The magnitude of god’s love can be understood only when measured by the extent of his holy wrath against sin. His grace must be seen against the certainty of judgment, his mercy in relation to that from which we have been saved.
We demean the nature and extent of God’s love unless we recognize sin for what it is—with its wages, now and for eternity. The Gospel is perverted if God is regarded as a sentimental being to whom men’s sins are merely offenses against one another, a matter requiring social reformation only and not redemption and a new creation.
Primarily sin is a matter not of man’s inhumanity to man but rather of man’s offenses against the holiness of God—human rebellion against divine sovereignty.
Until we are humbled before the love, mercy, and grace of God so that we cry out to him like the lepers of Israel, “Unclean, unclean,” we have never even sensed the wonder of salvation. Out of this vision of God’s holiness and our own sinfulness there come true worship, praise, and adoration, and from it there have come some of the world’s greatest hymns.
But the man who considers himself worthy of God’s love stands condemned by his own pride and folly. Furthermore, any conception of the Gospel solely in terms of service to others is not Christian but humanistic.
Why is this so important? Because of the very nature of God himself, of sin, of man, and of the salvation that is ours through faith in Jesus Christ.
The Bible tells us that “God is love.” It also tells us that “our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29) and that “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). This seems to be a contradiction. How can both descriptions be true? The answer is found in God’s love for the sinner and his wrath against sin.
There are those who decry the concept of an angry God, but there is no other way to explain the Cross. God’s holy anger is directed against sin, because of its nature and its effect on mankind. In the wake of the sin of disobedience and rebellion flows a stream of sorrow and suffering, of human ills Wrath and spiritual death. God’s love required a holy justice offered to all men vicariously in the death of his Son.
But man’s contempt for the provision of God’s love ends in fearful judgment: “A man who has violated the law of Moses dies without mercy at the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God, and profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace?” (Heb. 10:28, 29). And after this solemn warning we are told that “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Because of the nature of sin and the depravity and weakness of the human heart, God had to take desperate measures. He sent his own Son to give man a glorious alternative to “perishing”: eternal life. Our Lord preached the heart of the Gospel in one short statement about God’s love for the world and the sending of his Son: “that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16b).
Why, oh why, has the Gospel been perverted by many into something that hardly resembles its revelation of both the love and wrath of God? The Cross represents an act of redemption, not condemnation: “For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:17, 18).
God is not an angry God demanding justice. He is a holy God who has provided both justice and salvation. He is a holy God who hates sin enough to provide for man an escape from the condemnation under which he stands.
In the Second Psalm the writer describes the revolt of men and nations against God and speaks of the derisive laughter in heaven that is the prelude to God’s righteous judgment. The psalm ends with these words, “Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth.… Blessed are all who take refuge in him” (Ps. 2:10, 11).
The wrath of God is a devastating reality. And his love is a glorious truth, the depths of which can never be plumbed. The Gospel of redemption in Jesus Christ can be understood only within this context.
There is no escape from the doctrines of wrath and love in the assertion that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New are not the same. They are the same God, and some of the strongest denunciations of sinners to be found in all the Bible occur in the New Testament.
The Apostle Paul speaks of the final day when the Lord suddenly appears in glory: “God deems it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant rest with us to you who are afflicted, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thess. 1:6–9).
There is little comfort here for those who deny that a day will come when Jesus Christ shall be revealed, to judge the unbeliever and take those who have believed to be with him for eternity.
God’s wrath is a holy wrath against the spiritually naked—those who have refused to wear the robe of righteousness offered by Christ. It is directed not only against willful unbelief but against all the works of Satan, and Satan himself. It is he who is the arch deceiver, the tempter. And someday this one who lifts his head in pride against almighty God will be cast into the eternal fires of judgment. So too all who resist God, in the pride of human understanding and achievement, stand in danger of his wrath and judgment.
Today all men continue under the eyes of the One who loves them and who in winsomeness says “Come.” But the day of wrath will surely come. The Prophet Jeremiah speaks to us today: “To whom shall I speak and give warning, that they may hear? Behold, their ears are closed, they cannot listen; behold, the word of the LORD is to them an object of scorn, they take no pleasure in it. Therefore I am full of the wrath of the LORD, I am weary of holding it in” (Jer. 6:10, 11a).
God loves. He also warns: “Your wickedness will chasten you, and your apostasy will reprove you. Know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the LORD your God; the fear of me is not in you, says the Lord God of hosts” (Jer. 2:19).
L. NELSON BELL
