Wrath
Part One
By John Gavazzoni
There are few subjects, if any at all, in the Bible, as abused as the subject of wrath, especially the wrath of God. By analogy, one who has failed basic math ought not even attempt to join in on a conversation, let's say, involving calculus. The adage applies: If by being silent you appear to be ignorant, that's better than opening your mouth so that you remove all doubt. There are those who dare to make bold statements re: the wrath of God who, by our analogy, are sure that one plus one equals minus three.
There are basics that must be covered first before one attempts a calculus level understanding of the wrath of God. Basic number one: There is wrath, and then there is wrath. There's the fallen mankind kind of wrath; then and there's the God-kind of wrath. The computer world principle comes to mind: garbage in, garbage out. By the disconnect man has suffered since Adam's sin---a disconnect from the Love-source of our being---our capacity for being loved, and for being loving, has been invaded by deception-based alienation that ushers in resentment, building to hostility, onto resistance, and finally to outright rebellion.
If I, as the teacher, were to say to a group of Christians gathered together for Bible study, "tonight's subject is on what the Bible teaches about wrath," the average Christian, of typical mindset, most probably would assume the study would be specifically on the wrath of God. I assure you, as a former evangelist, pastor, conference speaker, and house-church leader, when the phrase, "the Bible teaches," and "wrath" come together in a sentence, the first thought that springs to the mind of the average conventionally-theologized Christian, is not, "oh, we're going to learn about the wrath of man."
Yet wrath is over and over again in scripture treated as at the heart of man's problem with God. Without the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, it is unnaturally natural for us to harbor anger and hostility against God while unconsciously feeling guilty for doing so, and therefore we go to all kinds of length to hide it from ourselves and others under cloaks of self-righteousness. This fundamental element of the human condition is especially difficult for folks of a naturally nice temperament to admit. Once when teaching on the subject, a sister in the Lord who was impressed with her niceness, and completely out of touch with seethings of anger and hostility toward God beneath that surface of outward congeniality, insisted that there was no way she could be mad at God.
Such an admission is less difficult for a man of my natural temperament. Though I'm easy to be friends with, and much prefer interactions with my fellow man to be pleasant and undisturbed by rancor of any sort, and though I certainly do not go looking for trouble, apart from the control of the Holy Spirit, ferocious anger comes easily to me. But I prefer avoiding the messy nastiness of trouble with people, so I take it out on things, on stuff, on all the little stuff God knows (Yes He knows, and could do something about it if He wanted to), that drive me to extremes of irritability.
Why does God arrange for circumstance, situations--stuff/things--to push my buttons; sometimes the same stuff pushing my buttons over and over again, allowing me no relief? See, deep down, I know it's God I'm angry at. There's still a substantial amount of that kind of residue still in me that God has not gotten to yet. He's confronted me more than once saying, "you know, it's really me you're angry at." I've come to understand that in all things, as the Book of Hebrews puts it, it's "Him with whom we have to do."
We need to know God experientially, of course, but we also need to know our own flesh. As an example, just the other day as I was very intensely focusing on choosing just the right words to express my thought in an article, I mean really intensely focusing; at that exact moment, Samson, our German Shepherd, came over to give me that stare (unblinking and insistent) that it was time for me to pay some attention to him. It's a stare you just can't ignore; no escape; it feels like it's boring a hole right through you.
He does that often, at the exact moment of my most focused, intense attention to saying something just right in an article. Always, always he does that. This last time was so irritating and distracting---as I said, you can't ignore that stare--I ended up with my fists clenched pounding the air, and resorting to grunts of frustration. I love that dog; oh do I love that dog, but "why, why, Lord, does he have to demand attention when my attention is on 'holy' stuff? Why can't I do my lovin' stuff with him when it's convenient for me?" Have you ever had conversations with the Lord like that? Have you ever, after losing your temper over something, said, "yeah, I know, Lord, it's you I'm really irritated at and, yeah, it's more than irritation, I'm actually angry at you, my God, Father, and Savior."
