9 Minutes
God’s wrath is a holy response. It is never out of the control of His wisdom and righteousness. If there was no sin in the world, there would be no wrath in God. God’s wrath without mercy is His settled determination and resolve that sin will not stand. This, because God has offered to all the mercy, the grace, and the forgiveness that can be found in Jesus Christ. God patiently held this door open. For those who suppress or reject any truth of God, He will give them up. We must take to heart the truth of God’s wrath. God doesn’t love us because Christ died for us...Christ died for us because God loves us. God so loved the objects of His wrath that He spent the wrath on Himself at the cross. This outpouring of God’s wrath was the greatest act of love this world has ever seen. The hope for sinners is that between us and the wrath of God stands the cross of Jesus. Sin was laid on Jesus and the Divine wrath toward it was poured out, spent, and exhausted in the darkness of Calvary. And when it was done, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “It is finished!” The wrath of God that will one day be poured out on all sin was spent at the cross with regard to all who are in Him. Cataclysmic wrath will be unleashed through natural disasters. God’s wrath is not abstract. Too many tend to take the images given in Jeremiah outside their original context and misapply this prophetic metaphor. Understanding the meaning of this image helps us to better understand how Jesus later uses the image of the cup. And this for those who say they live in covenant with Him. What of these who suppress any truth of God? Stubborness of heart stores wrath.
Romans 1:17-19; 2:5 Jeremiah 25:13-38
Wrath is the final judgment against all those who are accounted as God’s enemies, those who have turned their faces away from God. God is going to have a directed wrath toward willful sinners and His protective love toward His own. Wrath without mercy is not judgment by a flood, it is not levied by plagues, it is expressed by a consuming fire that ignites any cause against God. The reality of God’s wrath is as He says, “vengeance is mine”. Wrath is connected with God’s response to something that deserves vengeance. The wrath of God is never less than perfect, a judicial decree, it is always more than perfect, a judicial decree because it is always full of right and fitting vehemence in response to sin. And then He says, “I will repay.” So, God’s wrath is as a repayment to man for something man has done...those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth.
Romans 2:7-11
God’s wrath will not be eternal, it will end; but it will be terrible, indescribable agony; it will be deserved, totally just and right; yet it will have been escapable - through the curse-bearing death of Christ, if those would have only reasoned to take refuge in him. Reality goes beyond words. God is love. We hear those words, but the reality of God’s love must be focused attention on Him rather than on our circumstances. He is working everything out for our good, according to His specific purposes. We are to understand the centrality of that love to our spiritual life.
I John 3:1
The opening word, “behold”, doesn’t just mean to look at something, rather it means to grasp it, or to fully comprehend the nature of something and live in light of it. Comprehend the truth of what is said by paying strict attention. The force of the command underscores the importance of grasping the connection between reasoning the love of God and understanding a spiritual walk.
God’s love is astonishing, having a superlative quality and quantity at the same time...unmatched in its greatness. It is the love that resides within Himself, that He bestows upon us. It is the knowledge of this love in our relationship that brings us to know that the wrath of God without mercy is warranted upon the wicked who love Him not. The great reality of knowing the love of God is not just that we bear His image, but we also now bear His name as a fully privileged member of His family.
It was one sin alone that brought the entire world under the judgment of God. And God offered us the one thing to remedy that...”if you love me...keep obedience to my law”. Consider that any offense and any dishonor to an infinitely honorable and infinitely worthy God is an infinite offense and an infinite dishonor. Therefore, an infinite retribution is deserved. The consequence of rejecting the truth of God – His wrath.
Psalms 145:9
There is a people who forfeit mercy by the hardness of their heart. They love sin as sin. Deuteronomy 32:35, 39-43
Those who suspend the truth of God are in a perilous position. God’s love is never divorced from His holiness. Too many lack a clear understanding of God’s hatred for sin. Regardless of God’s word, they misshape the language of God’s character and His nature giving a truncated view to God’s wrath. They fail to capture the severity that God takes toward sin as spoken. And sin will bring about the holy wrath of God.
Genesis 2:17 Romans 5:12
God may delay His justice, but He will not deny His holiness. His wrath will be vented fully. God’s provision for His people who are faithful in every word centers on His divine satisfaction through divine substitution. We need to understand that God’s mercy is what declares the sinner righteous by means of Christ’s wrath-bearing sacrifice. It was by reasoning with the truth to understand the wrath of God, having knowledge of His justice and mercy, that Moses began to understand the position of God to change from Sovereign to Servant.
Psalms 90
God’s wrath is a form of justice. It has absolutely nothing to do with revenge. God’s wrath is a revelation from heaven in the providences of God. And God’s providences are never by chance. For revealed is the wrath of God from heaven upon all impiety and unrighteousness because clearly the revelation of wrath is in antithesis to the bestowal of salvation. We are saved in righteousness on God's part, by faith on ours. Righteousness is revealed from heaven in the gospel of God saving every true believer, but the righteousness of God without faith is condemnation to endure the wrath of God. It is now revealed from heaven, and existing, and about to be revealed in the future against sin, contemplates a specific class or classes we might say, those who had light and refused it; and very specially is it upon the "children of disobedience. Reason the terrible retribution that is the certainty of penalty.
II Peter 2:4
Revealed is the mode of the manifestation of wrath, and its moving cause. God’s wrath is revealed in His righteousness. And mercy cannot be sustained, in that wrath must have its way on all who refuse to yield to the obedience of faith. The whole visible procedure of God in His moral government by which He displays and reveals His divine opposition and hatred of sin, may be said to be the revelation of wrath which would take in the impossibility of escape if we bow not to the gospel. Who are they that refuse to be influenced by God’s truth, holding it in unrighteousness.
Romans 1:18
This verse is extremely important for understanding why some people seem so resistant to belief. In short, they don't believe because they don't want to. The problem is not that truth is unavailable; the problem is that truth is being suppressed. Refusing to see what can be known about Him by what He does. I cannot but think that we forget that the time we live in is not an ordered dispensation, but only a period of divine forbearance, ere the execution of threatened and revealed wrath takes place.
The gospel message is only provisional: the wrath is the permanent revelation, and is revealed from heaven; and is only held back by God's long suffering, while sending forth a proposal of pardon to those on whom the wrath of God abides and will, otherwise, eventually fall. I speak in this as to the world; the purpose and counsels of God for the glory of His Son, are being worked into effectuation by the Holy Ghost come down: and, looking from the side of God in connection with the evolution of His purpose and grace, a grander revelation is now being unfolded to the divinely anointed eye...the children of God are gathered, the body of Christ formed, the Bride of the Lamb about to be presented to Himself in all her purity when he comes to receive us to Himself. There is thus by grace a little hidden company in the very world that is in open relationship rising up to Christ. Revealed to these was the mercy withdrawn from Christ at the cross as the wrath of God was on display. It is this wrath that makes God’s people so uncomfortable with sin, that their love for what Christ did and is doing is the basis for holy living for each of us.
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