God's Anger with the Wicked

Luke 6:32-35 “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.


As usual for me, I got into a spot of controversy with some brothers during a Wednesday Bible study. We were into Luke 6 where a version of the Sermon on the Mount was being given. In verse 35 of that chapter, we are exhorted to be like God - kind and loving to our enemies. But me, being me, I felt the need to balance this scripture with John 3:17-18 and Psalm 7:11 just to preserve the idea that, though God is indeed love, and that He is indeed merciful, He never ceases to be angry with sinners.

Some people love to employ the hackneyed phrase that "God loves sinners and hates their sin", as if sin was something that has existence apart from those who commit it - or as if people were not sinners by nature and because of their very essence. The real truth is that we are inseparable from what we are - out of which springs what we do. When God looks at us, the love He has is generated entirely from His own Being and not on account of what He perceives in us. We ourselves are altogether repulsive to Him. We are the unlovely - corrupt, already condemned (unless we are in Christ). There is nothing whatsoever in us to recommend us to God.

So God is not just angry with the wicked things we do, but with the wicked beings that we are, and that anger must ultimately be satisfied. Was it satisfied on your behalf when it was unleashed upon Christ, or does it still abide upon you now, and for all eternity unless you repent? Here's one attempt at explaining wrath...


I'm not so sure I agree with Mr. Eaton (above), or with Charles Hodge's commentary on Romans when God's wrath is stripped of its emotional content and presented as a sort of dispassionate, arm's length, cerebral thing. I appreciate the effort to balance God's love and His wrath, but the way to balance is never to let the extremes be muted for the sake of harmony. It is to recognize the extremes as being part of a whole that is larger than each individually. The richness is in the extremes properly balanced and not in the extremes dulled by denial.

In Rev 14:10 we are given the picture of the lake of fire where the devil and His angels and anyone who worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. Try as I might, I cannot regard this as some dispassionate expression of the theological qualities of God. This is a passionate hatred of sin and rebellion. It is a just wrath, untainted with sin but not devoid of emotion.

But we are not God. We are tainted by sin and dwelling in sinful flesh. So we cannot truly have righteous anger towards sinners. That is for God alone. We can express passionately God's wrath towards sinners as contained in His Word. And we can strive to be yielded as instruments of His mercy and love by including the whole counsel of God in our teaching, including His violent and unquenchable indignation at all sin and, by necessity, all those individual people who commit sin - which leaves nobody out, except those who are now safely in Christ.