In trying to learn something of God, I have looked at a number of God’s characteristics.
Probably the best known of God’s characteristics is His love. In fact, John tells us that God is love (I John 4:8 & 16). If you want to know what love is, you must look to God. But before we look at God’s love there is something else we need to consider about God so that we can truly appreciate His love.
God is a God of anger, wrath and hate. For many, these things may not seem compatible with God having love. This is because too often God is represented as a weak, mild-mannered being that treats everyone with nothing but kindness. But that would not be in accordance with an all-knowing, all-sovereign, all-powerful, holy God, would it? It is true that man’s hatred, anger and wrath is normally unlike God’s. Man’s typically comes from sin; it usually is an act of meanness. God never does anything as an act of meanness.
Psalm 5:5 tells us that God hates the workers of iniquity and Psalm 7:11 says that God is angry with the workers of iniquity daily. It is sometimes said that “God loves the sinner but hates the sin.” Now this is a very good mind-set for each of us to have. And it is certainly true that God loves sinners, if God loves anyone they must be a sinner, since all have sinned (Romans 3:23). But these two passages tell us that God hates persons who sin. It’s logical, actually; sin is the act of the sinner. The problem isn’t really the sin; it’s the sinner who commits the sin. No sinner, no sin.
“In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power” (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9). I could list many particular sins from the Bible, but this passage sums it up for us. Ultimately sin is not worshipping and obeying the Lord Jesus Christ. The punishment is not limited to this world but involves eternal burning and eternal separation from God. Horrible! Romans 9:13 tells us that God loved Jacob, but that He hated Esau. Esau and Jacob were both sinners, but God’s love brought Jacob to repentance; Esau, however, never found repentance (Hebrews 12:16-17).
Because God is holy and righteous, He must hate sin and pour out His wrath upon it. But His wrath is not meanness; it is judgment. “But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God” (Romans 2:5). God pours out His wrath upon those who don’t repent of their sins. These persons have treasured up this wrath; they have asked for it by the way they live. In the next verse we are told that God “will render to every man according to his deeds.” God must punish, or pour out His wrath upon, those who are unbelievers in Jesus Christ. And notice, this judgment is righteous. This is not an act of meanness; it is an act of justice. It must be done, or God would not be just.
Surely the greatest but also the most wonderful display of God’s just wrath must be the wrath that was poured out on Jesus Christ. He bore the sins of His children on the cross and God poured out the wrath they deserved on the Savior. Isaiah 53 gives a tremendous description of Jesus’ suffering on His children’s behalf. Imagine God the Son crying out on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me?” (Mark 15:34) God has not appointed His children to wrath, “but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Thessalonians 5:9). So God poured out the wrath they deserved on the Savior, and by Him they have been delivered from the wrath to come (I Thessalonians 1:10).
When properly understood, God’s wrath, anger and hatred reveal His love. As the hymn says, “Hallelujah, What a Savior!”
•Philip Green is pastor of Greenwood Primitive Baptist Church.
