from our preaching and teaching is fatal to the gospel.  If wrath is not real, why do we trust a Bible that so clearly proclaims it?  If wrath is not real, on what basis do we proclaim the holiness, righteousness, and justice of God?  If wrath is not real, why do we warn unbelievers of the gravity of sin or magnify the sacrifice Christ made for us on the cross?  If wrath is not real, from what does the gospel save?

In our next chapter, then, we will see that a straightforward reading of Scripture does, in fact, reveal the reality of wrath.

INTRODUCTION: THE REASON FOR WRATH

I only remember one experiment from my college chemistry lab.  We were each given a pea-sized pebble of pure sodium and instructed to drop it into a beaker containing a small amount of water.  The reaction was explosive.  The instant my sodium pebble contacted the water an impressive flash of light and flame leapt from my beaker.  When pure sodium encounters water, electrons vacate the sodium and interact with the water.  In the process, flammable hydrogen gas is released and ignited by the heat the reaction generates.  The reaction between sodium and water is so explosive our instructor, smiling at the memory, claimed to have blown a lab utility sink off the wall by filling it with water and lobbing in a fist-sized chunk of sodium.

When pure sodium encounters water, a violent reaction occurs.  Every time.  Pure sodium and water cannot peacefully coexist.  In our next two chapters we will discover the same holds true when a holy God encounters unrepentant sinners guilty of unredeemed sin.  By nature, God and sin cannot peacefully coexist.  Like sodium and water, every encounter between God and sin produces an explosive reaction.  The Bible calls this reaction wrath.  John Stott defines wrath as God’s holy reaction to evil.[47]  Arthur Pink says wrath is “the holiness of God stirred into activity against sin.”[48]  A.W. Tozer characterized wrath as God’s “utter intolerance of whatever degrades and destroys”.[49]

As we consider the reason for wrath, we’ll be confronted with our own depravity (chapter three).  As descendants of Adam, we’ll be reminded that our inherited, willful sinfulness corrupts every aspect of our being.  In chapter four, we’ll consider God’s standing as our Creator and the perfections of his character.  By doing so, we’ll come to understand why who we are in the light of who God is constitutes the reason for wrath.

 

Chapter 3

THE REASON FOR WRATH: WHO WE ARE

The room was bare and cold.  The slam of the iron door behind me echoed off the concrete block walls.  My chair was a round metal stool bolted to the floor.  I set my Bible and rested my hands on the polished steel tabletop in front of me.  On the other side of the glass partition separating us sat Mike.[50] A judge had recently condemned him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Still in his early thirties, Mike was struggling to comprehend the severity of his sentence.  In a drug deal gone bad, he’d kidnapped a man, drove him into the mountains, forced the man to kneel, and put a bullet in the back of his head. In spite of this brutality, Mike looked me in the eye and sincerely pled, “I’m basically a good person.”

“I’m basically a good person.”  This is the mantra of fallen humanity.  It’s also a lie.  And not just for convicted murderers.  It’s a lie for you and me.  Both the Bible and human history testify to this.  The claim, “I’m basically a good person,” obscures the reason for God’s wrath.  It blinds us to who the Bible says we are.  In this chapter, we’ll confront the common claim that we’re all “basically good people”.  On the contrary, we’ll see that Scripture declares us to be exactly the opposite—sinful, corrupt, and worthy of hell.

Most people are, of course, offended by this.  Self-love, allied with our innate ability to rationalize, prevents us from grasping the depth of our fallenness and capacity for evil.  Martyn Lloyd-Jones, noted, “You will never make yourself feel that you are a sinner, because there is a mechanism in you as a result of sin that will always be defending you against every accusation.  We are all on very good terms with ourselves, and we can always put up a good case for ourselves.  Even if we try to make ourselves feel that we are sinners, we will never do it.”[51]  Years ago, journalist Malcolm Muggeridge observed, “The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.”[52]  He was right.  While most people cling to the notion that we’re all “basically good”, simple observation negates the claim.

After all, if people are basically good, why is history peppered with genocide?  Why do terrorists use God as an excuse to maim and murder?  If people are basically good, why does corporate greed exist?  Where do corrupt politicians come from?  If people are basically good, why do millions of unborn babies never take their first breath?  Why is there a child sex trade?  If people are basically good, why do we lock our doors?  Why are young people gunned down in our streets and schools?  Why do so many children grow up fatherless.  If people are basically good, why are 6000 years of recorded human history devoid of lasting moral progress?  Why do wars persist?

There’s only one possible answer.  We are—both individually and as a race—not basically good!  That’s not to say that we, as fallen people, are incapable of doing any good.  As we will see—by virtue of God’s common grace—humanity’s capacity for kindness, self-sacrifice, and nobility is real.  Nonetheless, both history—and an honest look in the mirror—reveal that our capacity for good is far from absolute.  Without exception, our best thoughts and deeds are fouled by inherited and willful sin.  Experience testifies to this.  So does God’s word. [53]

HUMAN DEPRAVITY

“Depravity” is a word theologians use to describe our fallen sinful condition.  “Depravity” is a harsh word.  Merriam-Webster defines it as “the quality or state of being corrupt, evil, or perverted.”[54]  Ouch!  You and me?  Corrupt?  Evil?  Perverted?  We impulsively recoil at the notion!  Even so, the Bible teaches that we are, in fact, depraved.  At the same time, our dictionary definition of depravity needs to be qualified.  When theologians speak of  “total depravity” they’re not declaring that we are, in an absolute sense, incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong or of performing outwardly righteous acts.  Rather, they are acknowledging the biblical truth that, left to ourselves, our best thoughts, words, and deeds are marred by mixed motives, sinful self-centeredness, and indifference toward God.

