Does God get angry?

And now see how Scripture actually speaks of the very point. It does not simply say that, where sin abounded, love did much more abound, but grace did much more abound. But more. We were by nature the children of wrath: it was our natural inheritance from God; for whose wrath is spoken of? What belonged to us? "But God who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us." So that wrath against us, as our natural portion from God, is not inconsistent with infinite and sovereign love. Thus Christ in the synagogue looked upon them with anger, being grieved at the hardness of their hearts. The grief was love, the anger His righteous estimate of their sin.

251 Grace reigns, blessed be God, but it is through righteousness; Rom. 5. Dr. W. seems to say it is in making us practically righteous by removing our sins. But it is "God's righteousness." Does he question it is God's wrath? I quote Romans 1:17-18, for both, "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed." Why? "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven." And then Paul proceeds to prove all the world guilty before God as the reason of this. It is not true, therefore, that wrath cannot be where there is love. A father full of love may be rightly angry with his child, and when Dr. W. says "wrath in the heart," he is misled altogether, and confounds hatred with judicial anger. There is no hatred in God to man assuredly. Yet God is a righteous judge, and God is angry every day and ought to be so.

It is quite true that justice is not wrath or judgment. But as far as men go, we may justly say we turned God into a judge by sin, not assuredly into a righteous Being. When he had created Adam innocent, there was nothing to judge. It would have been judging His own workmanship. But righteousness becomes wrath (not hatred) when evil is in the presence of judicial authority exercised in righteousness. The righteous Lord loveth righteousness; but God is a righteous judge, and God is angry every day. And now wrath is revealed from heaven as surely as infinite love is. In sovereign grace He rises above the sin, and loves without a motive, save what is in His own nature and part of His glory. Man must have a motive for loving. God has none but in Himself, and "commendeth his love to us" (and the "His" is emphatic as to this very point), in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us: the best thing in heaven that could be given for the vilest, defiled, and guilty sinners. Dr. W. seems to me to lower and depreciate the love of God quite as much as His justice and His righteous wrath.

"For we have been consumed by Your anger" (v, 7). Why should God's anger and wrath be against us, and cause us to be terrified? This is anger of a pure and righteous character, by no means the losing of temper. But we generally have little sense of the dreadful enormity of our sins, both public and secret. Do we not ourselves have anger against anyone who would viciously ham our children for no reason? — or against children who would deliberately despise their parents? Thus, if we harm others who are God's creatures, or if we despise God and His Word, is it not only right that God should be angry with us?

Then the third set of questions would again, if entertained, bring God's nature into question. "Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger shut up His tender mercies? (v.9). Is it possible for God to forget? Is he God, or not? Has He become so angry that He has cut off all possibility of showing His characteristic tender mercies? Men may become so angry as to lose control of themselves, but God's anger is always consistent with His love. Because He loves good, He is angry with 'what attacks good, and his anger is perfectly wise, for it is anger against evil, and therefore active on behalf of good. Always it has in view the greatest good of believers.

274 There are many things I should not accept in Dr. W.'s statement here, but I pass them over as not the main point; but he has not explained the ilastheti of the publican in the temple. I am not insisting on reconciling God, for I do not think it scriptural; but the "making peace by the blood of the cross" suffers in the hands of Dr. W. To say that God is not angry with the sinner, because He loves him, is confusion of mind. I can be angry morally and judicially, I cannot perhaps be righteously anything else, with those I dearly love. Did Christ not love those whom He looked at "with anger, being grieved at the hardness of their hearts"? Wrath may be come upon a people to the uttermost, and God not cease to be love, and he even who says it — Paul — not have ceased to love them devotedly. The union or meeting of infinite love and "the curse of wrath" is, by Dr. W.'s own admission, the essential character of the cross. Dr. W. must allow me to say that his argument as to the atonement-money or the numbering of the children of Israel is wholly without force. The commandment was not concerning the numbering, but concerning giving a ransom for their souls; lest they should die when they were numbered, being brought, poor sinners that they were, personally and individually under God's eye when thus numbered.

