The subject of God’s wrath is not a popular one, for obvious reasons. It’s not one that I would readily choose for a topic. I feel much more comfortable with other themes. But there’s so much about God’s wrath in the Bible that it seems impossible to be faithful in preaching Scripture if we avoid this topic. And, if we want to know God, we need to understand His wrath, since this is part of the truth He’s revealed about Himself.
Psalm 7:11 says: “God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day.” There are so many references to God’s wrath in the Old Testament that we could easily spend our whole time this morning just reading through some of the relevant Scriptures. But this is not just an Old Testament theme, one which has now been laid aside in the New Covenant. Jesus had much to say about this subject, and the book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, is about the outpouring of God’s wrath on the world that has rejected His lordship. And listen to these words, from 2 Thessalonians: “God is just. He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you, and give relief to those who are troubled and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed” (1:6-10). This theme appears over and over, throughout Scripture, in both the Old and New Testaments. A.W. Pink says: “A study of the concordance will show that there are more references to the anger, fury, and wrath of God, than there are to His love and tenderness” (The Attributes of God, p. 75, quoted by J.I. Packer, Knowing God, p. 135). If we want to know God, we need to know Him as He has chosen to reveal Himself, not as we wish He had revealed Himself. The biblical teaching on God’s wrath teaches us things about Him that we won’t understand otherwise.
Part of our difficulty is that anger seems unworthy of God. I used to know a man who would become uncontrollably angry for no apparent reason and with no warning. He was into bicycling, and one day he went on and on showing me a bicycle he was working on and telling me all about its qualities. A couple of weeks later, I asked him a question about his bike and he started yelling at me that he didn’t have a bike. He was so angry I thought he was going to attack me physically. After that I avoided him, because I never know how he would respond to a simple question. Saying “hello” at the wrong time could set him off. One of the problems with understanding God’s wrath is that human anger is so often self-centered, unpredictable, and destructive. There is such a thing as righteous anger as a response to wickedness and injustice, but most human anger isn’t in this category. Most of the time, we associate anger with losing control of ourselves and saying and doing things which we later regret. Or we associate anger with someone in our lives who was constantly angry and took it out on those nearby.
God’s anger is different than this. Scripture uses “anthropomorphic” language in talking about God (“Anthropomorphic” means “in human form”): it describes God by using terms that are ordinarily used for people. We are created in God’s image, so there is a relationship between the human qualities and the divine attributes we’re trying to describe. But there are two important differences. First, we are finite and God is infinite. He is not limited in the ways we are. Our anger is sometimes misdirected because our knowledge is deficient. The information we’ve received is incorrect. If the story we heard was true, our anger might quality as righteous indignation. But the story is false. Our knowledge is limited, and so our anger often grows out of incomplete, or even false, information. But God is not limited in this way. The second problem is that we are sinners. Even our righteous indignation very quickly crosses over into sinful anger as we dwell on it and allow it to take control of us. Our anger may be justified initially, but we take it too far. We respond out of proportion. We become self-righteous and proud (often without even realizing what is happening), which ends up distorting our perception. And then, most of the time are anger doesn’t even qualify as righteous indignation. We’re self-centered, and our anger is usually self-centered. It’s the result of not getting something we want, or something we think we should have. Or we’re angry that someone else has something that we want, or that things aren’t going our way.
But God’s anger, His wrath, is different from all these things. It’s never based on incorrect knowledge, nor is it corrupt and sinful, like our anger. God’s wrath is a response to sin; God’s anger is judicial anger, a response of the Judge of the universe administering justice. It is always controlled and perfectly proportioned to the needs of justice. And it’s not in conflict with His love. The theologian Donald Bloesch has a good description: “The holy love of God is inseparably related to his wrath.... The wrath of God must properly be understood as the necessary reaction of his holiness to sin. It is one form of his holy love” (Essentials of Evangelical Theology, vol. 1, p. 34). God is holy and loving and He exercises wrath against sin. There’s no contradiction between these things.
Most of the references to God’s wrath in Scripture are pointing to the future day of judgment, when all will appear before God to give an account. The passage I read from 1 Thessalonians points in this direction. The book of Revelation is also about the future. Here’s just one reference, from chapter 19: “I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war.... Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. ‘He will rule them with an iron scepter.’ He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: King of Kings and Lord of Lords” (19:11, 15-16). This is pointing to a future day, when Christ will return as Judge.
But the passage we’re looking at today, in Romans 1, isn’t about the future. Paul says, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” He’s speaking here about something that is happening right now, not something that will happen at the end of time. He’s saying, in these verses, that we can see the evidence of God’s wrath all around us. When we say that, the first thing that comes to mind is natural disaster. If God is pouring out His wrath on us, we expect things like earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and so on. But that’s not what Paul is talking about here. According to Paul, God exercises His wrath by giving people over to continue in the direction they have chosen for themselves. Most of the time, He restrains us and keeps us from becoming as evil as we would. But those who persistently reject God’s lordship–who want to be on their own, to live their lives without Him–will be granted their wish. He withdraws His presence, and hands them over to the natural consequences of their rebellion. He hands them over to become what they’ve chosen to be.
C.S. Lewis says this about the direction of our lives: “It is a serious thing to live in society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if we saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, and that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal” (The Business of Heaven, pp. 147-48). We are either in the process of becoming one or the other: transformed into the image of Jesus Christ, or “or horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.” One is a manifestation of God’s grace, and the other of His wrath.
