THE WRATH OF GOD

   How do we understand a God where love and wrath co-exist?

   Divine wrath is very different from human wrath.  People tend to believe God our Father, thinks like human fathers, bringing Him down to their own level. We understand the anger of man is sensual, springing from his fleshly desires.  It is unforgiving, resentful, acrimonious, and retaliatory, without mercy, spiteful, and malicious.  The wrath of God, however, comes from a spiritual and loving Holy God, without any displays of the traits of the wrath of the unregenerate man. Human fathers most often correct out of frustration or impatience; motive being self, instead of within the framework of love.  How often parents wait until they get so frustrated before they correct little Johnny!

   Divine wrath is tempered with justice; a principle of God’s character, and one of the seven pillars of wisdom.  Justice from God is always consistent with His love, for He is Love and and justice is a part of that.  For within His justice is equity, impartiality, fairness, rightness and dispassion. (no emotion) All of God’s attributes are within righteousness.  His judgment  is for our good! The execution of God’s wrath is simply a part of God’s love as a loving Father.

   We should think of the wrath of God as the intense fire of infinite love that burns up that which is not true. This is a beautiful way of looking at wrath.  God’s fiery judgment is a purifying fire, and if we read scripture with the thought that it is speaking of the intense fire of infinite love that is too pure to allow evil to destroy any person, then we can see why anything less that Truth has to go.

   A friend of mine put it this way:

  “One of the Greek words for “wrath” is “orge”.  It means excitement, passion.  That does not sound like the kind of wrath most people think of!  There is another word in the Greek for “wrath” which is “thumos.”  It means “breathing hard, passion.”  Let me give you an example of the use of “thumos” in Revelation.  Speaking of the great harlot, “Mystery Babylon,” the angel explains to John, “All nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.” (Rev. 18:3).  Now, I ask, who ever heard of wrath being sweet and intoxicating like wine!!!  And who would think of the sensual pleasures of fornication as being angry, vengeful, full of rage, and violence!  Nonsense!  But when we consider the true meaning of the word “thumos”, it becomes very clear – “For all nations have drunk of wine of the passion of her fornication.”  What a difference that makes!” End quote 

   When I was much younger in the Lord, I was studying the account of the flood during Noah’s day.  I could not understand how a God of Love could drown all those people.  God spoke to me while I pondered this.  He said, “Bonnie, I do not look at the flesh the way you do.” 

   I can understand today that in God’s purpose, He had made a way for the people during that time to repent after they died. (A precedent by the way)

   It was a terrible time on the earth when man was so evil.  God made a way in the midst of man’s terrible rebellion during this time.  In His infinite wisdom, God worked everything after the counsel of His own will.  This goes to the motive for flooding the then known world.  He could not save them any other way.  Anyone who has any years at all in the Lord, understands that the flesh must be mortified.  If God, in His wrath can mortify the flesh through a paddle/flood, then that is what makes it a righteous wrath. It is called purposeful correction.  Any F/father who does not discipline his children does not love them.

  1st Peter 3:9-20 By which (the Spirit) also he (Jesus) went and preached unto the souls in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. Lamsa Translation

   1st Peter 4:6 For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.

   There is a wrath, a passion, that makes everything right; balances the scales and at its’ base, is the love of God, our Father.