Wrath or Love

John 3:16

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.

As I age in the faith, I find that I am beginning to develop some intolerances. I find this interesting and comical in that some of my current positions were not previous strongholds. They have become that, however, and more.

One of the intolerances I am developing is towards those who characterize our Father as angry, judgmental and vengeful. Even people who know and quote today’s scripture sometimes confound its meaning by teaching, preaching and claiming God’s anger. Does an angry, vengeful God sacrifice His only son for miscreants? Only great love can motivate an act so profound. Can you imagine this verse reading, “For God was so angry that He gave His only Son.” Of course not.

God is love and He so loved that He created the greatest act in human history and, for that matter, in the heavens. He sacrificed His one and only for us even when we didn’t love Him. He wasn’t motivated by vengeance. He wasn’t trying to get retribution against an unruly race. He sacrificed the best He had to save the lot of us.

This position is especially enjoyed and understood by those who recognize their lives as in a fallen state. The issue becomes, at once, challenging when we become “the saved.” No longer are we “the world” and we begin to separate ourselves from those unholy heathens. That is when it is important to remind ourselves that God loves them even as He loves and forgives us.

It bothers me when I read books and hear people talk about “we and they” in such a way as to categorize sin and sinners. People have their pet sins and poster board sinners. I hear some ridiculous things and I am beginning to have less and less patience with those who pretend our beloved Father is angry so that they can cast some people into hell while ignoring the love of God, and the person in the mirror.

We can’t know what is in the heart of a person, but we can, and should, know the heart of the Father. Like Jesus, He is moved by compassion; He is motivated by love. Yes, He knows anger, as do we, but we are reminded that though we feel anger, it is no excuse to sin. It is not an excuse to act unbecomingly. Is our Father less graceful than we are instructed to be?

John 3:16 is arguably one of the best know verses in the Bible. Its theme is love, redemption and salvation. We should never use this verse as a means to judge others. To do so is, to me, sacrilege. If we learn only one lesson from the Bible, hold only one Biblical tenet in our hearts and minds, it must be this one, “God is love” (1 John 4: 8). However, that is not all the verse says. It also declares “The one who does not love does not know God.” So, describing God as angry and vengeful is a way to make God in our image. Because we don’t have love in our hearts, we turn God into a wrathful despot so that His reputation mirrors our self-image.

We must be careful in our assessment of others because that person whom we would condemn is the very one whom God loves so much that He sent Jesus to the cross. The purpose in my writing this devotional is to cause a shift in the church paradigm regarding evangelism, salvation and forgiveness. We need less focus on those whom we consider “sinners” and a great deal more attention on the Father, Son and Spirit. It is not for us to judge what is right and wrong, who is a sinner and who is a saint. Even Jesus said he didn’t come to judge (John 3: 17). Verse 17 says all I need to know because we are to walk according to Jesus’ ways. We need to receive the love of God in our own hearts and then share it with the rest of the world. For God so loved. . .

Love and Wrath

Romans 5:9

Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.

There is a lot of chatter about the wrath of God and it never ceases to surprise me. Why are we absorbed with talking about the wrath of God? There is no wrath for those who are in Jesus.

My first thought is this, I want you attending a church that teaches 1 John 4: 8, “God is love.” That is the revelation we all need to live in, God is love. God is not wrathful, He is loving. A church which hangs on “the wrath of God” is not going to be primed to lead people into revelation of who God is or how He wants to manifest Himself in our lives.

Today’s verse draws the paradigm for us. We have been saved from wrath by the blood of the Christ. That is the whole basis of the New Covenant. Thank God, we have been redeemed, even from our own stupidity. God didn’t want you under wrath or under condemnation so, motivated by love, He sent Jesus to take our place. Jesus bore every aspect of the curse giving us, instead, peace, joy and liberty. He redeemed us from the curse of the law where there was wrath. You can’t have all the New Testament Good News and still hang on to the penalty of the curse. Jesus set us free from all of that.

The same blood which justified us saved us from the wrath of God. We don’t deserve justification. In fact, doesn’t it blow your mind just a little to even read that we have been justified. Thank you Jesus. So, let’s hold on tightly to the good news of Jesus, our Messiah. Let us cling to the love of God. Forsake the ideas of a vengeful, wrathful God because it was He who sacrificed His only child for us. Wrath didn’t do that. Love did.

Compassionate Grace

Exodus 34: 6 – 7

Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth.

How often have you heard about the angry, vengeful God of the Old Testament? Well, here He is full of compassion, grace, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. You know, we’ve got to be careful about what we listen to. Show me the scriptures! Give me evidence! When we actually look at the Old Testament, especially in its entirety, we find a God who was long on patience and whose actions were characterized by lovingkindness.

God is love and He so loved all of us that He sent His only begotten son to the cross for us. No one sends there only son to suffer and die for people He doesn’t love. He gave everything precious to Him so that we could be saved. Is that evidence of a vengeful God. And think about it this way . . . didn’t Jesus come to earth, suffer and die in the Old Testament? The new dispensation and the new covenant could not be ushered in until Jesus went to the cross, died and arose so all that we celebrate in the Christian faith about resurrection, salvation and the new birth is based on the Old Covenant love of God.

Yahweh has always been a full of compassion and lovingkindness. When Moses hid himself so that God could pass before him, what he saw and reported was that this God was full of graciousness, truth and compassion. We learn that God was and is slow to anger. How can we justifiably describe Him as angry when He is slow to anger? Does that make any sense at all?

The truth is that God is as He always was. He has not changed. His love for us has always motivated His actions. The fact that He did not send a lightning storm and strike down the grumbling, complaining Israelites in the desert is proof enough of His long suffering. Not one among us is as patient or as slow to anger as our Divine Father and yet we accuse Him of being impatient and merciless. It is just not true. We’ve been lied to but now we know.

Never be afraid of your heavenly Father. Never fear seeking counsel and communion with Him. He is gentle and kind. In fact, He is the most gentle being that has ever inhabited this universe. His compassion knows no boundaries. I love Jesus and I know you do too but we must remember that Jesus came to reconcile us to the Father. Jesus is the way. The way to what? To the Father. Jesus’ mission was to bring us back into relationship with the Father when we, like the prodigal son, sinned against Him and went astray. All the while, the Father was awaiting us, His eyes searching the horizon, a gold ring and new robe in Hands readied to drape us in the family colors and crest. He is the one who was deprived yet He longingly awaited our return, every day searching the road in the anticipation of our appearance. He never lost faith. He put the sacrificial lamb on the alter so that we would be able to approach Him with a clean conscience. This is the act of love, not anger.

The God of the Old Testament is a loving God, full of grace and mercy, abounding in compassionate concern.