The first thing to notice is that the people Paul is describing here are not innocent victims. He wants it to be clear that they are without excuse: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” And, at the end of the chapter: “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” No doubt many of these people have been harmed by others in the past; they’ve been victimized by someone stronger than they. But that doesn’t say all there is to say about them. They’re not innocent victims in God’s sight, because they’ve persisted in going their own way, resisting the objections of their conscience.
Paul’s whole point, in verse 18 of chapter 1 through the middle of chapter 3, is to make it clear that everyone on earth is guilty before God, that there is no one who can claim exemption. He says it in v.23 of chapter 3 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We are all, by nature, children of wrath. Maybe we haven’t been taught well. Maybe we’ve had horrible models around us all our lives. But we’ve sinned against what we do know. We live in God’s world, surrounded by His constant self-revelation. We’re created in His image, with something of His law written on our hearts. Our conscience becomes corrupted and twisted, but we can’t escape it altogether. Listen to how these verses read in The Message: “But God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is. By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse.”
The next thing Paul stresses here is that God’s wrath is a response to deliberate disobedience. By the way of life they have chosen, they are guilty of suppressing the truth (verse 18). “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.... Therefore God gave them over to the sinful desires of their hearts” (vv. 21, 24). Then, in the next verse: “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie.... Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts” (vv. 25-26). And then, once again: “Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done” (v. 28).
C.S. Lewis says this: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘They will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it” (The Great Divorce, p. 72). God’s wrath is not an unfair punishment inflicted on people who just don’t know any better. He is perfectly just in His judgment. His wrath involves the withdrawal of His presence and blessing, turning people over to the fate they have chosen. They spend their lives surrounded by God’s self-revelation, but they resist it. Here’s Lewis again: “Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat on the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it. Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes fast shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts, or their mouths for food, or their eyes to see” (Ibid., p. 123).
Until God takes hold of us in grace and mercy, this is the condition in which we all find ourselves. Here’s what Paul says, writing to the church in Ephesus. He spends the first chapter describing the wonderful riches they have in Christ, then he goes on to say, in chapter 2: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath” (vv. 1-3). By nature we were “objects of wrath.”
Our society has become notorious for excessive lawsuits, and one of the assumptions many people have is that we have a right to be protected from suffering. If I spill hot coffee on my lap, someone should be punished for making it so hot (and, of course, if it’s not hot enough I’ll take it back and yell at the waitress). If I’m stealing apples from someone’s apple tree and I fall out of the tree, someone should have to pay for the trauma of my injuries. Life shouldn’t be so full of dangers, and when it is, someone should have to pay. But the reality of our situation is that we have forfeited all our rights before God. We’re objects of wrath; we need to be careful about yelling too loudly for what we’re entitled to, because what we’re really entitled to is wrath and separation from God, the source of all good. Our hope, in God’s presence, is not justice, but mercy.
And that’s the third point. Paul isn’t just writing to the Romans about the wrath of God. This whole discussion is there as a background to the gospel. We were, by nature, objects of wrath, as Paul says in Ephesians 2. But he doesn’t stop there. Listen to what he says next: “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions–it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus....” (vv. 4-6). Paul is writing in Romans about the wrath of God to show why we so desperately need the good news of the gospel.
If we don’t begin with the holiness and wrath of God, we can’t really understand His love and mercy. Part of our problem is that we don’t see sin as it is. We compare ourselves to others, and there are always others we can point to who are worse than we are. In the light of what some have done, our sins don’t seem so bad. But the way to understand how God looks at sin is by looking at the cross. Jesus, the Only-Begotten Son of God, God Incarnate, took our sins upon Himself. And when He was there on the cross, representing us, God turned away from Him. God gave Him up, because of what He became when He represented us on the cross. When He cried, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” He was experiencing the absolute despair of separation which belonged to us. God handed Him over to experience the consequences of our sin. God poured out His wrath on Him. And He did that because He loves us. On the cross we can see the fullness of God’s wrath poured out so that we could know His love. Nothing less could satisfy the demands of justice.
That’s why the author of Hebrews says “how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?” We deserve to be punished eternally. But Jesus has borne the punishment and the price is paid in full. The apostle Paul says we are, by nature, enemies of God (Romans 5), and “objects of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). Our position, on our own, is hopeless. When we understand the wrath of God against sin, we see our need for the message of free grace, which is what Paul is going to describe in chapters 3-8. But it begins with bad news about our hopeless, lost condition, and only after we’ve understood that are we ready to accept the good news. That’s why Paul spends the first three chapters of Romans talking about God’s wrath. God is holy and just. He’s not like an indulgent father, who wrings his hands at our dreadful behavior but won’t punish us in the end. “God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day.” But because of what Jesus has done, we can experience His love. We need never face His wrath, unless we refuse the free gift He offers.
Listen to these words from ch.5 of Romans: written to those who have accepted the free gift: “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.... And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:1-2). Being at peace with God, having our guilt wiped away, being delivered from the wrath of God, is cause for rejoicing. It was because they understood this that the early Christians were filled with “indescribable and glorious joy.”
Do you feel unworthy to stand in God’s presence? Are you aware of your unworthiness before Him? Jesus gives this invitation to those who feel the weight of separation from Him, who realize their unworthiness: “come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” We are weary of carrying heavy burdens. Because of the fall, we’re experiencing our alienation from His presence. We’re experiencing the fruit of His wrath, and it weighs heavily upon us. He goes on: “Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke fits perfectly, and the burden I give you is light” (Matthew 11:28-30, NLT).
We need never experience the consequences of rejecting God’s lordship. Jesus has already experienced it all for us. Cry out to Him. Cry out to know more of Him. And give thanks for the unspeakable gift of free grace and mercy.
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