The apostle Paul defines the essence of our corruption in Romans 1:18-21.  He explains that human depravity, here called the “ungodliness and unrighteousness of men”, is rooted in our active suppression of the truth about God’s existence, power and deity—all of which are plainly seen “in the things that have been made.” [55]  Note the intentionality of our corporate rejection of God’s self-revelation.  It’s not that we unwittingly miss the truth.  It’s that we willfully muzzle it!  Even as the heavens continuously declare the God’s glory[56] we—like unruly children—close our eyes and plug our ears in an attempt to drown out the truth we refuse to acknowledge.  That God alone is our Maker, Owner, and Provider.  In doing so Paul warns that we are “without excuse”.[57]

Here, then, is the essence of our depravity.  Knowing God, we willfully refuse to worship, submit, give thanks, and rejoice in him.  Like our father Adam, we refuse to admit our dependence on God as the Creator and Sustainer of all things.  Left to ourselves, we refuse to acknowledge him as the giver of every good gift—including our next breath.  This refusal to honor God as God is the sin from which all other “sins” spring.

But it’s not enough to recognize the nature of our depravity.  We must also understand its scope.  Human depravity is universal.  In the light of God’s holiness, every one of us, left to ourselves, is hopelessly corrupted by sin.  There are no exceptions.  Jeremiah reveals the breath of our fallen condition when he declares, “The heart (every human heart) is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it?”[58]  Jesus affirms the prophet’s assessment by declaring, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (emphasis mine).[59]

In Romans chapter 3, Paul quotes an array of Old Testament passages that reveal the universality of human sin.  He minces no words:

“‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.  All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.’ ‘Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.’  ‘The venom of asps is under their lips.’ ‘Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.’ ‘Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.’  ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes’” (emphasis mine).[60]

What then, is Paul’s conclusion?  “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (emphasis mine).[61]  And to anyone tempted to deny their own guilty rebellion, the apostle John warns, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  …If we say we have not sinned, we make him (God) a liar, and his word is not in us.”[62]

But all this is so negative!  Are we really so bad?  For anyone who embraces the Bible as God’s inerrant word, the answer must be “yes!”  The Bible says that, left to ourselves, not one of us is “basically good”.  Apart from Christ we are all hopelessly depraved and worthy of wrath.  If you doubt this, stop and honestly consider your own heart. For those who would walk with God, it’s not enough to affirm the reality of human depravity in a general sense.  We will never embrace the necessity of divine wrath—or the wonder of the grace that saves us from it—until we acknowledge our own inborn corruption and the gravity of our sin.

During times of personal peace or prosperity it can be difficult to recognize how deep our corruption runs.  Our capacity for sin is most often exposed during times of extreme stress.  Just prior to World War II and Japan’s invasion of the Philippians, my aunt was serving as an army hospital dietician in Manila.  After the fall of Bataan and Corregidor she and 76 military nurses—together known as the “Angels of Bataan”—were interned at Santo Tomas internment camp along with 3200 Western civilians.  Each prisoner’s “personal space” measured only 3’ x 6’.  Toilet facilities were almost non-existent.  Women were granted eight sheets of toilet paper per day.  Men were given six.  As their three-year captivity dragged on, food supplies dwindled.  The internees began to slowly starve to death.  It was under these conditions that many internees—including Christian missionaries—behaved in ways they would have previously thought impossible.  Tempers grew short.  Marriage vows were ignored.  Starving prisoners began to steal food from each other.  In at least one case, a father was caught stealing food from his own children.

Years ago, I came across an article written by a researcher who studied the backgrounds of soldiers who participated in the horrific Vietnam My Lai massacre.[63]  They were everyday suburban high-school grads, Midwest farm boys, and inner-city kids.  Among their ranks were practicing Baptists, Mormons, and Catholics.  Nothing about them suggested any of them would be capable of the brutality demonstrated that day.  It was only under the crushing fatigue and stress of war their personal and corporate capacity for evil was exposed.

Gratefully, for most of us, the revelation of our own depravity is seldom so stark or traumatic.  Still, the reality of our individual depravity becomes clear to anyone willing to honestly examine themself in the light of God’s word.  For instance, how do you respond when someone cuts you off in traffic or drives 25-mph in a 45-mph zone?  What are you thinking in the grocery store line when you’re in a hurray and the senior citizen ahead of you is systematically, and very slowly, digging through her purse looking for those two pennies she just knows are there?  Is the anger that often flares when we’re inconvenienced innocent?  As James warns, dare we bless God at the same time we curse those made in his image—even if silently?[64]  Doesn’t our too often trigger-happy irritation with those who get in our way expose a condemnable arrogance and sense of self-importance?

