Understanding God’s Love Through Understanding His Wrath

Understanding who God is, is the key to understanding the magnitude of what Jesus did for us at the cross. We all know God is love. The most common description of Him is just that; God is love. The Bible tells us so in 1 John 4:8 saying, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” But to stop there and say that is all we need to know about God dishonors Him and does not do justice to His ways.

If all God was is love then why did He allow His Son to suffer and die on the cross in such a brutal way? How is that love? If my dad sent me to a place where at first it seemed everybody liked me but then later they accused me of things I didn’t do and then beat me to a bloody pulp right up to the edge of death only to then hang me on a cross to die a slow and agonizing death, I would not find that to be very loving. There has to be more to the story. If my dad told me this was how it was going to be then I would need to have a little more information. There would need to be an explanation.

If love was the only attribute of God then He could have simply made us to be sinless and lived happily ever after with us in the Garden of Eden.

But there is more to the story. There is more to God. As a matter of fact there is so much more to God that we, in our finite and human minds, cannot understand His ways. Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

But this does not mean we cannot make some sense of all this. This is why theology is important. Too many people say we don’t need theology. We do. We do because really all theology really is, is the study of God. It is how we know Him. The saying goes “It is one thing to know OF God but another to KNOW God.” In order to know God we must spend time with Him. Unlike Adam and Eve or the people of the New Testament Times, we don’t literally in a physical way walk with God. We walk with Him spiritually. Jesus said this in John 4:23-24, "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."  This is how we walk with God. The way to do this is through prayer, through Bible reading and study, and through fellowship with the Body of Christ. This is how we walk with Him until Jesus returns.

I used to think the New Testament was the only place to read and to learn about God. But God is revealed and can be found in all scripture. The Old Testament is more than a historical study of the Jews. It is the story of Jesus and of how god’s love is manifest through His life, death, and resurrection.

As a simple example of this I am studying the final books of the OT and this morning was reading the book called Nahum. In this small book we learn more of God’s nature. We learn here of some of the Judgment of God and a proper understanding of who God is including the fact that God’s nature is not just of love but also of justice. I don’t think any of us would disagree that God is Holy. Scripture is replete with that truth; God is Holy. But do we really understand what holy means? Again we try and think of holiness in terms of human nature. We think of people like Mother Theresa or maybe the Pope, possibly Billy Graham as holy people. Compared to most of us those people are probably pretty good people. But compared to God they are not. None of us are. Again read your Bible. Read the Book of Romans. We are all sinners. All of us. Thus we must have the Blood of Christ shed at Calvary to cover us and give us a Holy standing before God. Without it we cannot be in God’s presence. While God’s all-knowing nature allows Him to hear our prayers unless we come through Christ and His holiness, our sins separate us from Him and He has no obligation to answer us. Without Christ and His blood we are enemies of God.

Hear the Word of God as spoken through the prophet Nahum.

Nahum 1:2
The LORD is a jealous and avenging God; the LORD is avenging and wrathful; the LORD takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.

This is God’s own Word describing Himself. Let us go on.

Nahum 1:3-6
The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebukes the sea and makes it dry; he dries up all the rivers; Bashan and Carmel wither; the bloom of Lebanon withers. The mountains quake before him; the hills melt; the earth heaves before him, the world and all who dwell in it. Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.

Do you hear the questions? “Who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.” Thank you God that you are slow to anger.

To my point about knowing who God is and not just taking one part of scripture in learning who He is read the next verse. Nahum 1:7. “The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him.”

You see God is holy and He is just. But He is good and he is loving. When you put all of scripture together you see who God really is. Through the knowledge of His anger against sin and the powerful and quite frankly scary understanding of the judgment He will bring upon those who reject Him, we can truly grasp the power of His love.

Knowing just what we see here in Nahum what Jesus was sent to do becomes an even greater act of love. When Jesus suffered and died on the cross He took the wrath of God meant for us, upon Himself. Wow. God really loves us.

Read the Bible. All of it. Learn of who God is and see how much He loves you. If you don’t know Jesus, call out to Him now and confess you are a sinner. I close with a great passage. Many of us know John 3:16 but take time now to read a little more. Then call on Him and ask Him to cloak you with His blood and to save you from His wrath into eternal life where love really will reign.

John 3:16-21
"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been carried out in God."