The Message In the Wrath of God

Considering the fame and evangelistic effect of "Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God," it is surprising that we don't hear much about the wrath of God anymore. I wonder if we're missing something important in ignoring or undercutting its message. Perhaps God's wrath has something important, even necessary, to say to this generation-- there certainly is no absence of the subject in the Bible. Do we need to be proclaiming the wrath of God more?

Romans 1 tells us the wrath of God is in the process of being revealed from heaven. Obviously, the subject is important enough for God to include it in his self-revelation in his word and in his creation. In other words, this is something we should know about him, he wants us to understand this. Life, if we'll hear it, screams at us in no uncertain terms that God is upset and he wants us to get the message. The repercussions of his wrath echo incessantly, rattling everything in this time and plane until it ultimately dies.

Prophets, one after the other, tried to establish God's wrath as a stimulant to reasonable thinking on the part of their hearers. Though far removed from them in space and time we need to hear them. Not that we should live in fear of punishment (that is the Devil's ploy) but we should live in sober judgment discerning the nature of how things work and what that tells us about the wrath of God. When sky-walking upon a steel girder stories above the security of earth, that sinking feeling that discerns gravity is a boon to clear thinking and careful stepping.

Surely wisdom owes a debt of gratitude to the revelation of God's wrath in nature.

The witness of that wrath and the deadness of our souls invoke a certain trembling in us when considering the almighty Creator. At even the thought of God we hide, trembling in the bushes, knowing we are sinners and children of wrath by nature. We fear the face of him who sits on the throne. Any wrath from one eternal, perfect in action and almighty in power is enough to seal our fates for eternity, so nothing could coax us out of our hiding places but the sure knowledge that our sins were fully expiated and we were thereby reconciled to God.

The outrageousness and brutality of Christ's passion impeccably scribes the fearful breadth of God's wrath against sin on the stone tablet that was Golgotha. 

Do we even have a real purpose in ministry and evangelism without paying due deference to the wrath of God? Ours is a ministry of reconciliation. The quality and depth of God' grace and forgiveness cannot be seen in proper relief apart from the backdrop of his animus against sin. He who is perfect in grace is also perfect in wrath. Have we even delivered a message worthwhile at all if we haven't communicated the message in the wrath of God?