The Fury of the Wrath of God
In the 1st chapter of the epistle to the Romans, Paul, after telling us of the Gospel as being the power of God for salvation, to everyone who believes, that in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith”, instead of expounding further on this point he suddenly seemingly changed the topic immediately. Instead of telling us more about this Gospel, the power of God for salvation, he suddenly made a bee-line to talk about something else. The wrath of God. Could it be that even in Paul’s mind, unless he tells us first of the holiness and wrath of God we can never really understand the Gospel?
Paul tells us in the 18th verse,
For the wrath of God is (being) revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
—Romans 1:18
When we read here of the wrath of God, that word there “wrath”, does not simply mean that God is angry. The word wrath in the Greek, it literally means passion/s, “bursts of anger.” It tells us that God’s anger burns with a passion! The Bible does not tell us that God is simply mildly displeased with sin. Or that God’s heart is simply weepingly broken every time we sin against Him. But rather it tells us that God is furious against sin and sinners! His wrath passionately and furiously burns against us!
Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses.
From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.
—Revelation 19:11-16
How much of a threat is God’s wrath to us? Or how much do we take His long-suffering for granted. Beloved, every time you and I sin, God’s wrath burns with fury against us.
Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God?
Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
—Romans 2:1-5
What’s the significance of this passage? See, dear beloved, every sin that you and I commit, every time you and I sin against a holy and just God we are storing up wrath for ourselves. The fury of the wrath of God. And whatever God pleases to do with you in His will, whether it would be to dash your head upon rocks or rip you open to death, know this, we deserve such judgments, and in reality, we deserve far worse.
Perhaps we can say that we are realists. We can say that living through life as we know there really isn’t much to be feared. We can go out to work or to a church picnic and not worry much about the consequences of our actions. We are sane people. We have a thorough grip on reality.
Some theorists argue that people may have a more accurate view of reality when they are insane rather than when they are sane. Think about the anxiety-stricken person who psychiatrists can medically diagnose as insane. They leave their home for a church picnic. How many real disasters can happen by stepping out of his home? He can mis-step and break his foot after walking down the porch. While driving to the venue he can get into a very serious car crash and kill himself and many others with him. An old building he regularly passes by in the main street could possibly collapse on his car on his way to the picnic.
These are real things. Real things that could happen in life. Yet we have that innate ability to mute the screams of anxiety in our hearts to go on living as best as we can in this life.
How tragic it is that in our depravity and the depths of our sinfulness, we would even go so far as to mute the screams of our consciences that tells us of our utterly depraved natures, of our defiling of God’s pristine holiness with our abominable continued wickedness, the screams of God in our hearts crying out to us to repent. In our every act of sin, in our self-absorbed worlds, God is crying out to us to repent.
Wrath on the Son
Dear beloved, It is my desperate prayer that you would see the seriousness of the wrath of God in His pristine holiness. It is my desperate hope that you see this, that God is so holy, so righteous, so just that He cannot not judge the smallest sin, the smallest lie.
Why? Why am I just so desperate with this? Because you see, the smallest sin we have committed, the smallest lie that rolled out from our lips demanded the fury of the Wrath of God to be fully poured out on the Son for that sin to be atoned for.
Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:21,
For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
Christ did not simply die on a Cross to fulfill some contract between Him and the Father. Then if He has accomplished it well God can let us go and enter paradise. No! Christ drank the cup of the wrath of God so much so that for our sake He has become sin on our behalf! Can you imagine the vastness of God’s fury against your smallest of sins? Now try to imagine the fury of the wrath of God against the multitude of your sins. Not the sins of all of those He redeemed, but your own personal sins. God’s wrath burns against all of who you are, you being a sinner that continually commits all these sins—God’s wrath was poured out against His only Son that He has ever loved throughout all eternity!
And He cried out “Eli, eli, lema sabachtani?” that is, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
He just did not feel forsaken. He was forsaken. Can you imagine anything more painful and more horrid than being abandoned by God?
You remember the Aaronic benediction,
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them, ‘The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.’ So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”
—Numbers 6:23–26
You know what it means to be abandoned by God? Do you know what it means for God’s furious wrath to be poured out against His only Son?
If this benediction is a word of great blessedness, then Christ has received a malediction, a word of great damnation. It can read something like this, “May the Lord curse you and abandon you. May the Lord keep you in darkness and give you only judgment without grace. May the Lord turn His back upon you and remove His peace from you forever.”
In the imagery of the atonement, where the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sin, Paul tells us in Romans 3, in the 21st verse,
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
—Romans 3:21-26
On your behalf. On the behalf of a people that is undeserving, ill-deserving, hell-deserving, drowned in sin, utterly repugnant before Him, Christ has died. And He did not simply died a normal death. But He bore the full curse of sin, the full weight of the fury of the wrath of the thrice holy God, that one such you and I could be saved. In order that He may be fully just and the sole justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
And in light of this, I hope we can finally appreciate when Paul continued to say in the 5th chapter of Romans,
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
—Romans 5:6-11
Coram Deo: Grace
A foremost Jewish theologian, Abraham Heschel, talks about life in America in the 20th century. He writes that the thing that characterizes us in the 20th century is our superficiality. He says,
That we have become a people who are satisfied with skimming over the surface of life, interested only with images & impressions on television; not with deep & profound truth, but with sound bytes that entertain us but don’t delay us in any serious call to reflection. We’re pragmatists; … we want to be practical and in our busy practicality we go through life blind to the very depths of the reality that is staring us in the face.
We do not like to consider these truths. But dear beloved, these truths are the only truths that can really ever help us. And because we deny these realities with all our might we are vivid displays of what C.S. Lewis talks about in his book “The Weight of Glory”,
Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
Would you still take God for granted today? His holiness? His wrath? His justice? His grace? Or would you join me in humble repentance that He would change our hearts to greater conformity to the image of His Son that we may be able to please and honor Him all our days?
And if you are a Christian today, hear now the extents of God’s grace for you because of the perfect atonement Christ has paid for on the Cross once for all (Hebrews 10:10):
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long;we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
—Romans 8:31-39
Are you a Christian today? Or are you not? Make sure of it, because it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a holy and just God. Repent of your sins and by faith and faith alone trust in the finished work of Christ Jesus the Lord on the cross. Though your sins may be as deep as crimson He can make you whiter as snow.
