Dear sister,
I have three vivacious children whom I love deeply. One just turned seven and the twins just turned four. Each have their own distinct personality that leave us both laughing and banging our head numerous times throughout the day. We practice catechism questions during our breakfast time to inform our effervescent and willful kids of who our God is, why he made us and all things, and also to give me wisdom in how to teach them about how to do life from a biblical world view. Today we worked on our sin questions:
- What does every sin deserve? The wrath and curse of God
- How sinful are you by nature? I am corrupt in every part of my being
- What is the sinful nature that we inherit from Adam called? Original sin
- Can anyone go to heaven with this sinful nature? No. Our hearts must be changed before we can believe in Jesus and go to heaven
- Who can change a sinner’s heart? The Holy Spirit alone
Whoa. These questions often remind me of the weight and hopelessness of sin and informs my children of what their sins deserve. A needed fact to help them ask themselves how they can be free of this wrath and curse. My heart longs for this wrath and curse of God to be turned away from my kids and others who have not trusted in Christ. This holy heat of wrath is real. But how do we comprehend his wrath and its purpose? It’s helpful to look at God’s love, righteousness, and jealousy to gain this understanding. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that God is love. His love is the foundation of all his qualities…it is not his only quality…it holds up his others. His love is good. His love is righteous. His love is jealous. His love moves him to wrath. But how?
Let’s look at his righteousness first. John Frame defines God’s righteousness as how God “acts according to a perfect internal standard of right and wrong. All his actions are within the limits of that standard.” That God is good is the foundation of his righteousness. We find his standard for law and justice in his law. Where is this law? It’s the Word of God! Not only does he give this law, he follows it as seen in Christ. He does what is right and just. This implies that righteousness is seen in actions. This is important because unrighteousness will also be seen in actions. God always does what is right. Humans do not. And God cannot condone what is not right, sin as sin is lawlessness and lawlessness must bring some kind of penalty. Hmmmm…a penalty has to be paid.
Next lets look at how God’s law is jealous. He is jealous for his great name, he will not give his glory to another. Moses describes his jealousy as a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24). His jealousy is focused specifically on the sin of idolatry. He has an exclusive love for his people and he demands reciprocal love from them, too. If they give glory to another, watch out! His jealous love will be seen fiercely, and rightly so. His jealousy demands wrath. He made a covenant with his people that demands exclusivity. If his people are unfaithful to him, he is fiercely angry and jealous, just how a wife would be if she discovered her husband was unfaithful. This is how God’s wrath comes on those who put idols before his name. The penalty for loving something or someone more than God is his wrath.
This brings us to wrath. Jealousy and his standard of complete righteousness being broken are motives for wrath. Wrath opposes our unrighteous sin in general and executes the punishments severely (Num. 11:33; 2 Kings 22:13, John 3:36, Rom 1:18, Eph. 5:6, Col 3:6, Heb. 3:11; 4:3, Rev 14:10, 19; 15:1, 7; 16:1, 19:15) Remember that our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29). So God’s decisions of salvation and wrath are made from His good and righteous personal decisions that are grounded in his love. We cannot separate out his character to make him all of one character and nothing of another. He is all of these all of the time. I love how John Frame says, “There is something wild, mysterious, and threatening about God’s wrath, which makes it difficult to reconcile this with his love.” We struggle with how a loving God can give holy heat. It helps to remember that he is also patient and slow to anger (Ps 103:8, Joel 2:13). He gives sinners many opportunities to repent. His love actually postpones his wrath…like how I warn my children about their behavior before disciplining them.
We need to remember that Hell is real. It’s the ultimate place where God’s wrath will be unleashed and fully experienced forever. Those who do not repent and trust in Christ “will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might (2 Thess. 1:9). This brings us back to his righteousness. The loving part of righteousness will forgive all when a sinner repents, yet this righteousness also calls for a just punishment for those who do not repent. This is made clear at the cross. Where Christ sacrificed himself to pay the wrath of God sinners deserve thereby satisfying the just portion of righteousness. He did this out of love for the Father which is the loving part of his righteousness. This proves that if there is no wrath against sin, there can be no righteous love. John 3:16 explains this best, “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.” What this means is there is a way to escape the wrath of God in hell – through the cross of Christ! There is hope for my kids and there is hope for you if you have not trusted him.
And for those of us who have placed their trust in Christ, it is true that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:1), but that does not allow us to openly sin or rebel against God. We no longer have to fear the wrath of hell, but He will discipline us when we do not live a righteous life out of our gratefulness and love for Christ. We would do well to escape this judgement by looking daily to Christ. We need to run our race with fellow believers who will encourage us on this lifelong journey (Heb. 10:25, Phil 3:14).
We teach our kids how their sins deserve the wrath and curse of God because we love them. They need to know that hell is real…that his holy heat will come. They need to not want that. We want them to see their need for a Savior…THE Savior. That Christ satisfied God’s justice by his suffering and death as a substitute for sinners of which they are. He took God’s wrath and curse for them. Then we beg them to trust Christ. And then we tell ourselves the same thing, we deserved that wrath but Christ took it for us. How can we not live out of a thankful heart full of love for this God who gave His only son to take our wrath out of His love for us? Sweet sister, trust him afresh!
Yours In Christ,
Colleen