We have preached here and there about God’s love. “God loves you”, “God hates the sin but not the sinner”, “God is gracious”, and the list goes on and on. What ever happened to the angry and just nature of God? We have chosen to pick out a side of God that appeals to us. I’m going to be painfully blunt with this entry.
This entry is inspired by John McArthur’s brilliant book “The love of God”
Think God forgot how to be angry?
All-angry God?
Most of us now regard God as all-loving and not as all-angry. Indeed God is all-loving especially to those who fear Him and believe in Him. But we have altogether forsaken the idea that God is all-angry especially to those who deny Him His story and who mock, disobey, shame and continue to disbelieve Him. In the Bible these people are called ‘sinners’ or ‘unbelievers’ and they exist even up until today.
When the Bible says ‘The fear of the Lord…’ it does not only talk about a sense of awe and reverence, it talks about a holy fear – a terror that overcomes your heart and shakes your very soul whenever the thought of sinning against a Holy, righteous and just God comes into mind. Indeed it is such a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of an Almighty God. It is said in His Word that you should not fear humans who has the capability to destroy the body, but you should fear God who is able to destroy the soul in hell. It does not say it jokingly, it explicitly says that God CAN AND WILL MAKE YOU SUFFER IN HELL but not because He so enjoys it, but because He is just and Holy in His nature.
God’s anger and love are not mutually exclusive
God is an angry God. But God is also a loving God. The two are not mutually exclusive of each other. If we can be both loving and angry towards one person at the same time, how much more our creator who created us out of His image and likeness? God loves us but He also must be angry with us whenever we sin against Him otherwise we get the notion that God is powerless over our ability to do and desire evil. If God cannot punish us because He loves us, we are making Him weak and unable to face the evil in our world today. No, God is sovereign over everything and even our sinful desires, He sees to discipline because He so loves us and does not want to leave us in a state wherein we will keep on shaming His name through disobedience and distrust.
So what now?
Only when we come to fully understand His anger, do we fully appreciate salvation by grace through faith. Only then can we come to fully appreciate His love, in other words, only then can we fully understand and know God because God is love.
Sin is sin, God is definitely, infinitely angry with it and WILL punish it by death in hell. God didn’t forget how to be angry, He loves us so much for Him to forget that.
FEAR GOD. God hates the sin and will be definitely angry with the sinner for choosing such a choice. But repentance is not far and His grace will always be available when you desperately seek it. God is love, yes, and for you to understand that, you have to know the extent of His wrath.