Dare we dig deeper?  Do you think thoughts you’re grateful no one else hears?  Is there anything about your life you’d be ashamed for others to know?  Have you never taken advantage of someone else?  Do you forgive those who sin against you like you demand to be forgiven?  Have you never slandered?  Never gossiped?  Never verbally wounded your spouse?  Your child?  Your friend?  Do you stay silent when you ought to speak?  Do you speak when you ought to stay silent?  Have you never ignored God?  Denied God?  Defied God?  Do you despise those who disagree with you politically?  Do you look down on others you deem less righteous than yourself?  Are you free of lust and sexual immorality?  I could go on, but we all get the point.  Not only is human depravity real.  It’s personal.  When answering the question, “What’s wrong with the world today?” G.K. Chesterton reportedly replied, “Dear Sir, I am.”[65]  Can’t we all say the same?

Still, the claim that we are sinful by nature and not “basically good” raises a legitimate question:

WHAT ABOUT NICE PEOPLE? 

When my mom entered hospice care, I made the trip to Oregon to be with her.  The day after she passed away, I felt the need to get away from the care center where we’d held vigil.  I needed to clear my head.  Being a Utah fan, I decided to go to a nearby bar where I could watch their football game.  Upon entering, I felt uncomfortable.  By upbringing and profession, bars are not my natural habitat.  My discomfort was short-lived.  As I sat at the bar eating a burger, the bartender engaged me in conversation.  He was busy, but we talked on and off until I left a few hours later.  When I walked out the door, I felt like I’d made a friend.  He was a young lawyer tending bar part-time while he worked to establish his practice.  He lived with his girlfriend.  They had just had a baby who he obviously adored.  He was warm and kind.  He was nice.

As I walked to my car, I found myself debating God.  “Lord, even without Christ, how can that man be headed for hell?  He’s kind.  He’s caring.  He’s nice.  How can you condemn him?  It doesn’t feel right to me!”

Let me be clear.  As a follower of Christ, I know my feelings aren’t the final arbiter of truth.  Still, I suspect I’m not the only Christian who’s struggled with the notion that nice people are, in fact, depraved and subject to divine wrath.   I’m talking about those kind-hearted, caring people we legitimately call “good”.  I’m talking about that neighbor who gave up his Saturday to help you lay sod; that co-worker who offered a kidney to a stranger in need of a transplant; those first-responders who ran into the Twin Towers on 9/11.  I’m talking about the grandmother who loves you unconditionally and that friend who, as Proverbs says, “sticks closer than a brother.”[66]  It’s hard to believe the ultimate destiny of these friends, neighbors, co-workers, and self-sacrificing heroes might be hell.

Still, as we have seen, the Bible plainly states that—apart from faith in Christ—everyone we love and admire remain fallen, depraved, and worthy of judgment.  Which raises the question—how is it that rebellious sinners retain their capacity for kindness, goodness, and sacrificial love?[67]  The answer is God’s common grace.  Common grace is the grace God bestows on all humanity—believers and unbelievers alike.  Jesus speaks of common grace when he declares that his Father “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.”[68]  But there’s more to God’s common grace than his physical and material blessings.  God’s common grace also acts to restrain the destructive power of human depravity in both our lives and our world.  Apart from this grace, expressions of human kindness, morality, and love would not exist.  Life on earth would become insufferable.

First, by virtue of his grace, God created us in his image.[69]  While the divine image God instills in us has been warped by our sin, it has not been extinguished.  Every act of human kindness, nobility, and self-sacrificing love bears testimony to the reality that our Creator imprinted his character upon our souls.

There is more.  The presence of God’s sin-restraining grace is also evidenced by his gift of human conscience.  Our conscience is the inborn moral compass God implants in every human heart.  Even though corrupted by sin, every person’s conscience bears general witness to the difference between right and wrong.  In Romans 2, Paul defines our conscience as “the work of the law” written on our hearts—at times accusing us, at times excusing us.  As such, human conscience both reveals and restrains sin.  This remains true even for people never exposed to God’s spoken or written word.  God’s gift of conscience makes it possible for people who reject his word, ignore his word, or have no access to his word to know—and to some degree do—what the God’s law requires.[70]

Nonetheless, in light of human depravity, we must remember that our conscience can never be trusted as the final arbiter between right and wrong.  Every person’s conscience has, to some degree, been corrupted.  Some are burdened with an overactive conscience that produces lives governed by false guilt or legalism.[71]  Others willingly sear[72] and defile[73] their conscience by giving themselves over to habitual sin and lies about God.  Nonetheless, when properly examined and heeded, human conscience remains a divine gift that makes “niceness” and nobility possible in a world populated by self-serving sinners like us.

Finally, God has graciously restrained the full brunt of human sin by establishing sin-restraining social structures.  The most basic of these is marriage and the two-parent family established by God at the time of creation.  By creating Eve to be Adam’s life partner,[74] God established the institution of marriage.  When presenting her to Adam, he declared, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”[75]  Here we discover that God’s unchanging blueprint for marriage is one biological man united with one biological woman in an intimate lifelong covenant relationship.  And for what purpose?  Certainly, for the purpose of companionship.[76]  Just as important, however, is the purpose (under normal circumstances) of bearing and raising children.