One thing more. Behind the truth of propitiation lies the fundamental fact of the anger of God against sin, which expresses itself in penal retribution. In this behold the real reason why every teacher of "modern" tendencies avoids the subject even if he does not attempt to flatly deny or explain it away. And yet how oft reiterated in Scripture! Terrible indeed, yet staring us in the face upon almost every page of our Bibles. God "hates wickedness," He is "angry with the wicked every day" and ultimately "the wicked shall be cast into hell" — whether men believe it or not.

128 This closes the introductory verses. The Person of the Lord Jesus and the righteousness of God are the great thesis of the glad tidings of God. One revealed as the Deliverer, the Son of God, claimed the obedience of faith; the other, still on the principle of faith, revealed as the ground on which man could have a part in purposed blessing through grace. The apostle now turns to what made this righteousness of God necessary to us. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness, and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness." This is a most important principle. It is not governmental wrath, such as bringing the Assyrian against Israel, or leading them captive to Babylon - a thing of this world, while God was hidden still behind the veil. It tells us of the incompatibility of God's nature with evil. God's wrath was revealed against everything inconsistent with His nature - wrath from heaven against all ungodliness; and, where the truth was known, and men might seem to be nearer to God, as the Jews, if held in unrighteousness, wrath was against such as so held it too. Wrath against all ungodliness was revealed from heaven; Gentile, Jew, men in every condition, came under the judgment. It was not a hidden God dealing in earthly judgment, but God Himself fully revealed according to His own nature, abhorrent of evil, in necessary wrath against all evil, wherever it was met. His nature could admit no evil. Dispensational ways there might have been - government, patience. But now wrath was revealed from heaven against all evil, wherever it was found.

We are prone to forget, when we speak of the love and mercy of God, that He is a Being great and terrible in His intolerance of sin. The God which the mind of the twentieth century has conceived is not the God of the Scriptures. It is like a breeze from the highlands of eternal truth to read the words of our prophet, describing God's jealousy and awful anger against evil doing, His righteousness, His power, and His majesty.

True, He is good, and His people find Him to be a stronghold indeed in the day of trouble. Moreover, His wrath is not easily aroused; He is "slow to anger." But when evil raises its head in persistent hostility to good, and will not be subdued, then indeed God shows that He is not indifferent, but that His indignation and fierce anger are such that nothing can stand before Him. His pity is infinite, but He "will not at all acquit the wicked."

It must be remembered that God's anger is always righteous anger—ours surely is not. Hence we frequently have the expression “provoked Him to anger,” applied to God, rightly; but man who is dependent, should not give way to anger, but leave the matter with God as supreme. Jesus when on earth took the place of man; hence He bore all with perfect patience and meekness, committing His cause to Him who judges righteously. The punishment in Moses' case may seem severe, but we must remember that Moses was a great saint, “Moses, the man of God”; and that a little sin in a great saint is worse than a great sin in a sinner. God cannot lightly overlook outbreaks of natural passion in His people, even when provoked; for He has given them power to restrain it.

There was a piaculum, 'an expiatory sacrifice,' something satisfying for the individual involved in guilt, or what was offensive to God, what He could not tolerate from His very nature. This with the heathen, who attached human passions or demon-revenge to their gods, was of course perverted to meet those ideas. They deprecated the vengeance of a probably angry and self-vengeful being. But God has a nature which is offended by sin. It is a holy, not of course a passionate, one; but the majesty of holiness must be maintained. Sin ought not to be treated with indifference, and God's love provides the ransom. It is God's Lamb who undertakes and accomplishes the work. The perfect love of God and His righteousness, the moral order of the universe and of our souls through faith, is maintained by the work of the cross. Through the perfect love not only of God, the giver, but of Him, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, propitiation is made, expiation for sin, its aspect being toward God, while the effect applies to us in cleansing and justifying, though it goes much farther.