Wrath and Mercy

A few weeks back I was reading during my quiet time in the morning and came across a comment by a writer on the subject of God's wrath."If you don’t believe in a God of wrath, you have no idea of your value".  Initially this seemed hard but the more I considered it the more it made sense.

All too often, Christians that I speak with, prefer to stick with the New Testament, Jesus, the disciples and the theme of love as shown through Jesus. The Old testament is at best treated with cursory interest at worst it is put aside. Perhaps a sad reflection on our society and culture, which seems to want to make things after their own image, even God.

For me there is a problem in leaving the Old Testament out of the picture and not wanting to engage with a God who does show anger, who we are told pours out his wrath at the sin of humanity. A number the prophets talk of God's wrath at sin, the sin of his people, who chose their own ways rather than God's. The impact over time was that the nation of Israel became degenerate, broken and self focused. In effect choosing to do whatever seemed OK at the time. (When I look at our culture I see many of the same traits). Ezekiel for example, tells us that God's wrath was to pour on his people as result of this.

What is God's wrath all about? Well it seems to me that it is about the effect of sin. Sin not only is a choice to go against God's ways, it has consequences, one person's wrong doing will affect others. For example our collective attitude to discarding our rubbish - often not in rubbish bins, affects others as it pollutes our towns and cities and even our hedgerows, land and seas. Most of us drive vehicles and most of us use them regardless of distance or need. These pollute, whether using "so called" clean fuel (Electric) or fossil fuel (petrol, diesel) they cause environmental damage - the energy source has to come from somewhere! So when we use them without consideration and damage the planets Eco-systems, what are we doing? When we live lives that are so self focused it leads to the attitude of work till we drop, being busy all of the time, filling every moment with doing. No wonder we suffer extreme stress and mental and physical illness. Not what God intended and hence his best for us is that we take regular rest to regenerate our energy and to help our well-being.

What God created was good, what we do is often not so good and in fact causes serious harm. Now I begin to get it. God's wrath, at least in part, is perhaps related to the impact of sin on everything. We are told that the price of sin is death, ours! Pretty harsh stuff. Measuring sin and its impact multiplied by humanity, past, present and future would be too difficult to compute. But God knows that computation and instead of wiping us out, God's love for us wins. All of that wrath was taken up and drunk by Jesus - read the account of the garden of Gethsemane.

All of the price of all of that sin, all of that wrath at that sin, taken and transformed by Jesus, through love, God's love for us. Love that means that if we accept the free gift of God, we are forgiven, restored to relationship with God, through Jesus. Wrath and mercy meeting through the life changing, live saving work of the cross. And our value? Beyond price I think.