Words We No Longer Avoid: Wrath & Judgment ~ 1 John 4:16b-19; Luke 15:11-32

 

There are certain words in Scripture we gladly embrace. We underline them, memorize them, even hang them on our walls. Words like grace, mercy, peace, and love. Then there are the words we quietly avoid. We skim over them in our Bible reading or relish them only if they happen to someone else, someone we don’t like, someone who we think deserves it. “Wrath” is one of those words.

But no sane person cross-stitches “wrath” onto a pillow. No good parent says, “I truly love you. But if you cross me, I will make your life a living hell.” And yet the concept of wrath is everywhere in the Bible and many of us have been told – that’s precisely who God is - an angry deity whose patience has run out—a God with folded arms, clenched fists, and lightning bolts at the ready. If we're honest, that picture has become one of the reasons some of our friends or family have walked away from faith. But what if the problem isn't the word itself? What if the problem is the picture we've attached to it – the meaning that wrath has been given?

Now, before we can talk about wrath, we have to begin with the nature of God. Scripture does not tell us that God is wrath. It doesn't even say that God is justice or holiness, though God is certainly just and holy. The apostle John tells us something even more fundamental: “God is love.”

Love is not merely one characteristic among many. It is the very essence of God's being. Everything else we say about God—his holiness, his justice, his judgment, even his wrath—must be understood through that one truth. God is not love plus something else. Love is the fountain from which every attribute of God flows.

John goes on to say, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.” Notice that love opposes what fear imagines: punishment. If our understanding of God's wrath leaves us terrified of God rather than drawn toward him, then we have misunderstood both wrath and love.

And if Christians truly believe that Jesus Christ is the exact representation of God's being, the very image of God’s love in action (1 John 4:9-10), then whatever we mean by wrath must be consistent with what we see in Jesus. We don’t begin with our assumptions about wrath or quote just any verse about divine anger. We begin with Jesus, because Jesus is the fullest and final revelation of the Father. And Jesus does not persuade an angry Father to love us. He reveals the Father's heart toward us—a heart that has always loved us, even in our sinfulness (Romans 5:8). Wrath must be read through that lens. So how does Jesus reveal the Father's heart and a theology of wrath?

He tells a story. And you know it well. A father has two sons. The younger son demands his inheritance early, essentially saying, “I wish you were dead.” And astonishingly, the father gives it to him. He lets him go. He doesn't lock him in the house. He doesn't threaten him. He doesn't manipulate him. Love refuses to coerce. The son leaves for a distant country, squanders everything, and eventually finds himself feeding pigs, so hungry that the pigs' food begins to look good.

It’s one of the saddest pictures Jesus ever paints. But notice something remarkable. The father never disowns the son. He doesn’t kick him out. He doesn’t wish him harm and never stops loving him. The only thing that changes is the son's distance from his father. I have often found help from theologian Brad Jersak, who says that the story of the Prodigal Sons is Jesus’ definitive theology of wrath.

Think about that. If Jesus wanted us to understand God’s relationship to us in our sinfulness, and this is the story he chose to tell, perhaps this is what wrath looks like. Not the Father becoming our enemy. Not divine rage replacing divine love. But a loving Father painfully allowing his child to experience what life is like apart from home. Love sometimes has to let go and wrath is the felt experience of that loss. Not because the Father has stopped loving or will ever stop loving, but because God refuses to force us to stay or obey.

Parents understand this. Every instinct wants to shield a child from pain. But there are moments when reality becomes the teacher that words never could. Allowing consequences is not vengeance. It’s one of the hardest expressions of love.

It’s by mimicking Jesus’ own theology that Paul will describe God's wrath in the same surprising language in Romans 1. Three times he describes “wrath” with the  phrase: “God gave them over” (Romans 1:24, 26, 28). Notice what he does not say. He doesn't say God struck them down. He doesn't say God cursed them. He doesn't say God delighted in their pain. He understands that wrath is the love of God that willingly, painfully, consents to our wayward choices. Love honors freedom. Even when that freedom can wound us.

The Church Fathers, the earliest interpreters of the Bible, understood that “wrath” described the consequences that naturally flow from sin itself. In the Bible, when God warned his people away from sin, but they ignored his warnings and suffered the self-destructive outcomes, Scripture often describes this as the “wrath of God.” But these earliest Christian interpreters would go on to explain that God’s actual role was only indirect. Because of the Gospel, they understood that “wrath” in the Bible, even when its attributed to God, was a metaphor for God’s respect of human choices and people’s experience of their own defiance. “Wrath” was not a literal description of God enacting harm. That would make no sense of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. No, wrath was both a metaphor for the experiences of our own sinful choices and an anthropomorphism—human traits projected onto God (like God having a face, or walking in the garden).

