The wrath of God

[AI translation] The apostle Paul reveals terrible things in the next part of his letter to the Romans. Particularly terrible is the way the whole passage begins, "The wrath of God is evident." This is not something we like to hear and talk about. The notion of an angry God takes a strong back seat in our faith consciousness to the good, loving, forgiving God. Even if we sometimes think of God's wrath, we often misunderstand it. We see an adverse change in our circumstances as God's wrath upon us. When God takes away from us someone we loved very much, or when He does not give us something we begged for, or when we fail to get something we really wanted and desired, we tend to feel that God is certainly angry with us for something! Well: He is punishing me, He is beating me. It is often in adversity that one feels the wrath of God. But it is not so! The Word we have read shows that God's wrath is something quite different. What it is: that is what I want to talk about now.The apostle goes on to say. Not against men, but against the unbelief and iniquity of men. God is not angry with men. Not against you or me, but against our unbelief and our iniquity. There is a big difference! We humans are usually angry at man for his sin. God is angry with sin because of man. He is angry with sin because He loves man. We usually hate someone because of their wickedness, and God hates someone because of their wickedness, and God hates someone because He loves that person so much! That angry God is the same God as the loving God! Out of his love flows his wrath. He is angry that his children are so miserable, angry at all the wickedness that they do to ruin their lives. And how good that he is angry! Or perhaps you think that God should not be angry? We know of a father in the Old Testament, the old high priest Eli, whose sons did a terrible amount of evil, but the old father was so helpless that he could not get angry, he kept saying, "Why do you do such things? Because I hear of your evil deeds from all the people. (1 Sam 2:23-24) It would be terrible if our God were such a bad mother! If He could only shake His head and complain, "Alas, what are His sons doing on earth! But thanks be to Him, He is not like that! He is angry, yes, He is angry at all the unrighteousness of His children. He is angry out of the love and compassion of His Father. Or would we want God to be as hard and as cold as fate, as fate? Fate cannot be angry, because fate has no heart, and cannot love. Only he who can love can be truly and justly angry. Behind and above God's wrath is His love!
Just think how good it is to have someone's anger darkened over the many, many sins and filth of men! Imagine if we humans ever succeeded in overturning the foundations of the moral world order! If no man could hate sin any longer, if all of us who live on this earth could only approve of evil, if evil could no longer be deterred by the hatred of evil! Even then there would be one place where all evil is despised: heaven. Even then there would be One Who is angry with all evil: God! It is fortunate that God's wrath against all human evil is sensed by the conscience, and unconsciously indicated by the conscience! Yes, the conscience, however faintly, but it indicates that the evil that is being done or is being done is somewhere, by someone, unrepentantly angry! Imagine what this world would be without God's wrath! Where would this world sink to if the wrath of God from heaven were not manifest against the unbelief and wickedness of men?
Then let us honestly confess that God has every reason to be angry! Such is the moral chaos that the apostle describes here, such a picture of the world, that it almost makes us dizzy! Unclean passions, perverse sexuality, indecent acts, wickedness, greed, cunning, envy, murder, rivalry, intrigue, malice, slander, slander, reviling, arrogance, boasting, disobedience to parents, the destruction of family life, apostasy, unchastity, ruthlessness. It is difficult even to enumerate the mass of human wickedness, of which the apostle mentions no less than sixteen varieties, just off the top of his head, in one breath! The earth is full of them! Or is it not so? Yes, indeed it is! We read such things regularly in the newspapers, such things happen on week-ends, it is the same all over the world! It's a horrible picture! Well, that's the world - we sigh sadly!
But beware! It's us! So this is who we are! You and me! Everything on this list of sins has its roots in you and me. Who would dare to say that they do not know the things that lie deep in their own soul, such as greed, envy, deceit, slander, pride, boasting, malice, indecent thoughts? Only these things are coated with a bit of culture, and worse, a bit of Christian colour! Paul exposes this too, that it is not in the world that there is so much evil, but - in our own hearts! "For this cause God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lusts of their hearts". Oh, where the lust of our hearts can lead us! Perhaps what the apostle is trying to show is that the corruption of this world is so terrible that it cannot be repaired, only saved, redeemed! How this world is ripe for Christ, for the grace of redemption.
