“I believe in God, but I just don’t know if I can trust the God of the Bible. How can a good God have Israel wipe out the Canaanites? Or send people to hell?” I was speaking with an acquaintance at the gym when he asked me a question that many people quietly carry: how can a good God also be a God of wrath?
There are many thoughtful defenses to explain how a benevolent God rightly administers divine judgment. Writers like Paul Copan (Is God a Moral Monster: Making Sense of the Old Testament God) help us answer the Canaanite question reminding us that God gave the Canaanites (a people who practiced despicable practices such as child sacrifice) four hundred years to repent (see Gen. 15:16 and Lev. 18:24-28) before finally bringing judgment. Others like, Darryl Dash, (“How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?”) help us think through the reality of hell. And C.S. Lewis memorably wrote in The Great Divorce that hell is, in the end, God honoring a human being’s lifelong request: “Go away and leave me alone.” Hell is God’s answer: “You may have your wish.” Lewis wrote, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it.”
The Canaanite and hell questions are important and deserve a fuller response than the paragraph above. Yet rather than attempting to answer every such question at once, I would rather focus on the deeper question: Is it right for a loving God to display wrath at all? I will answer that question by looking through the lens of Good Friday.
Before we go to the cross, let’s consider four foundational truths Scripture gives us:
God is holy, so he must oppose sin.
God is loving, so he must oppose evil.
God is patient, delaying judgment to allow repentance.
God is just, ensuring evil is ultimately dealt with.
1. God is holy, so he must oppose sin
The Bible consistently presents God as perfectly holy. In Isaiah’s vision, the seraphim cry out in the threefold repetition that the presence of God’s holiness demands: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts” (Is. 6:3).
God’s holiness means he is morally pure and utterly set apart from evil. Because of this, sin cannot simply be ignored without compromising God’s character. If God overlooked injustice, cruelty, and rebellion, he would not be righteous. Scripture describes wrath not as uncontrolled anger, but as his settled just opposition to sin, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness” (Rms. 1:18). God’s divine wrath is unlike man’s rage. It is not impulsive or selfish. It is the measured, righteous response of a holy God to real evil.
2. God is loving, so he must oppose evil
Imagine excitedly picking up your kindergartner as he climbs off the bus only to notice that he has a black eye. Tears roll down his cheeks. He falls into your arms and tells you the story. He’s been bullied into giving his lunch money to a third grader for weeks, but today he tried to stand up for himself and got punched.
What rises in your heart? How would you handle this situation? You call the school, you meet with the other boy and his parents. Love is not indifferent. Love responds. If someone harms a child, love demands justice. A love that shrugs at evil is not love at all.
In the same way, God’s love for his creation means he must stand against what destroys it.
Theologian Miroslav Volf (who lived through the brutal Croatian War of Independence in the 1990s) argued that belief in God’s wrath actually makes forgiveness possible, because it means evil will ultimately be dealt with. Without justice, victims are left with unresolved wrongs. With justice, victims are assured of perfect vindication (whether they ever actually see it or not).
Nahum says, “The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty” (Nah. 1:3). God’s wrath shows that evil matters, and that victims matter. God’s wrath is the expression of his love in a world corrupted by evil.
3. God is patient, delaying judgment to allow repentance
Unlike us, God is not quick tempered. He is patient and merciful. When he reveals himself to Moses, he declares, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Ex. 34:6). God’s history with humanity confirms this patience. Consider the 120 years of warning before God sent the flood, or the generations that God patiently waited on the grumbling Israelites to repent before bringing judgment. He delays judgment, giving people time to turn back to him. He says plainly, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked… and not rather that he should turn and live” (Ez. 18:23, 32). God’s wrath is never his first impulse. His heart is inclined toward mercy.
4. God is just, ensuring evil is ultimately dealt with
Because God’s wrath is perfect, we can trust that he will extinguish evil from the earth forevermore.
As the book of Revelation closes, God gives John a poetic vision conveying this truth, “And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Rev. 22:5). When Christ comes to judge, evil will be defeated, suffering will end, and injustice will be no more. Without judgment, evil would ultimately win. With judgment, God’s love restores and renews creation.
The cross reveals both the love and wrath of God
All of this brings us to Good Friday. At the cross, we see the clearest answer to the question of God’s wrath. There, God does not merely express wrath outwardly—he bears it himself, for our sake. God is merciful, bearing judgment on himself in Christ.
Love and wrath meet at the cross.
Paul says, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rms. 5:8). God does not ignore sin; he deals with it fully and finally in Jesus’ death.
Paul explains that we “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” (Rms 3:24-25). At the cross, God’s justice is upheld (sin is judged) and at the same time, God’s love is displayed (he bears that judgment himself).
Paul explains that the just law of God, intended for us to live righteous and loving lives, hangs over all of us as a curse. We have all sinned and so no one can stand perfectly righteous in front of a holy God on that day of judgment. To our rescue, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”— so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith” (Gal. 3:13-14).
God absorbs his own wrath in Christ for the sake of sinners. The cross is where God’s holiness and love embrace.
How do we respond to the question, “How can I trust the God of the Bible?” Ultimately, the answer is not an abstract argument. It is a person. Look to the cross. Look to Jesus.
In 2001, the world grappled with heartbreaking terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. Stuart Townend and Keith Getty penned the modern hymn “In Christ Alone.” They invite us to reflect on these great truths:
In Christ alone, my hope is found
He is my light, my strength, my song
This Cornerstone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
My Comforter, my All in All
Here in the love of Christ I stand
In Christ alone, who took on flesh
Fullness of God in helpless babe
This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones He came to save
'Til on that cross as Jesus died
The wrath of God was satisfied
For every sin on Him was laid
Here in the death of Christ I live, I live
Though questions about God’s wrath are real and weighty, the cross reveals where the heights of God’s love and his wrath are perfectly reconciled.
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Photo by Hugo Fergusson on Unsplash