GOD AND WRATH
“Anger”
is a response and not a constituent element of a person. Anger isn’t
built into us as if it exists in some compartment waiting to express
itself; it isn’t there every nanosecond of our existence. We may be
cheerful one moment and angry the next; we may be angry for days or
weeks but it is a response to some situation that doesn’t sit right with
us.
Associated
with anger are terms like displeasure, protest, rebuke—the kind of
activities that are sometimes called “negative”. We don’t go around all
the time displeased, protesting and rebuking because anger doesn’t exist
where there is nothing to trigger it. Sometimes people are angry and we
don’t know why (sometimes they don’t know why) but because we don’t
know why doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason.
If A
is angry we don’t expect her anger to result in sweet talk and
gentleness though she may control her anger and speak amiably but then
it isn’t her anger that is producing the friendly speech—it is something
else. Because anger includes the notion of displeasure we don’t expect
it to be associated with a pleasing response but when the situation is
resolved the anger that exists because of the troubling situation
disappears/dissipates.
Without
entering into a linguistic debate we have reason to believe that God
responds in what we call “anger” (an older word would be “wrath”). The
human family has behaved and can behave in a way that displeases God and
leads him to express himself in protest, rebuke and chastisement. His
anger is not like ours in any of the tragic ways our can show itself.
Our angry response can be vindictive, vengeful, over-the-top or
something like that. That’s not because anger is a bad thing but because
we are sinful people and we can abuse even things that are not bad.
God’s anger is always warranted, is not spiteful or vengeful and always
has an overarching redemptive purpose. [He deals with individuals, of
course, but even when dealing with individuals he is working within his
intention and purposes related to the human family as a family.]
We’re
not to think of God as restless and ceaselessly foaming at the mouth,
eager to blast the transgressors into oblivion; the kind that has to be bribed into
a good mood or a kind attitude—Jesus has brought a final and glorious
end to such thinking as he confirmed the OT witness to God’s commitment
to humanity’s blessing in a new creation.
Rabbi
Heschel has taught us that God’s wrath exists in order to destroy what
generated the wrath to begin with. It isn’t a divine sulk or
supernatural spite that lashes out at those who displease him. It is God
working to uproot the trees of wickedness we plant within us or around
us; uprooting them even when it brings us pain. It is God putting us to
grief for our own individual sake and/or the sake of the family as a
whole. Walter Moberly has taught us, the wrath may be experienced as
mere retribution but it isn’t intended as mere retribution it has a redemptive purpose that is never to be severed from the welfare of the family as a family. [A disruptive child, refusing pleas and reasoning, may be sent to his room and experience it merely as punishment
but he is being excluded 1) for the benefit of the other children and
2) in hope that he will experience a change of mind and cease his
disruptive ways.]
It’s
probably a mistake to speak of human repentance or Jesus’ saving life
and death as “satisfying” the wrath of God because that suggests “wrath”
has some kind of standard that must be met; it gives it a kind of
autonomous existence—something that exists alongside God that must be
placated. Wrath doesn’t exist apart from God! Wrath is God responding; God’s anger is God being angry. If we’re to satisfy anything we’re to satisfy God
who is such a being that he has the capacity for anger at
unrighteousness and has the capacity for seeking the redemption of the
transgressors and not just their punishment.
Transgression
is not external to the transgressor. Sin is a sinner expressing
him/herself and when God deals with sin in an individual he must deal
with the individual because sin is nothing other than the sinner in
action—sins and sinners can and must be differentiated but when sins are
being dealt with they must be dealt with “in” the sinner. [I recognize
that “sin” is a much more complex reality than I’m sketching here but
it’s nevertheless true that a surgeon who deals with a patient’s tumour
doesn’t operate on the bench the patient lies on. Whatever else God does
in working with a person’s sin he must work with the sinning person.]
God’s
wrath is our assurance that oppression, abuse and immorality in all
their forms are contrary to his character and will. The people who
cannot be angered by anything are not more saintly because that’s true—they have something missing in them that should frighten and/or repulse us.
A
person who would be perpetually wrath-filled would be a nightmare. The
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is well illustrated by Jesus
himself when sometimes we see him anger-filled and at other times we
find him filled with joy and pleasure. The balance is there in
perfection.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.
