God's wrath

In the Bible it is written: "God is love" (1. John 4,8). He made up his mind to do good by serving and loving people. But the Bible also points to God's wrath. But how can someone who is pure love also have something to do with anger?

Love and anger are not mutually exclusive. Therefore we can expect that love, the desire to do good also include anger or resistance to anything hurtful and destructive. God's love is consistent and therefore God resists anything that opposes his love. Any resistance to his love is sin. God is against sin - he fights it and will eventually eliminate it. God loves people, but he displeases sin. However, "displeased" is far too mild to put it. God hates sin because it is an expression of hostility to his love. This makes it clear what is meant by the wrath of God according to the Bible.

God loves all people, including sinners: "They are all sinners and lack the glory that they should have before God and are justified without merit by his grace through the redemption that came about through Christ Jesus" (Romans 3,23-24). Even when we were sinners, God sent his Son to die for us, to deliver us from our sins (from Romans 5,8). We conclude that God loves people, but hates the sin that harms them. If God were not inexorable towards everything that is against his creation and his creatures and if he were not opposed to a real relationship with him and his creatures, he would not be unconditional, comprehensive love. God would not be for us if he were not against whatever stands against us.

Some scriptures show that God is angry with people. But God never wants to cause people pain, but wants them to see how their sinful way of life harms them and those around them. God wants sinners to change to avoid the pain that sin causes.

God's wrath shows when God's holiness and love are attacked by human sinfulness. People who live their lives apart from God are hostile to his path. Such distant and hostile people act as enemies of God. Since man threatens all that is good and pure that God is and for which he stands, God resolutely opposes the way and practices of sin. His holy and loving resistance to all forms of sinfulness is called "God's wrath". God is sinless - he is a perfectly holy being in and of himself. If he did not oppose man's sinfulness, he would not be good. If he were not angry with sin and if he did not judge sin, God would admit to the evil deed that sinfulness is not absolutely evil. That would be a lie, because sinfulness is completely evil. But God cannot lie and remains true to himself, as it corresponds to his innermost being, which is holy and loving. God resists sin by placing persistent enmity against it because He will remove from the world all suffering that is caused by evil.

End of enmity

However, God has already taken the necessary measures to end the enmity between himself and the sin of mankind. These measures flow from his love, which is the essence of his being: «He who does not love does not know God; because God is love »(1. John 4,8). Out of love, God allows his creatures to choose for or against him. He even allows them to hate him, although he opposes such a decision because it harms the people he loves. Indeed, he says "no" to her "no". By saying "no" to our "no", he affirms his "yes" to us in Jesus Christ. «In it the love of God appeared among us, that God sent his only begotten Son into the world that we should live through him. In this is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be atonement for our sins »(1. John 4,9-10).
God has taken all necessary steps at the highest cost of himself that our sins be forgiven and erased. Jesus died for us, in our place. The fact that his death was necessary for our forgiveness shows the gravity of our sin and guilt, and shows the consequences that sin would have on us. God hates the sin that causes death.

When we accept God's forgiveness in Jesus Christ, we confess that we have been sinful creatures in opposition to God. We see what it means to receive Christ as our Savior. We accept that as sinners we were alienated from God and in need of reconciliation. We recognize that through Christ and his work of redemption we have received reconciliation, a profound change in our human nature, and eternal life in God as a free gift. We repent of our "no" to God and thank him for his "yes" to us in Jesus Christ. In Ephesians 2,1-10 Paul describes the path of man under the wrath of God to the recipient of salvation through God's grace.

God's purpose from the beginning was to show his love for people by forgiving the world of its sins through God's work in Jesus (from Ephesians 1,3-8th). The situation of people in their relationship with God is revealing. Whatever “anger” God had, He also planned to redeem people before the world was created “but redeemed with the precious blood of Christ as an innocent and immaculate Lamb. Although he was chosen before the foundation of the world was laid, he is revealed at the end of time for your sake »(1. Petrus 1,19-20). This reconciliation does not come about through human desires or efforts, but solely through the person and the redemptive work of Jesus Christ on behalf of us. This work of redemption was accomplished as "loving anger" against sinfulness and for us as individuals. People who are "in Christ" are no longer objects of anger, but live in peace with God.

In Christ we humans are saved from the wrath of God. We are profoundly changed by His work of salvation and the indwelling Holy Spirit. God has reconciled us to himself (from 2. Corinthians 5,18); he has no desire to punish us, for Jesus bore our punishment. We thank and receive his forgiveness and new life in a real relationship with him, turning to God and turning away from all that is an idol in human life. «Do not love the world or what is in the world. If someone loves the world, there is not the Father's love in him. For everything that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and arrogant life, is not from the Father, but from the world. And the world passes with its lust; but whoever does the will of God remains forever »(1. John 2,15-17). Our salvation is God's salvation in Christ - "who saves us from future wrath" (1. Thes 1,10).