By God’s design, mothers and fathers are called to bear, love, and discipline their children in a way that enables them to know God and behave morally. [77]  Within a properly functioning family, children learn to respect authority, restrain their selfish desires, and consider the needs of others.  Apart from this, a child’s natural bent towards self-centeredness and sin will likely dominate their lives.  Admittedly, every earthly family is marked by some degree of dysfunction.  This too gives evidence of our universal depravity.  Still, without the training-ground of God’s sin-restraining gift of family, the world would be a far more violent and chaotic place.

A second social structure intended by God to restrain sin is the peer group.  A peer group is “a social group of people who have similar interests, age, background, or social status.  Peer groups can influence the beliefs and behaviors of their members.”[78]  We tend to think of peer groups only, and often accurately, in terms of their negative influence.[79]  But, a well-chosen peer group exercises a powerful influence that encourages righteousness and restrains sin.  Proverbs 13:20 says, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise…”  The Psalmist extols the positive influence of his own peer group when he writes, “I am a companion of all who fear you, of those who keep your precepts.[80]  The New Testament commands Christians to guard against personal sin and spiritual-drift by consistently gathering together with their believing peers.[81]  And, even among unbelievers, it is often the influence of noble peers that produces heroism in battle, kindness in the midst of brutality, and perseverance in the midst of trials.  The fellowship of moral peers is an essential expression of God’s sin-restraining grace.

A third social structure God gives to actively restrain the violent fruit of human depravity is the gift of government.  In light of its own tendency to be abusive and corrupt, we often find it difficult to think of government as God’s gift.  Even so, history testifies to the fact that the only thing worse than bad government is no functioning government at all.  Paul, who himself suffered under Rome’s oppressive rule, makes clear that every government is established by God and exercises authority derived from God.  He affirms that “the ruler” is God’s servant for our good and that “he does not bear the sword in vain.  For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”[82]  And so, in spite of its bent towards corruption, human government is a divine gift given to restrain sin by deterring and punishing wrongdoers.  When a government fails in this task, it is certain that social chaos will ensue.

In all this, we learn that the evidence of human “goodness” in our fallen world is not because of who we are, but in spite of who we are.  As sin-stained people, our capacity to act with kindness, love, and nobility is not an expression of inherent goodness.  Rather, it’s the outworking of God’s sin-restraining grace.  So yes, that bartender who encouraged me the day after my mother’s passing was without question genuinely nice.  Still, the fact remains.  As we’ll see in our next chapter, all the human niceness found on earth can’t compensate for our guilty depravity.  In spite of the goodness and nobility we encounter in this world, all who refuse Christ as Savior will ultimately be condemned.

REMEMBERING MERCY

Anyone who begins to comprehend the depth of their own depravity can’t help but tremble at the reality of divine wrath.  Even so, we should never lose sight of God’s mercy.  Because God is love, we ought always pray the prayer Habakkuk prayed, “Lord, in wrath remember mercy.”[83]

How, then, has God remembered mercy in the face of our depravity?  We find our answer in the forgiveness and life God offers us through faith in Christ.  In this chapter, we have been reminded that, left to ourselves, we are worthy of nothing but eternal condemnation.  But here’s the good news!  God has not left us to ourselves.  In Christ, God became human and lived the sinless life we can’t.  Having done so, he died on the cross to pay our sin penalty and forever conquered death on our behalf when he rose from the grave.  Because of this, every sinner willing to entrust themself to Jesus as Lord and Savior becomes a new creation.  They will never see death.  They will never taste wrath.  This is the grace of God.  We will consider this grace in greater depth in chapter eight.

In our next chapter we will consider God’s perfections along with his standing as our Creator.  By doing so, we will better understand that the reason for wrath lies not just in the fact that we sin, but who we sin against.

 

  Chapter 4

 THE REASON FOR WRATH:  WHO GOD IS

“My God isn’t angry!  My God doesn’t punish sin!  My God would never send someone to hell!”  I’ve heard many people say this—and I have no doubt it’s true.  Their God isn’t angry.  Their God doesn’t punish sin.  And most certainly, their God will never send anyone to hell.  Multitudes take comfort in this knowledge that their God is infinitely lenient—always forgiving, never judging, never condemning.  But as comforting as their view of God might seem today, it will prove disastrous tomorrow.  Why?  Because, come Judgment Day, no one will find themself standing before their God—that is, the god of their imagination.  On the Last Day, we will all find ourselves standing before the one true God who reveals himself in Scripture.  And, contrary to popular opinion, that God is angry with unrepentant sinners.[84]  That God will punish every sinful thought, attitude, word, and deed.[85]  And, yes, that God will forever banish all who refuse salvation in Christ to a place Jesus calls Gehena—otherwise known as hell.[86]

Which raises the question, “Who is your God?  Who is mine?  Is our God a god of our own making?  A non-threatening God?  A God we need never fear?  An indulgent God who in the end winks at our sin, pats us on the head, and welcomes us into heaven as is?  Because, if that’s our God, we’ll never comprehend the reason for wrath.  It is essential, then, to consider wrath’s necessity on the basis of who it is we sin against—the God who defines himself in Scripture.  Paradoxically, he’s the God who loves the world[87] even as he punishes sin, hates sinners, and forever condemns the lost to hell.  Admittedly, many find this God offensive—which makes it difficult to explain him to our unbelieving friends.

