It has become unpopular, even taboo to preach “fire and brimstone,”
but the inescapable fact is that the Bible frequently does and Jesus frequently did.
“And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’” Mark 9:47-48
In this excellent article / message, Dr. Don Carson of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (my seminary) provides a helpful summary of the doctrine of God’s wrath. He points out that the topic of God’s wrath occurs no less than 600 times in the Old Testament alone. He describes this as “a personal offense against the personal God who made us, and his reaction against us is to bring judgment, and that is a function of his judicial wrath.”
“A wrath-less god does not make him more attractive. It makes him morally indifferent.” Dr. Don Carson
Pastor Tim Keller has pointed out that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Hatred is built into true love. You hate whatever threatens the one you love. You could not claim to love someone without correspondingly hating whatever might harm your beloved. To be indifferent to a kidnapper or violent aggressor against your child would not be laudable in the name of “tolerance,” it would be a wicked dereliction of your duty as a parent!
In the same way, God has to punish sin. He has to hate sin – because it is our mortal enemy. Sin is what threatens to kill us and consign us to an eternity of misery. So God is at war with sin – and that is an expression of the fullness of His love. He is committed to eradicating sin from the hearts of his people and from this world that He made. One day it will all be gone – thanks be to God!
If He left sin unpunished He would not be a good and loving God, He would be an indifferent, impotent and faithless failure. But because God is faithful, loving, almighty and just He will punish sin on the day of His wrath.
This week we study the curse. We saw last week that in God’s original creation everything was “very good” (Gen. 1:31). Just two chapters later everything fell apart as God pronounced three curses. Yet even in that moment when the fabric of human nature and of our entire world was torn, God was merciful and loving. He cursed the serpent and the land, but he deflected his curse away from the man and woman. Eventually, of course, that curse fell on God’s own Son who “became a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13).
The ultimate expression of the love of God is that Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath – every drop of it – so that you and I would not have to! God poured out His wrath full strength to accomplish justice, but He poured out His wrath on Jesus so He would not have to pour it onto us!