Wrath of God

Are you still reading?  I hope so.  There is so much false, inaccurate, or partial information regarding the wrath of God.  How do you view the wrath of God?  James Bryan Smith in Hidden in Christ offers a helpful explanation of this topic.  Here are several quotes from his devotional:

"We have two phrases difficult to reconcile: the love of God and the wrath of God. Unless we find a way to understand how both can be true of God, we end up with a Jekyll and Hyde kind of God. . .And yet I do not believe that God's wrath is the same as human anger. We get angry when we don't get our way, and we scowl and stew and sometimes take it out on someone or something. That is not the kind of anger that God expresses."

"God set up an order, a good order, and if we rebel from that order, we suffer. That is what the wrath of God is. Wrath is not God's disposition toward us; wrath is God's arrangement regarding sin."

"God is for us--that is why he hates sin. . . Sin brings with it the wrath of its own punishment."

"God is love. God's disposition toward us is, and forever remains, love. If we reject that love and go our own way we feel a void that we try to fill with the pleasures of sin. When we do that, we must expect the sad consequences. . .The natural consequence of sin is the wrath of our loving God. God set up this order because he loves us. The emptiness found in sin is often the only way people will, like the prodigal son, come to their right minds and come home."

For those in Christ, the following verses should serve as a comfort because of Jesus.

 "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!" (Romans 5:9)

"For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Thessalonians 5:9)

And that is the good news of the gospel!