So, how can we understand this God who simultaneously loves and hates, saves and condemns, and offers heaven while threatening hell?  Ultimately, we can’t.  Not fully.  His thoughts are not our thoughts.  His ways are not our ways.[88]  But here’s what we can do.  We can embrace what God tells us about himself in the Bible.  In Scripture, we’ll be confronted with the weight of what it means to sin against God in light of his perfections and his standing as our Creator.

So, what does God reveal about himself in the Bible?  What must we know about him in order to understand the reason for wrath?

 

GOD IS OUR CREATOR

We’ll start where the Bible starts—in the beginning.  “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”[89]  God is our Creator!  This is the first truth he reveals about himself in Scripture.  God made us.  He owns us.  Not one of us decided for ourselves when to be born—or even if to be born.  It was God who called us into being.[90]  It is God who determines the number of our days on earth.[91]  He is infinite, we are finite.  He is preeminent, we are subservient!  As Creator, God alone has standing to define who we are, why we exist, and how we should live.

By what right, then, can we claim title to our own lives?  On what basis do we demand, “It’s my life, my body, my future!”  ME!  MY!  MINE!  These are mutinous declarations of independence from our Life-Giver.  They represent insurrection against the One to whom we owe everything.  Rather than serve God, we stubbornly exalt ourselves over him.  In his expansive work on God’s attributes, Stephen Charnock observed, “A man in every sin aims to set up his own will as his rule and his own glory as the end of his actions, against the will and glory of God: and could a sinner attain his end; God would be destroyed”.[92]

And so, the reason for wrath is not only that we sin—it’s who we sin against!  In our fallenness, we defy the God who made us for himself.  We resist our Creator who, for the sake of his glory and our good, calls us to love him with all our heart, all our soul, and all our might.[93]

But our struggle to grasp the reason for wrath rests not only in our rejection of God’s standing as Creator.  It’s also rooted in our disregard of his perfections.

 

THE PERFECTIONS OF GOD

Understanding God’s character requires us to survey a number of his perfections—also called attributes.  An “attribute” is a characteristic or quality of a person or thing.[94]  “The attributes of God, then, are essential characteristics of the divine being.  Without these qualities God would not be what he is—God.”[95]  As we consider God’s attributes, we must ensure that our thinking is governed by Scripture alone.  Any attempt to define God based on our own perceptions, feelings, or opinions is certain to lead us astray.

When thinking of God’s character, the first divine attribute that usually comes to mind is love.  In both the Church, and the world at large, love is God’s most celebrated attribute.  In fact, many consider love to be God’s defining attribute.   It’s no mystery why.  The Bible itself proclaims, “God is love”![96]  From eternity past to eternity future, the life of God is defined by love—the Father loving the Son, the Son loving the Father,[97] the Holy Spirit loving and being loved by each as he invites rebellious sinners (like us) to share in the fellowship of God’s triune community.[98]  The wonder of God’s self-giving love ought to possess us!  We ought always contemplate God’s love, stand in awe of God’s love, and worship the God who is love!  But at the same time, we must know that even as God is love, he is not only love.  Forgetting this has led many to deny both the reality and the necessity of divine wrath.

What, then, are other attributes of God we must consider in order to understand the reason for wrath?  In terms of biblical emphasis, we dare not ignore God’s holiness.  Divine holiness means that “God is morally spotless in character and action, upright, pure, and untainted with evil desires, motives, thought, words, or acts.  …God cannot approve of any evil, has no pleasure in evil (Ps. 5:4), and cannot tolerate evil (Hab. 1:13).”[99]  In the Old Testament, the word “holy” qualifies God’s name more than all other adjectives combined.  The majesty of God’s holiness is revealed in Isaiah 6:1-3 where the prophet recounts:

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and

lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.  Above him stood the seraphim.

Each had six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet,

And with two he flew.  And one called to another and said:  Holy, holy, holy is the Lord

of host; the whole earth is full of his glory” (emphasis mine)!

In Isaiah’s vision, the central divine attribute magnified by the angels dwelling in God’s presence is not love, but holiness.  In English, we emphasize words or thoughts by using italics or exclamation points.  In Old Testament Hebrew, emphasis is expressed by the use of repetition.  Regarding the thrice repeated word “holy” in Isaiah chapter six, R.C. Sproul notes:

“On a handful of occasions the Bible repeats something to the third degree.

To mention something three times in succession is to elevate it to the superlative

degree…  Only once in Scripture is an attribute of God elevated to the third

degree.  Only once is a characteristic of God mentioned three times in succession.

