THE LOVE AND WRATH OF GOD

A Theological Reflection on the Relationship of God's Love to God's Wrath.

Do you remember the "happy face" God on the yellow lapel button, the face beneath which the following words were inscribed: "Smile, God loves you!" To many Christians during the 80s and 90s that's the only side of God with which they were acquainted . . . or wanted to be. Turning the biblical equation "God is love" (1 John 4:8, 16) upon its head, positive thinkers opined that, "Love is God!" This thought is now mainstream among professing Christians with the result that many do not understand either the person or character of God. They have been duped into believing God loves them no matter what they believe or how they live. To their minds, God is a spinless glob of gooey and mushy love. But in His self-disclosure, in the Bible, God reveals that He possesses a "dark side."

"A study of the concordance will show" wrote one theologian, "that there are more references in Scripture to the anger, fury, and wrath of God, that there are to His love and tenderness."[1] As Nahum the prophet declared, "A jealous and avenging God is the Lord; The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, And the Lord will by no means leave the guilty unpunished" (Nahum 1:2-3a). It shall be the purpose of this essay to explore within the divine character the relationship between love and wrath and show the necessary interdependence of these seemingly bipolar emotions and how they do not contradict, but rather compliment one another.

God is righteous. Through the prophet Isaiah God announced, "And there is no other God besides Me, A righteous God and a Savior; There is none except Me" (Isaiah 45:21b). That God is righteous can perhaps be explained like this: First, by virtue of His sovereign creation of it, God is the righteous Absolute Ruler of the universe. Second, in keeping with His divine moral character, God determines the rules are that should govern a moral society (i.e., the Ten Commandments). Were these rules universally obeyed, a safe society would exist, a peaceful way of life for which all of humanity longs. As the Apostle Peter expressed this future hope, ". . . according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13). Third, God keeps His rules. Unlike some human judges, God is no hypocrite. He does not have one standard for the universe and another for himself. God is thoroughly consistent with and lives up to His own righteous standards. And forth, God enforces the rules. He exercises wrath upon those who do not abide by His righteous commandments. Both objectively (revealed in Scripture, Romans 2:12b) and subjectively (human conscience, Romans 2:14-15), humanity knows and understands what the rules of life are and that they are divinely ordered for the mutual protection and welfare of all people. All people possess an innate sense of right and wrong, even if that sense be warped and perverted. Their conscience as Paul put it, "also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another" (Romans 2:15, KJV). In short, the uncreated Creator righteously rules His universe. He is the rules. He makes the rules. He keeps the rules. And by the exercise of His wrath, He enforces the rules. And all of this is for humanity's mutual betterment and produces peace on earth and good will on earth toward men.

In His created universe, both immediate and transcendent, God designed a righteous moral order by which He governs the universe for the mutual welfare of everyone and everything alive, and any disorder from that order makes His opposition to disorder (i.e., sin) necessary. Divine wrath therefore, expresses God's ruling benevolence for and His resistance to the chaos that humanity's sinning and rebellion against Him and His rules inflicts upon the interconnected universe and the world that He created, a world to which God has temporarily delegated dominion to humanity (See Genesis 1:26.).

In the exercise of His providential benevolence that seeks to prosper the greater good of His planet, God directs anger toward individuals (all of us) who complicate (sin against) His moral order which He designed to protect and benefit our planet and all its inhabitants, people and animals. For the mutual benefit of His total created world, God counters the immorality of those who would defile the moral order of it by expressing "wrath-love" against them. This divine wrath is at the same time historical (Nahum 1:2-3a), personal (Romans 1:18), impersonal (Romans 8:22), propitiatory (the satisfaction of God's wrath, 1 John 4:10)), and expiatory (i.e., the removal of God's wrath from people for the sins they commit, Romans 3:25).

Because of the pain sin inflicts upon this earth generally, divine "wrath-love" becomes a necessary manifestation of God's overarching care for all His creation, including people, animals and their environment. People's aberrant behavior forces God to judge them for reason of their failed dominion, for the immoral wrongs they inflict upon each other and the planet they inhabit. People also sin against other persons though that sin is primarily committed against God (Psalm 51:4) because God stands in solidarity with all humanity by virtue of His creation of them and endowment of them with His image and likeness. Above the rest of creation, humanity possess the divine likeness and image (Genesis 1:26-27). As such, mass killings by modern dictators, genocide, or ethnic cleansing are not to be viewed merely as crimes against humanity, but rather they are foremost crimes against God. Abortion must likewise be viewed so for it is heinous violence committed against little persons who bear the image and likeness of God. This constantly developing situation not only grieves God (Genesis 6:5-6), but also angers Him as His loving moral order is broken to the injury of humanity.

But sin is not merely against God and other humans. Sin complicates the whole of God's created order (See Genesis 3:17-19.). On this basis, all Christian believers ought also to be concerned environmentalists. Its a sin to trash nature. God loves and watches over His universe. A sinning humanity's abuse of its fellows and trashing of its environment arouses God's anger, and rightly so. Because of the arousal that a sinning humanity induces in God, He must be satisfied, and divine propitiation becomes therefore the means to that end. Selfish humanity's disregard for the governing moral order deeply offends God and His love for His world.

"Wrath-love" can be seen then as proceeding from God's singular zeal to protect His creation. What to us are seemingly bipolar emotions, love and wrath, both emanate from the same divine motive, being but various manifestations of the same emotion. Absent divine wrath and the required propitiation of it, nobody could opinionate, "God is love." But because of the connection of God's wrath to His love, John wrote, "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation (the hilasmos or satisfaction of divine wrath by the offering of sacrificial blood) for our sins" (1 John 4:10).

It was at the point of the Old Testament mercy seat (the hilasterion, or propitiatory) on the Day of Atonement that God designated that His wrath be temporally satisfied and His love expressed. In the New Testament, both the propitiatory (the Mercy Seat of the Hebrew Tabernacle) and the propitiation (the sacrificial blood) meet in Jesus Christ (Romans 3:25; 1 John 2:2). By reason of its association divine anger with a fallen and out of control humanity, psychoanalyzed Christianity arbitrarily dismisses any expression of divine anger to be beneath God's dignity. I would argue that the expression of divine wrath is essential to divine dignity, and any failure by God to express wrath against those who violate His benevolent moral order could hardly be considered loving. At the point of His non-response, infidels would then accuse Him for manifesting indifference to that order. In this respect, pantheism (New Age religion], deism, and "happy face" Christianity are insufficient. God is not unmoved by the plight His creation is in (Romans 8:18ff.; The Holy Spirit groans over the creation.), and one day God will make it right (2 Peter 3:10-13). Nevertheless, during the present time, God's loving wrath against the offenses of His creatures must be satisfied, even if temporarily, so that the present order might continue. Jesus Christ's propitiation (His death on the Cross) provides that satisfaction.

During His kingdom age, God will manifest His sovereign "love-wrath" by undoing the disorder that sinful humanity has inflicted upon itself and its environment (Isaiah 11:6-9; Romans 8:21; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1).

Pastor Larry DeBruyn

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[1] Arthur W. Pink, The Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1975) 82.