Our Message Must Include 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 relevance. 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, Old or New Testaments.

Do we need to be proclaiming the wrath of God more in our day?

Romans 1 tells us the wrath of God is in the process of being revealed from heaven. The subject is important enough to God to include it in his self-revelation in his word and in his creation as well. This has to be something we should know about him, he wants us to understand this about him. Life, if we'll hear its witness, screams at us through death, decay and disease that something isn't right, that God is upset and he wants us to get the message.

The thunder of his wrath echos incessantly, rattling everything in time and space, shaking everything 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 we still need to hear that today. Not that we should live shivering in fear of punishment (that's 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.

The witness of that wrath and the deadness of our souls invoke a certain trembling in us when contemplating the Almighty. At even a too clear conception 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. What 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 is the sinful heart. 

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 offended cannot be reconciled to the offender until wrath has been placated. 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, so we can't casually slip into the former without giving proper notice of the latter.

Is a message which focuses on grace without so much as mentioning wrath really good news? Our message, to be the gospel message, must include the wrath of God.