In previous blog posts, I've been writing about the character of God because as we know God, intimately, we come to trust him—we find the rest our soul craves. As we trust him wholly, refusing to limit God by our own definitions, biases, and experiences, we put to rest the fears that have been nagging mankind since the garden. We answer, once and for all, for ourselves, is God good?
To answer this question completely, we have to wrestle with the justice or wrath of God and its flipside of the same coin: the love of God.
"[Holy] Anger is the fluid that [holy] love bleeds when you cut it." —C. S. Lewis
But this is no ordinary, Disney-movie kind of love. It's extravagant to the point of obsession. Sacrificial not enabling. Heartbreaking and remaking. Breathtaking.
"Likewise, the love of god—a prominent theme in both Testaments—is never kitschy or sentimental. His love is tenacious as oak roots, potent as a typhoon. It is abrasive as much as it is soothing. It scours and breaks us before it sets us right—in order to set us right. It never lets us alone. It is so fierce, the love of God, that many choose to be condemned rather than to step into the light of it."—Mark Buchannan
We've mistakenly sold the world (and the church) on a milquetoast bowl of fluffy love. And while the orphaned do experience God's love as a father to the fatherless and those who've been rejected by the world do experience God's love as the unconditional adoption into royalty...his love doesn't stop there. It never stops. Ever.
The love of God doesn't leave us alone until he has us for his own. Then he continues to love us with all his holy fervor until we look like his son.
But you can't truly understand the love of God until you understand his justice—his wrath. And visa versa.
Wrath is an old-fashioned word hijacked almost exclusively by manipulative pastors or cult leaders to control their followers. But God's wrath rightly understood, is one of the most comforting aspects of His character. We don't actually want a god who refuses to respond in righteous wrath at the injustices shown by the world (often, to us)—such a god would not be worthy of worship!
Let me prove this: I once read about a younger brother who saw boys bullying his sibling with Down syndrome, and he got mad—right good mad. He was smaller than the boys but his anger made him strong: he waded in and whipped the lot of them. Situations like this resonate with something noble inside of us because we bear witness to the holy anger, the right-ness of the anger. We know that anything less would be cowardice.
Of this I am certain, God's wrath, as a natural outworking of his holy justice, is the safest place to rest. Truthfully.
Usually, however, man's anger doesn't bring about righteousness. We are all too familiar with unholy anger—abusive parents or spouses, teenaged gunmen on sprees. Only the holy wrath of a holy God in response to the injustices we enact on each other can minister justice in a way that leaves peace in its wake. Like that time when God sent himself to take upon himself the wrath we so deserved.
"For God so loved the world," Jesus said, "that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." But then he adds, "Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed." Like scattering roaches in an abandoned south Georgia dwelling...there are those who refuse to step into the light of this love.
So then, what exactly is God so wrathful about? In Romans 1, Paul gives us a list of godless wicked things then reiterates that these are practiced openly, brazenly. One translation even says the wicked "hand out prizes" to those who think up new ways to sin! (Erhm, Oscars. Cough, cough.) But notice what Paul reiterates three times: God is not pouring out his wrath on people simply because of these acts—they are actually symptoms of a people who are already under God's wrath. They are what people under God's wrath turn to, or better said, are turned over to.
Did you catch that? Wickedness is not the cause of God's anger but the consequence of it.
Wickedness is when, in his holy anger, God has doomed people to getting their own way. Wickedness is what a doomed people come up with! They are already "sons of disobedience" from Ephesians 5. God's final demonstration of wrath is God letting us have our own way, in His absence for eternity. "The lost," C. S. Lewis said, "enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded."
So, while the wickedness has natural, assured consequences, it's not the hefty list that has God so riled. Paul tells us why:
"For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened." —Romans 1:21
Rather than being the image of God ruling the earth on his behalf and sharing his authority, we chose to make a power-grab in the garden. Thousands of years later, we continue the disloyalty to choose to set ourselves up as our own gods, calling what we want good and evil. We choose to disconnect from the life-giving Vine himself, then we wonder why we wither, rot, and die!
In our self-imposed pathway toward destruction, Christ came and took justice—the full brunt of what we deserved—upon himself:
"Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed."—Isaiah 53:4-5
The safest refuge is at the foot of the cross, upon which all the wrath of God was poured, in the most costly act of love. It's safe because scorched earth can't burn again.
In the time of U.S. westward expansion, the pioneers lived in mounded huts made of grass in the midst of oceans of grass as tall as a man. They lived in constant watchfulness of smoke or fire because, once lit—from either lightning strike or Native Americans practicing their normal regeneration procedures—grass burns ferociously. A horse cannot outrun a prairie fire. Instead of running, the pioneers would burn out a patch of grass themselves and then move as much of their livestock and goods as quickly as possible to the center of the patch. Once smoke had been spotted, they had mere moments to act. There, on the burned-out patch of grass, they made their stand. The fire would blast up to them but finding nothing to burn, turn aside to continue its catastrophic path. Safety is found where the fire has already come.
This teaches me where I can rest: We can rest in the wrath of God, knowing that God is just and acts justly, but only after we rest in the forgiveness of God through Jesus Christ, for we have all fallen short of the glory of God.
In response to his sacrifice on the cross, I willingly (only by the power of the Holy Spirit) submit my own fleshly desires and tendency to lawlessness to be scoured, burned away, and even amputated by the love of God. This is how we respond to Christ's call to die to ourselves. This, then, is the love of God in action in my life: God graciously burns out the flesh, rebellion, and idolatry in me, now, creating already burnt-out patches.
Then, when the full wrath of God is poured out upon all flesh in the End Days, I'll be safe at the foot of the cross, staking out my own burned-out patch of grass, flesh long since burned away. When he returns, I'll know him for I'll be like him—this is what he promises.
"Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him."—John 3:36
This is what I mean by two sides of the same coin: God's love and God's wrath are both like fire. They're both ferociously consuming.
I invite you to join me. Don't even try to run. Rest. In the safest place, at the foot of the cross.
Grace makes room at the foot of the cross.