The Wrath of God
The Wrath of God
John 3:36 “The one who believes in the Son has eternal life; but the one who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.” (NASB 2020)
God reconciled the world to Himself in Christ Jesus, but He does not force us to be reconciled with Him. Those who reject Him, those who refuse to believe Him, those who decide they can do it on their own, are the ones upon whom His wrath remains.
We should not think of God’s wrath like simple anger. Things are far more serious than that. God is perfect and therefore, nothing imperfect can exist in Him. All that is imperfect is simply consumed. It must be so because if anything imperfect could exist in Him, He would no longer be perfect, and therefore He would not be God at all. Since we know that at rebirth we are baptized (immersed) into Christ, at that point we must be perfect as a matter of fact. If we were imperfect in any way, we would find that “our God is a consuming fire.”
Many see God as being different in the Old Testament from the way He is in the New Testament. That is because the bulk of the Old Testament reports on events that took place while the Hebrew nation was under the Law. Under the agreement (covenant) He made with the Hebrew nation, they had to DO all the things laid out in the 613 stipulations of the Law. They agreed to those terms three times and the covenant was ratified by blood. The agreement they made with God kept being broken however, because they could not possibly do all the things they agreed to do.
Over and over in the Hebrew scriptures we see examples of the wrath of God being evidenced because of the disobedience of unbelief. It came upon the nations other than Israel because they did not know and believe God, and from time to time, it came upon Israel because they were “stiff-necked” and rebellious against God.
The covenant we have is completely different. The new covenant is unilateral. All the conditions required by the terms of the covenant must be met by God. No conditions of the covenant must be met by us. All we must do is trust Him to have meant what He said.
One of the things He said was that we have been given His righteousness and its consequence, which is eternal life, and therefore His wrath no longer rests on us. It isn’t an issue of Him having been angry with us before but no longer being angry. It is an issue of us having been incompatible before and now we are compatible.
