God’s Wrath
God’s wrath is his revulsion against evil, his settled displeasure with sin and sinners.
The wrath of God is not a popular concept in the liberal West. It is widely ignored, denied, or radically reinterpreted. Yet it is a prominent doctrine in the Bible. In the Old Testament there are over 580 references, using more than twenty different words. In many instances God’s wrath is portrayed in dramatically personal terms, as in Nahum 1:2–11. In the New Testament it is again frequently mentioned, though generally in less personal terms, with few passages stating explicitly that God is angry.
It is widely recognized that talk of God’s wrath is anthropomorphic or, to be more precise, anthropopathic. God is portrayed in human terms. It is important not to equate God’s anger with often-sinful human anger: God does not have mood swings and does not “fly off the handle.” God’s love is also anthropopathic; we must not fall into the error of equating the divine love with human love in all its imperfection and distortion. So what is God’s wrath? It is his indignation at sin, his revulsion to evil and all that opposes him, his displeasure at it and the venting of that displeasure. It is his passionate resistance to every will that is set against him.
C. H. Dodd proposed viewing God’s wrath as an impersonal process, as the “inevitable process of cause and effect in a moral universe.” He argues that in the New Testament, “anger as an attitude of God to men disappears, and His love and mercy become all-embracing.” Like Marcion in the second century, Dodd rejected the teaching of the Old Testament on the basis of a selective reading of the New Testament, and in so doing reduced God purely to love. The latter argued not just that “God is love” but also that “God is light.” But there is no shortage of teaching in the New Testament, especially in the Gospels, about God’s active judgement of sin. P. T. Forsyth wrote perceptively of the “holy love of God.”
Dodd’s aim in talking about impersonal wrath appears to be to dissociate God from wrath and punishment, to portray wrath as a mere byproduct of sin, not actually willed by God. Such a position is not free of deistic implications: it removes a significant aspect of human life from the active rule of God. It is also profoundly disturbing. Can God really view the sexual molestation and murder of a child without any sense of displeasure or indignation?
Wrath is not an eternal attribute of God in the manner of love and holiness. It is his reaction in time to the phenomenon of sin. Also, wrath is not natural to God in the way that mercy is. Isaiah 28:21 calls it his “strange work” his “alien task.” God is “slow to anger,” as the Old Testament repeatedly states, while he delights in showing mercy (Ps 103:8). Parents who have to discipline their children understand this.
God’s wrath should be seen not as opposed to his love but as an outworking of that love. The opposite to wrath is not love but indifference. Paul’s injunction in Romans 12:9 that love be “sincere” is followed by the command to hate what is evil. A husband who loved his wife would feel jealous anger at her infidelity. Failure to hate evil implies a deficiency in love. A “God” who did not detest evil would not be worthy of our worship, and indeed would not be loving in the sense that the Bible portrays his love.
Key Verses
• Ro 1:18–32
• Na 1:2–11
• Heb 3:7–11
• Ro 12:9
• Ro 12:19–13:5
Tony Lane, “God’s Wrath,” in Lexham Survey of Theology, ed. Mark Ward et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).
God’s wrath is his revulsion against evil, his settled displeasure with sin and sinners.
The wrath of God is not a popular concept in the liberal West. It is widely ignored, denied, or radically reinterpreted. Yet it is a prominent doctrine in the Bible. In the Old Testament there are over 580 references, using more than twenty different words. In many instances God’s wrath is portrayed in dramatically personal terms, as in Nahum 1:2–11. In the New Testament it is again frequently mentioned, though generally in less personal terms, with few passages stating explicitly that God is angry.
It is widely recognized that talk of God’s wrath is anthropomorphic or, to be more precise, anthropopathic. God is portrayed in human terms. It is important not to equate God’s anger with often-sinful human anger: God does not have mood swings and does not “fly off the handle.” God’s love is also anthropopathic; we must not fall into the error of equating the divine love with human love in all its imperfection and distortion. So what is God’s wrath? It is his indignation at sin, his revulsion to evil and all that opposes him, his displeasure at it and the venting of that displeasure. It is his passionate resistance to every will that is set against him.
C. H. Dodd proposed viewing God’s wrath as an impersonal process, as the “inevitable process of cause and effect in a moral universe.” He argues that in the New Testament, “anger as an attitude of God to men disappears, and His love and mercy become all-embracing.” Like Marcion in the second century, Dodd rejected the teaching of the Old Testament on the basis of a selective reading of the New Testament, and in so doing reduced God purely to love. The latter argued not just that “God is love” but also that “God is light.” But there is no shortage of teaching in the New Testament, especially in the Gospels, about God’s active judgement of sin. P. T. Forsyth wrote perceptively of the “holy love of God.”
Dodd’s aim in talking about impersonal wrath appears to be to dissociate God from wrath and punishment, to portray wrath as a mere byproduct of sin, not actually willed by God. Such a position is not free of deistic implications: it removes a significant aspect of human life from the active rule of God. It is also profoundly disturbing. Can God really view the sexual molestation and murder of a child without any sense of displeasure or indignation?
Wrath is not an eternal attribute of God in the manner of love and holiness. It is his reaction in time to the phenomenon of sin. Also, wrath is not natural to God in the way that mercy is. Isaiah 28:21 calls it his “strange work” his “alien task.” God is “slow to anger,” as the Old Testament repeatedly states, while he delights in showing mercy (Ps 103:8). Parents who have to discipline their children understand this.
God’s wrath should be seen not as opposed to his love but as an outworking of that love. The opposite to wrath is not love but indifference. Paul’s injunction in Romans 12:9 that love be “sincere” is followed by the command to hate what is evil. A husband who loved his wife would feel jealous anger at her infidelity. Failure to hate evil implies a deficiency in love. A “God” who did not detest evil would not be worthy of our worship, and indeed would not be loving in the sense that the Bible portrays his love.
Key Verses
• Ro 1:18–32
• Na 1:2–11
• Heb 3:7–11
• Ro 12:9
• Ro 12:19–13:5
Tony Lane, “God’s Wrath,” in Lexham Survey of Theology, ed. Mark Ward et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).