The Bible says that God is holy, holy, holy.  Not that he is merely holy, or even

holy, holy.  He is holy, holy, holy.  The Bible never says that God is love, love,

love, or mercy, mercy, mercy, or wrath, wrath, wrath, or justice, justice, justice.  It

does say that He is holy, holy, holy, the whole earth is full of His glory”.[100]

We cannot, then, contemplate the reason for wrath without giving full weight to the significance of God’s holiness.  Because God is “holy, holy, holy” we must remember that he cannot—and ultimately will not—tolerate the presence of unredeemed sin or unrepentant sinners.[101]  This proves truth not only because God is holy, but also because he is righteous and just.[102]  “God’s righteousness means that he always acts in accordance with what is right and is himself the final standard of what is right.”[103]  “The justice of God means that he is fair in the administration of his law.  He does not show favoritism or partiality.”[104]  Because God is holy, righteous, and just, he must punish every sin.  Coupled with God’s omniscience,[105] this is not good news for those who refuse the forgiveness and new life found in Christ.  Omniscience means that God sees our every deed, hears our every word, and knows our every thought.  Accordingly, on the day of God’s wrath, no sin will be overlooked; no dark motive will be left unexposed; no condemned sinner will be able to rightly claim that God’s judgment is unjust.

Admittedly, this brief survey of God’s attributes is partial.  Nonetheless, it provides a basis for our consideration of how all God’s attributes operate concurrently when confronted by human sin.  Many entertain the popular notion that God’s love excludes the possibility of eternal wrath.  If God is love, they reason, he will not—he cannot—condemn sinners to hell.  In response to this claim, we will ask two questions related to another divine attribute we have not yet considered—God’s unity:

 

DOES GOD HAVE AIRPLANE MODE?

Anyone who flies commercially has heard the announcement.  It goes something like this: “Cellular features must be turned off once the front entry door is closed.  …Small portable electronic devices, including cell phones, may be used in airplane mode for all phases of flight.”

Airplane mode—every smart phone has it.  In order to prevent interference with aircraft communications, airplane mode suspends your phone’s radio-frequency transmission capability.  In short, airplane mode deactivates an essential attribute of your phone.

So, does God have airplane mode?  Can he deactivate one or more of his attributes when circumstances require?  For instance, when God confronts human sin, can he suspend the operation of those attributes that might interfere with his “loving acceptance” of all people into heaven?  If, as assumed by many, love is God’s defining attribute should we not surmise that, when confronting human sin, he suspends the exercise of those attributes that would require an unbeliever’s condemnation?[106]  Those who deny the necessity of God’s wrath seem to believe exactly this when they elevate God’s love over—or isolate God’s love from—his other attributes.  Apparently, they do believe God has airplane mode.

Here is a second question that can help us understand why God’s unity (defined below) necessitates his wrath:

 

IS GOD CONFLICTED? 

Does God wrestle within himself?  Do some of God’s attributes express themselves in ways contrary to the expression of his other perfections?  Specifically, is the expression of God’s wrath opposed to the expression of God’s love?  It seems many Christians think so.  Within Christ’s church there exists a vague notion that divine wrath and divine love operate in contrary ways.  We too easily imagine that the love of God acts as a kind of counterbalance to the wrath of God in order to prevent his “dark side” from gaining the upper hand.  Some suggest that God’s love literally battles against God’s wrath.  In this case we are, of course, assured that “love wins.”  Taken to the extreme, these notions lead to the conclusion that God’s love and God’s wrath are mutually exclusive.  For many, God is either love, or he is wrath.  He cannot be both at the same time.

But the relationship between God’s love and God’s wrath is never “either/or”.  A.W. Tozer rightly insists, “God is never at cross-purposes with Himself.”[107]  Divine wrath never opposes divine love.  Divine love never opposes divine wrath.  They are, in fact, one and the same.  The unity of God makes this certain.

 

THE UNITY OF GOD

The unity, or simplicity, of God means he cannot be divided.  In other words, God is not made up of parts.  None of God’s attributes can be expressed in isolation from all his attributes together.  The totality of all God’s attributes always operate together as one unified whole.  This means we can’t legitimately rank or prioritize any single attribute of God (including his love) above his other attributes based on personal preference.  Every expression of God’s love is perfectly integrated with the concurrent expression of all his other attributes.  Conversely, the expression of all God’s other attributes is perfectly integrated with the concurrent expression of his love.  In short, all God is is expressed in all God does all the time.

 

THE LOVING WRATH OF GOD

If then, all the attributes of God are perfectly integrated in their expression, can we not say that God’s love is wrathful love and that God’s wrath is loving wrath?  We can.  In fact, we must.  However, in doing so we must make sure that our definition of “love” is rooted in Scripture rather than popular culture.  D.A. Carson writes, “…when informed Christians talk about the love of God, they mean something very different from what is meant in the surrounding culture.”[108]  He explains,

“To put this another way, we live in a culture in which many other and complementary truths about God are widely disbelieved.  I do not think that what the Bible says about the love of God can long survive at the forefront of our thinking if it is abstracted from the sovereignty of God, the holiness of God, the wrath of God, the providence of God, or the personhood of God—to mention only a few nonnegotiable elements of basic Christianity.  The result, of course, is that the love of God in our culture has been purged of anything the culture finds uncomfortable.  The love of God has been sanitized, democratized, and above all sentimentalized.”[109]

Carson affirms what we’ve already seen.  God’s love is never expressed in isolation from his other attributes.  Knowing this, Tozer explains how every expression of God’s wrath is, at the same time, an expression of his life-sustaining love.  He writes:

