THE WRATH OF GOD.
Geoffrey R. Kirkland
Pastor, Christ Fellowship Bible Church
A necessary attribute of God is His wrath. THE WRATH OF GOD is a perfect, holy expression of holy indignation over sin and evil. The Scriptures state that the LORD is avenging and wrathful (Nahum 1.2). For those who sin and break God’s Law, he promises that “I will act with wrathful hostility against you” (Leviticus 26.28). God’s wrath is the stirring of His holy and furious anger toward all sin. Never is God’s wrath something that is emotionally irrational or an unthinking sudden response to something but it always perfectly and purely shows itself in righteous opposition to anything that goes against His perfect character and nature.
In fact, the perfect and exceeding love of God demands and necessitates the perfect and holy wrath of God. God loves His own pure holiness so perfectly that anything that is sinful and lawless ignites His Holy wrath. God’s wrath comes out from the beginning to the end of the Scriptures. No one can deny the wrath of God. It proves to be one of the most common, most described, most illustrative, and most sobering attributes of the Almighty. The enemies of God will be destroyed in His wrath (Psalm 59.13). When Jesus returns at His 2nd coming, He will trod down people in His anger and trample them in His wrath (Isa 63.3, 6). God’s future Tribulation “Day of wrath” is soon coming (Zephaniah 1.15).
This attribute of God’s wrath comes forth not only in the Old Testament but also in the New. The same God of the Old is the holy God of the New (for He never changes). Jesus warned the self righteous to ‘flee from the wrath to come’ (Luke 3.7). God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness (Romans 1.18). In fact, God sovereignly demonstrates His wrath by enduring with much patience people, vessels, of wrath prepared for destruction (Romans 9.22). For unbelievers, God promises in His wrath, they will never enter His rest (Hebrews 3.11). All unbelievers will be struck down and thrown into the wine-press of the wrath of God, the Almighty (Revelation 19.15).
How you respond to the doctrine of the wrath of God reveals your attitude toward God. It is hard. It is uncomfortable. it is difficult. But your reluctancy or your readiness to meditate upon and praise God for His wrath reveals your heart attitude toward God’s holy and good and supreme character.
To behold the wrath of God in his perfect and fullest expression, you must look at the cross. This is the perfect, unmitigated, everlasting wrath of Almighty God poured out and pressed upon the soul of the infinite Son, Jesus Christ at Calvary. God made Him to be sin (2 Cor.5.21). He bore our sin (1 Pet 2.24) and took our curse (Gal 3.13). Christ took the cup full of divine wrath and fury and drank it to the dregs. God’s dark wrath and holy punishment against our sin was mysteriously and infinitely - but truly - placed upon Christ and charged to Him. And He bore it all, in full, once for all, on that tree! He bore our hell and God’s wrath - all out of infinite love!
Oh sinners, unbelieving sinners, must hear this and tremble for the wrath of the Son will soon be kindled against them (Psalm 2.12). Jesus said to self-righteous people: “how will you escape the sentence of hell” (Matt 23.33)? All unbelieving sinners who refuse Christ will drink of the cup of God’s wrath and be tormented forever and ever (Rev 14.10). O flee to Christ! Run immediately! Receive His righteousness by faith alone! Be saved from this wrath by trusting in the substitute who took it all in your stead!
**More from the Attributes of God blog-series can be accessed HERE.
