Thoughts on the Wrath of God

Romans 1:18. 'For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven.......'
Romans 2:8-9. '...But to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness - indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil....'

The word 'wrath' is old-fashioned; I can't think when I have used it in normal conversation. We should not suppose that in the Bible it means a special, extreme form of anger. Many of the words translated as 'wrath' in the KJV are also translated as 'anger' elsewhere, and some of those are no less fierce that those that speak of wrath.
Psalm 7:11. 'God is a just judge; and God is angry with the wicked every day.'
Nahum 1:2-3. 'God is jealous, and the LORD avenges; the LORD avenges and is furious. The LORD will take vengeance on His adversaries, and reserves it for His enemies; the LORD is slow to anger and great in power; He will not at all acquit the wicked.'

So verses speaking of God's wrath or anger are found all over the Bible. The verses that speak of it are very often charged with intensity and emotion. This causes problems for those who misunderstand the Reformed Confessions when they speak of God being 'without parts or passions.' What this means is that God is a pure Spirit and therefore does not wake up one morning with toothache or constipation that puts Him in a bad mood. No, His emotions are real, but stable and consistent as Psalms 7:11 makes clear.

Unlike love (1 John 4:8), anger is not one of God's intrinsic attributes. God is love; God is not wrath. But before we read that God is love, we learn that 'God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all' (1 John 1:5) Anger is the reaction of a holy God towards sin; where there is no sin, there is no wrath, but where there is sin, there must be anger or God is not the holy One He proclaims to be. If His wrath is diminished, so is His holiness. 'For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness, nor shall evil dwell with You. The boastful shall not stand in Your sight; You hate all workers of iniquity. You shall destroy those who speak falsehood; the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man' (Psalms 5:4-6). These verses, by the way, give the lie to the myth that God 'hates the sin but loves the sinner.' God's wrath is upon both sin (Romans 1:18ff) and sinners (John 3:36).

So God's wrath is not a blind rage, but the reasonable reaction to offences against His holiness. God's love is not conditioned upon the loveliness or lovability of its recipients (eg, Ephesians 2:1-7); He loves because it is His nature. But His anger is conditioned upon offences to His righteous nature. It is therefore quite possible for His love and His wrath to be directed towards the same person. In this He is not unlike a human father who loves his child but is furious at his behaviour. He knows he will forgive the child, but not before he has punished him for his misdemeanour. So we read that, 'Whom the LORD loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives' (Proverbs 3:12; Hebrews 12:6).

A common error is to see God as permanently wrathful towards humans and the Lord Jesus, softer and more gentle, needing to mollify Him. Not at all! We must understand that both Father and Son are one in holiness, and one in mercy. They work together in the great project of the redemption of Mankind. We can agree with John Stott here when he says that we should never suppose that on the cross the Father laid upon Christ an ordeal that He was unwilling to undergo; and nor should we imagine that the Lord Jesus extracted from the Father a salvation that He was unwilling to bestow. We can also quote Don Carson, that, "the picture is .... that the Father, full of righteous wrath against us nevertheless loved us so much that He sent His Son Perfectly mirroring His Father's words and deeds, the Son stood over against us in wrath - it is not for nothing that the Scriptures portray sinners wanting to hide from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb - yet, obedient to His Father's commission, offered Himself on the cross .... out of love both for His Father whom He obeys and for us whom He redeems."

Thus, on the cross, God is both the subject and object of propitiation. It is He who, in the Person of the Son offers the sacrifice and it is He whose righteous anger is propitiated and satisfied by the offering of His Son. This is the great argument of Paul in Romans 3:25-26. The crucifixion was the Triune God's wise plan (Isaiah 53:10) to set forth His righteousness and justice in pardoning guilty sinners, since their sins have indeed been punished in the Lord Jesus who 'was made sin that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.' So we read that 'The LORD is well pleased for His rigteousness' sake; He will magnify the law and make it honourable' (Isaiah 42:21); that God's law, far from being made void, is established (Romans 3:31), and that nevertheless, believing sinners can say, O LORD, I will praise You; though You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away, and You comfort me' (Isaiah 12:1).