Is God Loving or Angry?

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness Romans 1:18

The idea that God is capable of anger is anathema to the modern secular mind.

If God exists (we confidently declare), he is, of course, a kind and loving God who is tolerant, politically correct, and thinks highly of me and my moral achievements. The idea that he could be permenantly displeased with me is a thought that never enters the mind of modern right-thinking people but is seen as a legacy of a more primitive age when witches and homosexuals were routinely persecuted and when people thought the earth was flat.

Thank goodness we have outgrown such crude ideas!

There are of course several problems with this modern dismissal of the wrath of God.

Firstly, the idea of an anger-free God is actually more disturbing than it is comforting. Think for a moment about the worst crime you have ever read or heard about. For me, I always go back to a particularly brutal child abduction here in the UK several years ago. The 10 year old victim was snatched in broad daylight, bound, gagged and repeatedly raped before being suffocated by her attacker. Her naked body was then dumped in woodland.

As a human being and a father, how do I feel about such a crime? Actually, anger is one of the natural responses to such evil. I want that man caught, stopped and punished. My anger is mixed with all sorts of other motives - revenge, self-righteousness, horror, to name a few. But even in its impure and imperfect state, there is something appropriate about having such angry feelings in the face of gross evil. I submit to you that a response to such a crime that does not include a degree of anger is an inappropriate response.

God sees every child abduction that has ever taken place on planet earth. He also witnesses every instance of human trafficking, sexual exploitation and murder. He sees every war in all of its vile detail as well as every fraud, mugging and abuse of power.

Here is the question: is the idea of a God who sees all this and is not moved to anger by it an idea that you personally find comforting?

Put another way, how would you feel if another human being responded with an attitude of indifference or "tolerance" to such acts?

When we really think about it, the idea that God is not angry about evil is actually a terrifying, rather than a comforting, idea. It undermines our hope that there will ever be justice in the universe.

As we shall see in the coming verses, there are qualities in God's anger that distinguish it from that of human beings. It is righteous anger, to name but one. For now, however, we are introduced to Paul's systematic presentation of the Christian gospel not with an upbeat message about the love of God but firstly with an explanation of the real problem: God is justly angry with human sin.

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness Romans 1:18