Watchman Nee told the story of a sister in the Lord over in China coming to him for counseling. She was in a very unhappy marriage; miserable really. She went on and on telling Nee how awful her husband was, and how miserable it was for her to live with him. Finally Nee said to her (words to this effect), "I believe you're really angry at God for being in the situation you're in." Sheepishly she admitted that was the case really. Nee then suggested that she tell the Lord she was angry with Him. Aghast at such a suggestion, she replied, "I wouldn't dare." Of course, all the while the Lord knew of her anger, but for her to get it out in the open, actually telling God she was angry with Him, that would be too, too humiliating for her, and she obviously thought that it would be just too terrible to actually speak to God in such a way.
We all, saint and sinner alike, have our own unique versions of this fundamental of the human condition. A clever, crafty way out of our dilemma is to create in our minds a god in our image, and according to our likeness; an angry god who is easily ticked off for whatever reason. That, psychologically, takes the pressure off of us. "Hey, God's like us, so we can't be that bad, can we?" Plus, I don't have to worry about His propensity for anger, since He poured out all His wrath on Jesus instead of me, and since I've accepted that by faith, and accepted Jesus as my Savior, now God doesn't have to be mad at me anymore; instead He's free to love me." (That's a bit of a crude way of putting it, but it's essentially how most believers have been taught, and how they believe, "the atonement" works.)
There's wrath, and there's wrath. For discussion sake, we'll use the word, "wrath" in regard to both human and divine relational propensity, but "wrath" is not necessarily the best choice to translate the Koine Greek (the language of the New Testament), words, "orge," and/or "thumos," for example: two words from which translators get the idea of "wrath," "anger," "fierce indignation," and the like. Really from the roots of those two words, what is conveyed in New Testament writings is "intrinsic fervor," or "inherent fervor," or "swelling emotion."
What is further implied is an impassioned reaching out to the object of such fervor and swelling emotion. As a reference work on this subject, and many others, I strongly recommend Jonathan Mitchell's Translation of the New Testament. Look up in your Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, all the places where "wrath" is found in the kJV, and even "anger," and "indignation," and the like, and then check out Jonathan's translation of those passages. Often conventional translations encourage us to stay in a rut of theological presumption, and as someone has said, "a rut is simply a grave with the ends kicked out."
But we'll stick with "wrath," as I said for discussion sake. Now, dear reader, just what kind of "wrath" would issue forth from the God who IS love? I know what kind of "wrath" can and does issue forth from the hearts of fallen men. There's this completely nutty idea that, though Jesus admonished us to love our enemies and pray for those who despitefully use us, and not return evil for evil, that this doesn't apply to God, since He's so perfectly holy. The thinking is that being so holy, our sin is such an offense to Him, that that holiness demands that He punish us with suffering, and that, forever, unless there's some way out. "Wrath," issuing out from pure love is love heated up, impassioned, releasing the full ardor of God who will not settle for anything less than we possessing all of Him, and He possessing all of us.
It is admitted and affirmed that God's love somehow stands in contrast to that awful, holy wrath, and God would rather not have to send us to hell for offending Him as we have. But there's the problem. On one hand God is holy, and on the other hand God is love; right? No, not right! Those two qualities of the divine nature in no way stand in contrast to one another, amounting to creating a conflict in God, for God is holy BECAUSE He's love. It's His love that makes Him holy. There's no need for God, in His holiness, to demand satisfaction, propitiation, expiation, or whatever word you choose to express the notion that God needs to get even with sinners. God doesn't need His "pound of flesh, in order to free up His love.
God does not hold our sins against us. Paul understood that when he wrote to the Church in Corinth, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, NOT reckoning their sins against them." Did you notice, "reconciling the world to Himself," NOT reconciling Himself to the world, or reconciling His holiness to His love, by demanding that Someone suffer first to satisfy His holiness. The phrase, "...not reckoning their sins against them," explains what is operative in God reconciling the world unto Himself.
