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.