“To preserve His creation God must destroy whatever would destroy it.  When He arises to put down iniquity and save the world from irreparable moral collapse, He is said to be angry.  Every wrathful judgment in the history of the world has been a holy act of preservation.  The holiness of God, the wrath of God, and the health of the creation are inseparably united.  God’s wrath is His utter intolerance of whatever degrades and destroys.  He hates iniquity as a mother hates the polio that takes the life of her child.”[110]

Most of us have never experienced the brunt of this world’s oppression or genocidal violence.  In our prosperity we often struggle to see what Tozer saw—God’s wrath is a necessary expression of his life-preserving love.  It was his own encounter with overt evil that convinced Yale Divinity theologian, Miroslav Volf that the absence of God’s wrath would constitute the absence of his love.  He writes:

“I used to think that wrath was unworthy of God.  Isn’t God love?  Shouldn’t divine love be beyond wrath?  God is love, and God loves every person and every creature.  That’s exactly why God is wrathful against some of them.  My last resistance to the idea of God’s wrath was a casualty of the war in the former Yugoslavia, the region from which I come.  According to some estimates, 200,000 people were killed and over 3,000,000 were displaced.  My villages and cities were destroyed, my people shelled day in and day out, some of them brutalized beyond imagination, and I could not imagine God not being angry.  Or think of Rwanda in the last decade of the past century, where 800,000 people were hacked to death in one hundred days!  How did God react to the carnage?  By doting on the perpetrators in a grandparently fashion?  By refusing to condemn the bloodbath but instead affirming the perpetrators’ basic goodness? Wasn’t God fiercely angry with them?  Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God’s wrath, I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn’t wrathful at the sight of the world’s evil.  God isn’t wrathful in spite of being love.  God is wrathful because God is love” (emphasis author’s).[111]

Volf’s point is clear.  God cannot be loving and, at the same time, ignore wickedness.  Divine love must destroy evil and all who, in the absence of repentance, perpetrate it.  Divine love must ultimately punish every wrong.  This is why God’s wrath is loving wrath and God’s love is wrathful love.  There is no contradiction between the two.

 

SUMMING UP:  THE REASON FOR WRATH

Chapters three and four have confronted us with the unpleasant truth that we are, in the light of God’s character, the reason for his wrath.  Chapter three reminded us that, apart from new life in Christ, we are all inherently sinful.  Theologians use the word “depraved” to describe our fallen condition.  While it might be true that none of us have hacked our neighbor to death with a machete, the Bible is clear.  Left to ourselves we are, by nature and by choice, spiritually corrupt and worthy of divine judgment.

In this chapter, we’ve been reminded that the reason for wrath lies not just in the fact that we sin, but who we sin against—God.  He is our Creator.  We were made by God, for God.  He is our Life-Giver, Provider, and Owner.  We owe him our allegiance, our obedience, and our worship.  In light of this, humanity’s refusal to honor God as God necessitates his wrath.  His perfections, also called attributes, govern his response to human sin.  God’s perfections include his love, holiness, righteousness, justice, omniscience, and more.  Because God is indivisible, the totality of all his attributes are perfectly integrated and always operate in unity.  All God is is expressed in all God does all the time.  In light of this, God’s wrath is never in conflict with his love.  God’s love is never in conflict with his wrath.  They are one and the same.

Here, then, is the reason for God’s wrath—the incompatibility of who we are in our depravity with who God is in his perfection.  In the same way pure sodium and water cannot peacefully coexist, neither can God and sin.  When a holy God encounters a depraved sinner, an explosive reaction called wrath must ultimately occur.

 

REMEMBERING MERCY 

Who we are in light of who God is, makes us subject to divine wrath.  Left to ourselves, we have no hope of escape.  But here’s the good news—God has not left us to ourselves.   Because none of God’s attributes are expressed in isolation, we can be certain that wherever we find God’s wrath we will also find his love.  This proves especially true at the cross where both the love and wrath of God were perfectly satisfied in the death and resurrection of Christ.  In Christ, all who entrust themselves to him find forgiveness and eternal reconciliation with God.

Again, we will explore the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection more fully in chapter eight.  Before doing so we will devote our next three chapters to exploring the nature of God’s wrath.

[1] Arthur W. Pink, The Attributes of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1975), 82.

[2] Revelation 20:11-15

[3] I retired from full-time pastoral ministry in 2019.

[4] J.I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 150.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid, 151.

[7] Romans 1:21

[8] Habakkuk 3:2

[9] Romans 5:8

[10] See Psalm 5:4-6; 11:5; Isaiah 59:18; 66:15-16; 2 Thessalonians 1:6-9; Revelation 19:15.     

[11] Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and Other Writings (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, Inc.), 6-7.

[12] See Ecclesiastes 8:8; 9:12; James 4:13-14.

[13] Edwards, Sinners in the Hands, 9.

[14] See Matthew 5:22; 13:40-42, 47-50; 25:41; Mark 9:42-49.

[15] Edwards, Sinners in the Hands, 9.

[16] Ibid., 16.

[17] Ibid., 18

[18] R.P.C. Hanson, God: Creator, Saviour, Spirit (London: S.C.M., 1960), 37; quoted in Tony Lane, “The Wrath of God as an Aspect of the Love of God,” in Nothing Greater Nothing Better: Theological Essays on the Love of God, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2001), 139.