God doesn't need to be reconciled. He's by nature conciliatory toward sinners. His ear was open to Jesus prayer as He was being crucified, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." Scripture teaches us that when we pray according to God's will, He answers us. Do you think Jesus was praying according to God's will? If your answer is "yes," then God is forgiving of sin, even the sin of crucifying His beloved Son. Forgiveness is not about sending sin away from God's conscience.
Be clear; forgiveness is about sending sin away from our conscience. Jonathan Mitchell's Translation of the New Testament makes it very clear, that forgiveness from God sends our sin away from us. The full force, as brother Mitchell's translation reveals, conveys re: God forgiving us, that He divorces our sin away from us. Thus we can relate to God not as rejected sinners, but as His beloved children, albeit still struggling with sin.
It's not the heart of God that, according to the Book of Hebrews, needs the sprinkling of the blood of Christ. It's our human hearts of defiled conscience. Read it! Jesus didn't offer the bread of His body to be broken for God to eat. The wine of the cup of the new covenant was not for God's drinking. It's for us! Way back in the instruction of the law of Moses, God said, "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement." (Lev. 17: 11 NAS).
It's we who need at-one-ment. It's we who suffer, from our end, a disconnect from God because of the darkness and ignorance of our hearts. That Old Testament altar-type foreshadows the altar of our hearts. Never once, in all the record of the New Testament, is there anything about God needing to be reconciled to man; it's always man needing to be reconciled to an already conciliatory God. God is at-one with us, holding us forever in the embrace of His everlasting, unfailing love.
Wrath Part Two
Let's Get Real
Get real, Mr. or Ms. pastor, teacher, presumptive prophet and/or apostle, evangelist, and theologian. This is what you obsessively embrace re: the everlasting destiny of unconverted sinners: the wages of sin is not death, it's divine punishment into infinity. Not a lifetime of payment for your sin (which would at least seem to be a kind of proportionate justice), not a thousand years, nor a million years, nor a billion years, nor a trillion or quadrillion, or whatever numbers come next, but divinely inflicted suffering WITHOUT END.
From whence comes this abomination of imagination? It is not, I assure you, from the manuscripts of the canonical scriptures, Old and New Testaments, in Hebrew and Koine Greek that, in matters of essential doctrine, have been so carefully preserved for us by the providence of God. It comes from hideously bad translation, to which is added the unhinged rantings of the likes of Jonathan Edwards, with his infamous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," and other historic religious figures who have added to the bare-minimum of gospel content they preached, a heavy dose of over-the-top, gruesome, pagan superstition.
Then is added your own delight that some day, those sinners who have not done what you've so righteously done, i.e., before you died, exercised your "free will," and "accepted Christ as your savior" will finally get what they deserve. And according to the Reverend Edwards, your bliss in heaven will be increased by hearing the cries, moans, and shrieks of those so horrifically damned. By implication, the comparison between their state and yours, will punctuate with exclamation, just how good God is, and will always be, to you.
Have you ever considered what it is in you that resonates to such hideousness? Out of what depth of darkness does your amen to that demonic scenario spring forth? If sin is "missing the mark," you're one pathetic archer. If confession of sin is an imperative in the life of a believer, if and when God gives wings to my words by His Spirit into your conscience, then repentance with confession will certainly be of high priority in that day. I can personally testify of the awesomely firm severity by which God's corrects such false witness against Him.
There was that day, that arresting moment, in His presence, when He let me know there would be no more such ghastly misrepresentation of Him by me before men. I was, both stunned by my up-to-that-moment ignorance, and instantly filled with the wonder of His all-embracing grace. I could never again think of my Heavenly Father, and my Savior, Jesus, as I had. Oh, yes, I'd preached grace for sinners, but it was hardly of that breadth, length, height, and depth, that does justice to the love of Christ. I'd seen in a moment, God's rejection of our rejection of Him. The finality of the matter, is not what is in man's heart toward God, but what is in God's heart toward man.
The latter converts the former and we are delivered from the authority of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son. That conversion is grounded on that union with Christ that belongs to all humanity by His incarnation, whereby we are held as dear to the Father as Jesus Himself. Don't mess with that, Mr. Preacher. You're standing on holy ground.
