“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
Romans 5:6-11 ESV
God’s wrath.
We don’t sing too much about that. Perhaps it is because our understanding of wrath is from human to human, where one unrighteous sinner is exacting vengeance on another unrighteous sinner. We know, on some fundamental level, that our wrath is almost always unjust at some level, with few exceptions. We teach our children that they should not unleash their unbridled fury against another child on the playground who didn’t take turns on the swing or pushed them out of line for the slides. We teach them to take their problems to mom or dad to mete out justice on their behalf. The reason is that, in their wrath, they go too far. The obvious implication is that, as adults, we would administer the proper amount of punitive judgement while restraining from the emotional outbursts that our children are prone to.
We carry this lesson into adulthood, “my wrath cannot be trusted,” but many times in polite society we take that to the measure of “all wrath is wrong and cannot be trusted.” We even apply this manner of thinking towards God. As children, the adults in our lives were the God given authorities whom we took our issues to. Unfortunately, sometimes those adults abuse their authority and release their unjust wrath on those they have been given charge over. We see the ramifications of the unjust wrath of man all around us, so much so that it makes it difficult to comprehend a wrath that actually is not only justified, but good.
The Bible, however, doesn’t beat around the bush when it comes to the topic of God’s wrath. When Jesus spoke about Hell, He of course spoke about the unnamed rich man who begged Abraham for just a drop of water to ease his suffering. (Luke 16) There are probably a good few of us who can read that, think of some snooty rich person, privileged and greedy, and thumb our noses at them, knowing they deserve hell. I’ve recently seen more than one person with a tattoo which read, “eat the rich,” and I’m sure they would agree with this sentiment. On the other hand, do you believe the people who simply failed to enter by the narrow door described in Luke 13 deserved to be shut out in a place where there would be “weeping and gnashing of teeth?”
We seem to have this idea that we all start out basically good. That, of course we sin and no one is perfect, but in our hearts we are generally good people. Of course, good people don’t deserve God’s wrath! The problem is that we are most definitely NOT good people. We are sinners. Our hearts are desperately wicked, so wicked that they will even deserve our own selves. But, as much as we try to evade that truth, our wickedness comes out in lies, in abuse, in sexual immorality, in hatred, in traffic! We are not good people who sin every once in awhile, we are evil people who sometimes know how to give good gifts. (Matt. 7)
The truth is, we fully deserve God’s wrath. The fact that we question God’s rightfullness to judge shows that we have no concept of His holiness or our own sin. When God came into the world, by right He should have crushed us and it would have been completely justified. And yet, while we were still in the sinful act of rebelling against Him, He came with the intent to take all of the wrath of God on Himself. What’s even more crazy is that after this unspeakably glorious act of unmerited love for us, we still will scoff and question His goodness or even His right to judge us at all. In His long suffering, He endures it all so that all of those who will repent will have their opportunity in the fullness of time.
We deserve His good and righteous wrath, but instead He extends to us His love. God is so much better than you think.