[19] Acts 20:27

[20] For example, Genesis 6-7; 19:23-24; Exodus 7-11; Romans 1:18-32; Matthew 13:47-50; 25:31-46; 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10; Revelation 20:11-15

[21] 1 John 4:8

[22] Brian Zahnd, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2017), 55.

[23] Ibid, 16.

[24] Luke 17:26-30; 1 Corinthians 10:1-10; 2 Peter 2:5-6

[25] Matthew 16:27; 25:31-46; John 5:28-29; 17:30-31; 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10; Revelation 20:11-15.

[26] Tony Jones, Did God Kill Jesus? (New York: HarperOne, 2016), 30.

[27] Ibid., 31.

[28] Jeremiah 17:9

[29] 2 Timothy 3:16

[30] Romans 11:22

[31] 1 John 4:8

[32] Romans 1:32

[33] Isaiah 1:4; 37:23; Jeremiah 50:29; Habakkuk 1:13; James 1:13

[34] Packer, Knowing God, 151.

[35] Jeremiah 2:35; Luke 18:9-14; 1 John 1:8-10

[36] Genesis 2:24; Malachi 2:14-16

[37] Hebrews 13:4. See also 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Revelation 21:8.

[38] Matthew 5:22

[39] James 3:6

[40] Matthew 12:34-37

[41] 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

[42] We will explore this infinitely gracious act of God in detail in chapter 8.

[43] 2 Corinthians 5:21

[44] Isaiah 53:5-6, 10, 12; Romans 3:21-26; Hebrews 10:10-18; 1 Peter 2:24

[45] Packer, Knowing God, 195.

[46] Romans 5:8; 1 John 4:9-10

[47] John R.W. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 103.

[48] Arthur W. Pink, The Attributes of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1975), 83.

[49] A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row, 1961), 106.

[50] “Mike” is a pseudonym.

[51] Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Seeking the Face of God: Nine Reflections on the Psalms (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 34, quoted in  Dane Ortland, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 67-68.

[52] Malcolm Muggeridge, www.azquotes.com/author/10521-Malcolm_Muggeridge.

[53] Isaiah 64:6

[54] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/depravity :  Accessed January 11, 2024.

[55] Romans 1:19-20

[56] Psalm 19:1

[57] Romans 1:20-21

[58] Jeremiah 17:9

[59] Matthew 15:19

[60] Romans 3:10-18

[61] Romans 3:23

[62] 1 John 1:8, 10

[63] The My Lai massacre was a 1968 U.S. war crime in which American soldiers murdered as many as 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians—mostly women, children, and elderly men.

[64] James 3:8-12

[65] https://www.chesterton.org/wrong-with-world/

[66] Proverbs 18:24

[67] Matthew 5:46-47; Luke 11:11-13; Acts 27:3; 28:2; Romans 5:7

[68] Matthew 5:45; See also Acts 14:17

[69] Genesis 1:26-27; 9:6; James 3:9

[70] Romans 2:14-15

[71] 1 Corinthians 8:7-8

[72] 1 Timothy 4:1-2

[73] Titus 1:15-16

[74] Genesis 1:27; 2:18-23

[75] Genesis 2:24

[76] Genesis 2:18-22

[77] Genesis 1:28; 9:1; Deuteronomy 6:6-7; Proverbs 19:18; Malachi 2:15; Ephesians 6:1-2

[78] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_group  Accessed January 22, 2024.

[79] Proverbs 16:29; 22:24-25; 23:20-21; 1 Corinthians 15:33

[80] Psalm 119:63

[81] Hebrews 10:24-25

[82] Romans 13:1-7

[83] Habakkuk 3:2

[84] Psalm 5:5; 7:11; Nahum 1:6

[85] Matthew 12:36-37; 16:27; 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9; Revelation 20:11-13

[86] Matthew 13:49-50; Matthew 25:41; Revelation 20:14-15

[87] John 3:16

[88] Isaiah 55:8-9

[89] Genesis 1:1

[90] Psalm 139:13-15; Acts 17:25

[91] Psalm 139:16

[92] Stephen Charnock, Discourses Upon the Existence and Attributes of God, Volume 1 (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1840), 92.

[93] Deuteronomy 6:4

[94] Webster’s New World Dictionary, Second College Edition (Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 90.

[95] Walter A. Elwell, ed., Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1984), 451.

[96] 1 John 4:8

[97] John 3:35; 5:20; 10:17; 15:9-10; 17:20-26

[98] John 1:12-13; 3:5-8; 15:26; 16:13-15

[99] Walter A. Elwell, ed., Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1984), 455.

[100] RC Sproul, The Holiness of God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1985), 39-40.

[101] Isaiah 6:3; Habakkuk 1:13; Matthew 5:48; James 1:13; 1 Peter 1:15-16

[102] Genesis 18:25; Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 19:8; Isaiah 45:19

[103] Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 204

[104] Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology: Volume 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1983), 288

[105] Psalm 139:1-4; Hebrews 4:13; 1 John 3:20

[106] Holiness? Righteousness? Wrath?

[107] A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row, 1961), 88

[108] D.A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2000), 10

[109] Ibid., 11

[110] A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row, 1961), 106

[111]Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005), 138-139