It’s like unplugging a lamp. The electricity is not punishing the lamp. Light simply exists in the connection. Once the connection is broken, darkness isn't imposed from the outside. It’s simply what happens when the source of light is removed. The same is true of judgment. Most of us imagine judgment as a courtroom where God finally pronounces sentence. But Jesus offers a very different picture. In John 3 we’re told, “This is the judgment: the light has come into the world.”

Judgment as understood by Jesus is the presence of love and light in the world to expose and deal with sin. Light doesn't create what is in the room. It reveals what was already there. Think of opening the curtains in a room that has been shut for years. The sunlight doesn't create the dust. It simply exposes it so the room can finally be cleaned. That is God's judgment. Not his refusal to love us. His refusal to leave us trapped in illusion.  His refusal to allow that which has lain destructively in the dark to remain hidden.

If we truly want to know what wrath and judgment look like, we have to stand at Calvary. There we do not see an angry Father pouring violence onto an innocent Son or wicked people. We see humanity pouring violence, hatred, betrayal, mockery, cruelty, wrath, and death onto a loving God (Acts 2:23; 7:52).

And what does God do in the face of sinful wrath? He consents. He forgives. He dies and rises again – revealing that love unkillable. God wins. The Cross reveals that God would rather lovingly absorb wrath than inflict it. The cross is God’s judgment upon sin to save us from wrath. Paul says in Romans 5:9: “Since we have now been vindicated by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from wrath through him!” Jesus does not save us from the Father. He reveals our wrath and saves us from everything destroying us. From sin. From shame. From death. From the lies that keep us in a distant country. The Father's heart has never needed changing. Only ours. Even when Scripture speaks of God's final judgment, we should remember who the Judge is and what he has done.

The Judge is the same Jesus who washed feet. The same Jesus who welcomed sinners. The same Jesus who forgave his executioners. The same Jesus who wept over Jerusalem. Throughout Scripture, fire of judgement is often the image of purification. Gold passes through fire not because it is despised, but because it is precious. The purpose of the fire is not destruction. It’s refinement. God's final judgment is the triumph of holy love over everything that distorts and destroys. It is love burning away every false self. Every wound. Every lie. Every chain. Because God desires children, not slaves. Sons and daughters, not prisoners.

In Ephesians 3 the apostle Paul tells us that God's love is wider and longer and higher and deeper than we can comprehend. I love that Paul doesn't simply say God's love is great. He says it “surpasses knowledge.” That means every time you think you have reached the limits of God's mercy, God surpasses it. Every time you imagine you have found the edge of divine compassion, God surpasses it. If I can imagine God's love becoming greater than I currently understand it to be, Paul says it is greater still. And that means any picture of God where wrath overshadows love is already too small. God is love. Not mostly love. Not love struggling against anger but non-coercive, non-abusive, enemy-loving – love that restores us.

So wrath is not the fire burning in God's heart against us. Wrath is what life feels like when we insist on walking away from the fire of God's love. That should be taken seriously, but it’s not terrifying because wrath is love that refuses coercion. Wrath is love that honors freedom. Wrath is love that allows us to discover the consequences of our choices. But wrath is never the wish or action of an angry father. A Father who never stops watching the road. Every morning. Every evening. His heart remains the same. The Father didn’t send the son away. The Father didn’t make his son hungry. The Father's love was always constant, he never gave up, and he had the last word. Mercy triumphs over judgment!

And when the son finally turned toward home, he discovered something astonishing. The Father had already begun running toward him. That is the God Jesus reveals. That is the God Paul proclaims. That is the God whose judgment is light, whose discipline is healing, whose holiness is love, and whose wrath is the severe mercy that refuses to let us destroy ourselves forever. And that is the God whose love is always greater than we could ever ask, imagine, or comprehend. Amen.

When Silence Makes Us Sick ~ Psalm 32:1-5

 

There are certain words that many people, Christians included, either weaponize or avoid. And “sin” may be at the top of the list. Some hear the word and think:

• shame,
• condemnation,
• control,
• self-loathing
• fear

We cringe because the word can feel outdated at best (playing cards, seeing movies, drinking alcohol) or has been used to harm others or shame us at its worst. But Scripture refuses to avoid the word. Not because God is obsessed with punishment or every mistake or mess up. But because God loves us too much to remain silent about what hurts us. In this series we’re going to discover that the words we avoid are often places God lovingly waits for us. And sin and confession are those kinds of words. Not because God wants to accuse us, but because God wants to heal us. Listen to David in Psalm 32: “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.”