Man has become an enemy of God by the nature of Adam, and this hostility and distrust of God creates a necessary countermeasure from the holy and loving God - his wrath. Right from the start, out of His love, God intended to end man-made anger through Christ's work of redemption. It is through God's love that we have been reconciled to him through his own work of redemption in the death and life of his Son. “How much more will we be saved from wrath by him, now that we have been righteous by his blood. For if we have been reconciled to God through the death of his Son when we were still enemies, how much more will we be saved through his life, now that we have been reconciled »(Romans 5,9-10).

God planned to remove his righteous anger against humanity even before it arose. God's anger cannot be compared to human anger. Human language has no word for this type of temporary and already resolved opposition to people who oppose God. They deserve punishment, but God's desire is not to punish them but to deliver them from the pain that their sin causes them.

The word anger can help us understand how much God hates sin. Our understanding of the word anger must always include the fact that God's anger is always directed against sin, never against people because He loves them all. God has already acted to see his anger against people ended. His anger against sin ends when the effects of sin are destroyed. "The last enemy to be destroyed is death" (1. Corinthians 15,26).

We thank God that his anger ceases when sin is conquered and destroyed. We have assurance in the promise of his peace with us because he overcame sin in Christ once and for all. God has reconciled us to himself through the redemptive work of his Son, and thereby stilled his anger. So the wrath of God is not directed against his love. Rather, his anger serves his love. His anger is a means of achieving loving purposes for all.

Because human anger seldom, if ever, negligibly fulfills loving intentions, we cannot transfer our human understanding and experience of human anger to God. When we do this, we are practicing idolatry and introducing ourselves to God as if he were a human creature. James 1,20 makes it clear that "man's anger does not do what is right before God". God's wrath will not last forever, but His unwavering love will.

Key verses

Here are some important scriptures. They show a comparison between God's love and his divine anger as opposed to the human anger we experience in fallen people:

• "For the wrath of man does not do what is right before God" (James 1,20).
• “If you are angry, do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger »(Ephesians 4,26).
• «I will not do after my fierce anger nor ruin Ephraim again. Because I am God and not a person, holy in your midst. That is why I do not come in anger to devastate »(Hosea 11,9).
• «I want to heal their apostasy; I would love to love her; for my anger has turned from them »(Hosea 14,5).
• «Where is such a God as you are, who forgives sin and remits the guilt of those who have remained as the remainder of his inheritance; who does not cling to his anger forever, for he takes pleasure in grace! " (Micha 7,18).
• "You are a God who forgives, gracious, merciful, patient and of great kindness" (Nehemiah 9,17).
• "In the moment of anger I hid my face a little from you, but with everlasting grace I will have mercy on you, says the Lord your Redeemer" (Isaiah 54,8).
• «The Lord does not repudiate forever; but he grieves well and has pity again according to his great kindness. Because he does not plague and grieve people from the heart. ... What do people grumble in life, each one about the consequences of their sin? " (Lamentations 3,31-33.39).
• "Do you think that I enjoy the death of the wicked, says the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his ways and stay alive?" (Ezekiel 18,23).
• «Tear your hearts and not your clothes and turn back to the Lord your God! For he is gracious, merciful, patient and of great kindness, and he will soon regret the punishment »(Joel 2,13).
• «Jonah prayed to the Lord and said: Oh, Lord, that's what I thought when I was still in my country. That's why I wanted to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are gracious, merciful, long-suffering and of great kindness and make you repent of the evil »(Jonah 4,2).
• «The Lord does not delay the promise as some consider it a delay; but he has patience with you and does not want anyone to be lost, but that everyone should find repentance »(2. Petrus 3,9).
• «Fear is not in love, but perfect love drives out fear. For fear reckons with punishment; but whoever is afraid is not completely in love »(1. John 4,17 last part-18).

When we read that «God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten Son, that all who believe in him should not be lost but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that through him the world might be saved »(John 3,16-17), then we should understand precisely from this act that God is "angry" with sin. But with his annihilation of sinfulness, God does not condemn sinful people, but saves them from sin and death in order to offer and give them reconciliation and eternal life. God's "anger" is not intended to "condemn the world" but to destroy the power of sin in all its forms so that people can find their salvation and experience an eternal and living relationship of love with God.

by Paul Kroll