The apostle also reveals that all this moral chaos is the consequence of a deeper evil, the fruit of a greater evil. He says: "The backwardness of the moral life can be traced back to a single cause: the original sin of separation from God. Since man's relationship with God is fundamentally corrupt, it follows that man's relationship with other men is fundamentally corrupt. This is what the apostle says: "For though they knew God, yet they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks to him; but in their reasoning they became vain, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the everlasting God for the image of corruptible men, and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things... As they have turned the truth of God into a lie, and have honoured and served the created things instead of the Creator". The trouble on this earth has already begun, and is beginning again, before it is even visible, before the gross violation of the moral law, within the heart. Just as the prodigal son did not become a sinner when sin became manifest in its immoral form, when he forsook his possessions and sank down to the pig trough, but his sin began before, when he bade farewell to his father's house and turned his back on his home, disregarding his Father. For in every man, infidel and heathen alike, there is a minimum of knowledge of God, and a moral sense that flows from it. God has not left the Gentiles in total ignorance, let alone us who know Him from the Bible. He has not left men in total ignorance of His existence and power: "For in God, who is invisible, even His eternal power and deity, is seen from the creation of the world, being understood by His works, so that they are without excuse. The sensus divinitatis, the sense of divinity, is indissoluble in the human soul, even when it denies God. Therefore, even if one does not know the God of the Bible, the Ten Commandments given by Him, one can sense - however faintly - when he does something wrong. Even if he does, he does it against his conscience: he sins against God unconsciously. This minimum of God-consciousness makes a man inexcusable.
Let me return to the wrath of God! The punishment of God's wrath is not to strike us with a blow, but more serious: to let us go, to give us over to the drift of our own desires. It is tempting to hear Paul repeat this three times, when he says: 'Therefore God gave them up to impurity in the desires of their hearts', 'God gave them up to impure passions', 'And just as they did not count God worthy to be kept in their knowledge, so God gave them up to unworthy thinking'. It is horrible even to think, much less to experience, that God punishes not with a stroke of fate, but with sin, by allowing sin! All the immorality, depravity and corruption that we have just been talking about, that Paul lists, is not only sin, it is punishment! The scourge of God's wrath is upon us. The most terrible punishment of God is when He grants the desire of those who want to separate themselves from Him, to live according to their own will! God's most terrible punishment is when He lets us out of His hands and gives us over to our own passions. It is a sign of God's wrath that he gives man over to his own rebellious, unbridled impulses. God's law, the Ten Commandments, or for those who do not know it, the law of conscience: it is like a guardrail to keep man from drifting into moral chaos. If one does break this guardrail, the punishment is to fall deeper and deeper. And if one is determined to fall, let him see the consequences.
But why doesn't God use force to restrain man, who always wants to run away from Him again? Why did the father let the prodigal son go? For he must have known the moral chaos that would ensue! Yes, He did know, but the boy did not. Well, well, let him know! Then, when he has wasted everything, he will be able to appreciate the home and be happy in it! Love cannot be forced. If it is broken with God, if it is broken with relationship, there is nothing to keep a man from ruin. Listen to yourself: you know that what you intend to do, what your heart desires to do, is not right, you can almost hear God's voice: do not do it! Your conscience also signals you: it is not right, do not do it! Then you do it, then you may have to lie, then you may have to be a hypocrite, then you may have to accuse someone innocently: one sin leads to another, and you sink deeper and deeper. This is what the Scripture says: 'God gave them over to unclean passions ... to unworthy thoughts'. Well, that's God's wrath on us!
But just because God gives someone away, doesn't mean He gives up on them! In fact! He gives it by waiting. He waits for the man to run out of the way, until he is splashed, until he is like the prodigal son whom his father kept waiting for him to come back. He never gives someone away to be lost forever, but to be saved! God does not want to drive anyone away, but to draw him to himself. God's wrath is nothing but a powerful, powerful call back home! To the Father's house. He gives man there so that he may finally realize that home is better after all. One should return home after all! For without God, man is heading for total disintegration!
But once you are caught up in the drift of your own desires, is there any stopping there? Yes! For God Himself has entered into this terrible drift. All the multitude of sins that we have spoken of above, have once been unleashed on Calvary. In Jesus Christ crucified on the cross, all human sin was lifted up to heaven on the one hand, and on the other, the full severity of God's wrath was poured down on earth in Him! In Him, the terrible sins of all of us have been reached and judged by divine justice. There, in the cross of Christ, God's wrath is seen to be a mercy, a scourge upon us, a whip to drive us into the Father's embracing, forgiving arms. There God waits for us, there He reconnects with us, with those who have drifted away from Him. Always, again! There He assures us that there is no sin so great, no corruption so great, no wickedness so great, that is not made so much greater by His saving grace - in Jesus Christ!
It is with this in view that the author of Hebrews once wrote to his readers, with which I would now conclude, "Therefore all the more need we take heed to what we have heard, lest we ever be led astray." (Heb 2:1) With a prayerful heart we sing:
Though the weight of my sin be great, Yet to thee I come:
Thou art the hater of sin, But thy mercy endureth for ever.
My strength is small, and sin is strong:
Thou canst and wilt help me, So help me in my trouble.
(Song 461 verses 2-3)
Amen
Date: 2 February 1969.