Sin here is not so much legal guilt. It’s internal cancer. Silence becomes sickness. Hiddenness becomes heaviness. The refusal to talk about it begins to disintegrate us from the inside out.

The Psalmist says:

• my bones wasted away,
• my strength dried up,
• I was exhausted by concealment.

This is not God torturing David. This is what sin and shame do to the human soul. Because we were not made for hiding. We were made for communion. We were made for love of God and one another. And when we move against love, against truth, against communion, something in us begins to fracture. Not because God abandons us. But because sin and its concealment hurt us.

We can be helped by attending to the Greek version of the Old and New Testaments which most often use the word hamartia for sin. It literally means: “to miss the mark.” Like an archer whose arrow misses the target. But over time many Christians reduced that to: “You broke God’s rules. You’re bad.” Yet the deeper image of hamartia is far more tragic and complicated and not merely criminal.

Sometimes we try our best, intend to harm no one, and we still miss the target (my divorce). It can be painful and yet Jesus doesn’t seem to focus so much on these types of failures. He’s much more concerned when people or groups notch their arrows and can’t bother to care, who have no interest in aiming at the targets of love of God and neighbor. In fact, Jesus will tell the story of the good Samaritan  - a withering look at people who are crack shots and who simply don’t bother. They could hit the target – help the man – but they don’t bother. And, it turns out, that the supposedly sinful one – the outsider –aids him. Listen! Sin is not primarily doing bad things. Sin is the failure to hit the target of being fully human by failing to love. Brad Jersak says that sin isn’t so much breaking arbitrary rules; it’s participation in indifference and death rather than love and life. It’s the vandalism of shalom. It deforms us because it moves us away from the life of God. It’s the refusal to participate in the love of Christ. And that changes the emotional center of the conversation. God is not standing far away saying, “You disgust me.” God is saying, “Stop wounding yourself and others. Come home. Come into the light. Let me heal what is killing you. Let me teach you how to hit the target of love.”

This is why Jesus and the early church don’t talk about sin in primarily legal metaphors of prosecution and guilt but sickness and injury. Not because every sickness is punishment. Jesus explicitly rejects that simplistic thinking. But Scripture does insist that sin infects and harms like cancer or addiction. It’s serious because it spreads. It harms the person who has it and everyone around them. It simply cannot be ignored. But no one says, “You are cancer.” The disease is not the person. Jesus shows us that sin is something that infects human flourishing. It does not define human worth. When we recognize this the question changes from: “What have you done?” to “What needs healing?”

Romans 7 describes sin almost like an infection: “I do not do the good I want…” Sin disintegrates the self: Addiction, Bitterness, Dishonesty, Contempt, Self-hatred. These realities shrink the soul. Greg Boyle writes about how sin and shame create generational cycles of violence and self-destruction. People often harm others because they themselves have been harmed. Hurt people hurt. And the response to sin is not condemnation but the way of Jesus - radical belonging fueled by a love that sits and eats with us, chases after us, refuses to separate from us, would rather die for us than seek to punish us. That matters for how we talk about sin. Because naming sin is not the opposite of compassion. Naming our sin is the beginning of healing. If I refuse to name what is killing me, I cannot be healed (James 5:16). If we refuse to name what wounds communities, communities cannot heal.

In Mark 2, friends lower a paralyzed man through the roof to Jesus. And the first thing Jesus says is startling: “Your sins are forgiven.” Why? Because Jesus sees the whole person. In the ancient world, people often assumed sickness meant divine punishment. Jesus rejects that repeatedly. But he also refuses to separate spiritual healing from human wholeness. Forgiveness is not a legal transaction detached from life. Forgiveness is restoration. Reconciliation. Rehumanization. Jesus heals bodies. Jesus heals souls. Jesus heals relationships. Jesus heals alienation. Salvation, sṓzō in the Greek, first and foremost meant to make well or whole.  

The breakthrough of healing in Psalm 32 happens in the naming: “Then I acknowledged my sin to you…” Confession is not groveling. Confession is agreeing with reality. It is stepping out of hiding. It is refusing illusion. The great lie of sin is: “If people knew the truth about me, I would lose love.” But the great truth of the Gospel says: “Truth is where love finds you.” I love the phrase in Al-anon: “You are as sick as the secrets you keep.”

