The Wrath of God

Why when I read the opening phrase of Romans 1:18: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men," does it not hit me like a ton of bricks? The sheer fact that what we get from God when we don't get his "saving righteousness" is His "wrath" should put anyone in an insane asylum until they know they are free from God’s wrath and under His eternal grace. Two thoughts came to my mind as to why I am not deeply riveted by an understanding of the "wrath of God": (1) The preaching we get on the wrath of God is scarce and what we do get is puny and trivial (there are a few, keyword “few” exceptions though). (2) Our culture has taken God’s attributes and made them in our image so that we eventually have a God and a Jesus who is as Mark Driscoll says “a hippie-Christ (or God); a neutered and limp-wristed popular sky fairy of popular culture that would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell." So then I decided to look up a couple definitions and statements about the wrath of God that brought out the true biblical definition of it and exposed its horrendous implications. Here is what I found:

Douglas Moo says the following about the wrath of God in his commentary on Romans: “The wrath of God is not, of course, an emotional rage but a steadfast and absolute opposition to all that is evil. It is essential to the character of God: ‘As long as God is God, He cannot behold with indifference that His creation is destroyed and His holy will trodden underfoot. Therefore he meets sin with His mighty and annihilating reaction,’ (A. Nygren, Commentary on Romans).”

Jonathan Edwards talks about the torment that the unbeliever will face when he finally experiences the full wrath of God: “"The body will be full of torment as full as it can hold, and every part of it shall be full of torment. They shall be in extreme pain, every joint of them; every nerve shall be full of inexpressible torment. They shall be tormented even to their fingers' ends. The whole body shall be full of the wrath of God. Their hearts and their bowels and their heads, their eyes and their tongues, their hands and their feet will be filled with the fierceness of God's wrath. This is taught us in many Scriptures..."

Here is John Piper speaking out against people who try to dumb down the reality of the wrath of God that will be experienced in Hell: “when the Bible speaks of hell-fire, woe to us if we say, 'It’s only a symbol.' If it is a symbol at all, it means the reality is worse than fire, not better. The word 'fire' is used not to make the easy sound terrible, but to make the exceedingly terrible sound something like what it really is."

Wayne Grudem gives a concise but solid definition of the wrath of God and then talks about why as Christians we should embrace it and thank God for it: “God’s wrath means that he intensely hates all sin…this is an attribute for which we should thank and praise God…what would God be like if he were a God that did not hate sin. He would be a God who either delighted in sin or at least was not troubled by it. Such a God would not be worthy of our worship, for sin is hateful and it is worthy of being hated. It is in fact a virtue to hate evil and sin (Heb. 1:9; Zech. 8:17).”

After I started pondering the wrath of God I had to move quickly to the one place where I know I can rest assured that I am not under God’s wrath but under His eternal grace. Some may think I started thinking about the Kingdom and how God is going to restore everything and sit upon His throne but I did not. I went some place more comforting; more central. I went to the cross, the same place Paul eventually goes in 3:21-26, where the wrath of God that was meant to be poured out on me for an eternity was spent on Christ so that I could embrace and be embraced by God and experience nothing but grace for eternity.

So let us understand wrath so we can understand the cross and be moved into a deeper understanding of the grace of God revealed in the cross.

Jesus, keep us near the cross.