James 5 says: “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed.” Notice that: confession and healing belong together. Because secrecy isolates. But confession reconnects. The Church was never meant to be a museum of pretending. It was meant to be a hospital where showing our wounds becomes possible.

Many people fear the word “sin” because they were taught shame instead of true confession. Shame says: “You are bad.” The kindness of confession says: “This path is killing you.” Shame drives us into hiding. Confession invites us to show God and others are wounds. Shame says: “There is no future.” Confession says: “Come home all is forgiven.” This is why Jesus could speak honestly about sin without crushing people. Because love was always the expression and experience. The woman caught in adultery. Zacchaeus. Peter after denial. Jesus names reality without withdrawing mercy.

Psalm 32 begins as a beatitude of joy: “Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven…” Notice: the Psalm of confession is also a Psalm of blessing. Because confession is not shame or abandonment. Confession is finding yourself loved even after you sin.

Perhaps you’ve avoided the word “sin” because you thought of the word as a weapon. But Scripture gives us the word as medicine. Not to crush us. To heal us. Because God is not trying to keep us from joy. God is trying to keep us from destruction.

A few pieces of advice from a flawed and failed archer (ugh, I can’t talk about everything) about targets, arrow safety and bow and arrow control:

1.     The metaphor is everything. I grew up in a church that solely camped on one metaphor – criminal guilt. That metaphor does exist in Scripture but it’s not the only one nor the most prominent one and is often misrepresented. The Bible also uses other metaphors like sickness needing healing, slavery needing liberation, blindness needing sight, exile needing homecoming, death needing life, lostness needing rescue, brokenness needing restoration. If you look at the culminating reality of these metaphors we are often less understood as perpetrators and more often as sin’s victims.  That’s the point of original sin – not that you are guilty for what someone else has done but that you were harmed by sin before you had a choice. Your first experience of sin is as its victim.

2.     Loving is the target. If sin is “missing the mark” it’s worth asking, “What’s the target?” And if that target is being good or being right, then perhaps a moral understanding of sin is correct. But Jesus seems to move away from that definition and defines the target as “love of God and neighbor.” So it seems to be a more helpful metaphor to understand that sin is like a disease of love. It doesn’t change whose you are; it changes how well you can love, receive love, and recognize love. Left untreated, it spreads and harms everyone. Grace and salvation then are not God deciding to love you but through love healing you because God has always loved you. And that means that if people don’t feel love then you are missing the mark. Many of us encountered the message of God’s love like Monty Python & the Holy Grail. A number of times a message would be sent between knights by attaching a message to an arrow and then shooting the messenger. Once shot the knight’s page would say “Message for you, sir.” We must stop shooting others with our message of God’s love and grace. Love is the goal.

3.     Societies are dangerous. One of the more dangerous elements of the contemporary church’s talk about sin has been the sole focus on individual sins rather than the more prominent Biblical discussion about sin in societies, institutions, legal systems, economies, etc. When sin is talked about in Scripture it primarily focuses on group elements like: exploitation of the poor (Amos 2:6-7; Ezekiel 16:49-50), corrupt justice systems (Isaiah 1:23; Micah 3:9-11); immoral religious systems (Matthew 23; Mark 12; Matthew 25). Sin is never private for long because we belong to one another.  And when the church seeks to address a societies sins (all the “-isms” like racism, sexism, fascism) in a loving way it’s called “justice.”

4.     The holiest people are not people with no sins. They are people with no secrets. People who have stopped defending false-selves. People who trust grace enough to tell the truth. People who bother to love in the face of sin. Find a relationship of love where you can talk about your failed targets. Find a church where you can talk about your personal addictions.  The invitation today is not: “Pretend to be perfect.” The invitation is: Come into the light. Tell the truth. Lay down the burden of hiding. And discover that confession is not the place where love ends. It is often the place where healing can finally begin. Amen.

Becoming an Acts 6 Church: A Vision for Trinity to Complain About This Coming Year ~ Acts 6:1-7

 

“In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.” — Acts 6:1

Anyone who’s been in church long enough knows this truth: eventually, someone complains. Usually we treat complaints like threats. Like grenades thrown into the life of the church. We brace ourselves. Defend ourselves. Explain ourselves. Fight. Flee. Shut it down. But Acts 6 gives us a surprisingly different picture. The early church doesn’t grow despite complaints. It grows through them. Complaints become the doorway to deeper ministry, wider participation, and greater faithfulness.

So here’s the challenge before Trinity this year: What if the future of our church depends not on silencing complaints—but on listening for the Spirit within them? What if some complaints are not distractions from ministry but invitations into it? And what if the church in Acts 6 became our model for real ministry? What might that look like?

Acts 6 Churches Complain About Real Need

In Acts 6, Greek-speaking widows are being neglected in the daily distribution of food. Not inconvenienced. Not overlooked accidentally. Neglected. And the church does something remarkable: they tell the truth about it. A minority group names a real injustice, and the apostles do not minimize it, spin it, or bury it. They listen.

Friends, I have seen us becoming that kind of Acts 6 church. I saw it when people in this congregation became weary of toxic politics poisoning relationships, distorting Christian witness, and discipling people more deeply than Jesus. A few brave people complained—and instead of ignoring it, they created space for honest conversation, prayer, and reconciliation.

I saw it when members of this church looked around Salem and complained that families living below the poverty line were drowning financially with nowhere to turn. And that complaint became a free tax-preparation ministry that served our neighbors with dignity and practical care.

I saw it when people noticed families losing SNAP benefits and struggling to put food on the table. They complained that people were being neglected—and that complaint became partnership, food distribution, and shared ministry with Queen of Peace Catholic Church.

Again and again, I’ve seen this truth: complaining does not disqualify us. Silence does. A Spirit-filled church is not a church without problems. It is a church courageous enough to face them honestly. Because if we cannot name our failures, our needs, we cannot make a difference.

Acts 6 Churches Critique Themselves From the Inside

Notice something important in Acts 6: the complaint comes from within the church. The people speaking up are not disgruntled detractors. They belong. They love the community enough to tell the truth about it. That is rare. Most institutions protect themselves, get defensive, become better at cancelling complainers than addressing them.

But the early church did something different. When they spoke about sin and failure, they did not point outward and say, “their sin.” They confessed: “our sin” (1 Cor. 15:3). Our neglect. Our blindness. Our responsibility.

So here is the question before us: Can Trinity become the kind of church where people are free to name what is broken without fear? Can we become the kind of church where complaints are not dismissed immediately, but discerned prayerfully? Can we become a people secure enough in grace that we no longer need to pretend?

Because that kind of honesty is evangelistic. It tells the world we are not performing righteousness but truly pursuing it – sometimes failingly, of course, but honestly and persistently.

Acts 6 Churches Empower the Complainers

And here is the most shocking part of the story. The apostles do not merely listen to the complaint. They hand ministry over to the people raising it. “You choose the leaders,” they say.

And who do they choose? The very group that spoke up. That is the turning point of Acts 6. Because complaining by itself is only criticism. But complaint joined with responsibility? That becomes ministry. Some of the most powerful ministry at Trinity this past year was led by people who first complained. They saw something broken. Something neglected. Something hurting. And instead of walking away, they stepped toward it.

So let me ask you directly: What do you want to complain about? Where do you see neglect? What breaks your heart? What frustrates you? Where do you find yourself thinking: “Someone should really do something about this”?

Acts 6 asks a dangerous question: What if that someone is you? Not because you are the loudest voice. Not because you have all the answers. But because the Spirit may be helping you see what all of us must. We do not need more volunteers. We need disciples willing to take responsibility for what God places in front of them. People who will complain. Pray. Discern. And act. That is ministry. That is how the church grows: not when a few exhausted people do everything, but when the whole body becomes responsible for the mission of Jesus together.

The Result: The Church Revives and the Pastor Converts

Acts 6 ends with a surprising detail: A large number of priests begin joining the movement (6:7). Religious professionals start becoming Christians. Why? Because they witnessed something beautiful: a community where ministry was not controlled by a few powerful people, but shared among the whole church. A church where the Spirit moved through ordinary people. A church where people did not merely attend—they took ownership. A church where people did not merely complain—they served.

And friends, I need to tell you something honestly: Your faithfulness has converted me. Your willingness to speak hard truths, start ministries, serve neighbors, and take responsibility has changed how I understand who we are and what we might do. This is the kind of church I don’t simply wish to lead but am proud to belong. Not a church without problems— but a church willing to face them. Not a church afraid of complaints— but a church listening for the Spirit through them. Not a church where a few people carry the ministry— but a church where every member is called into it.

So as we recommit ourselves this year—spiritually, relationally, financially—this is the question before us: Will we remain spectators? Or will we be an Act 6 church of Spirit-filled complainers? A church brave enough to complain, faithful enough to listen, and courageous enough to serve. So complain, if you must. But don’t stop there. Pray. Step in. Take responsibility. Because that’s where the Spirit moves. And that’s how the church becomes good news.