Why We Need God's Wrath

It seems that church isn’t like it used to be or that our expectations have exceeded what we wish church to be. Church used to follow the Word of God, embracing the divine doctrines that spell out the relationship that He wants each of us to have with Him. These doctrines encapsulate what He teaches and what we learn to accept from Him. With these in mind, we are now seeing massive distortions and as we enter the eschatological period of the End Time, we bear witness to some of the most unbelievable things to come out from various churches.

Rob Bell’s missive from his book called Love Wins is that there is no hell. He believes that when Jesus talks about eternal damnation, He can’t possibly mean ‘eternal’ in the way you and I think it means. He says God cannot be this mean as to subject someone to a hell that lasts forever. He also thinks that people can die not knowing or rejecting Jesus and still be given the keys to heaven. He gives examples of those who do good but who denies Jesus and believes that people like Mahatma Gandhi is and should be in heaven. In a way he cites names of ‘great world leaders’ so that it is difficult for many of us to oppose his line of argument.

A person who calls himself a pastor, a person like Rob Bell, has made it very difficult to many to understand the true nature of God. Like many who cast God as mono-dimensional, Bell talks voluminously about love and prosperity, about forgiveness and of truth but he also doesn’t think there is anything wrong with same-sex marriages simply because people have a need for one another to be loved. According to Bell, when love conquers all, no sin comes in its way.

(Show video) MSNBC Host Makes Rob Bell Squirm – You’re Amending the Gospel So That It’s Palatable

It’s not only easy but dangerous to be given a global platform where one spouts divergent doctrines that go against the divine grain of God’s Word. When someone says there is no hell, what do we read into it?

-          Do we say that he has never read the Bible in his life? Rob Bell has. He is a trained pastor.

-          Do we say that he has no inkling of one of life’s most given precepts? Most of us including non-Christians are aware of heaven and hell and if there is a heaven, there is a hell.

Those are the obvious ones. Perhaps the less obvious but more dangerous aspects of Bell’s allegations are these:

-          Without acknowledging hell, one can do as he pleases.

-          By telling others there is no hell to worry about, we can be unaccountable for all that we do.

-          Without a hell to threaten us, we can sin and get away with it.

-          Without a hell but only heaven to beckon, we don’t have to be good and yet be rewarded.

This is liberal theory. This is a theory of convenience designed to tell others that we don’t care about God’s anger or fury; that there is no God’s wrath to worry about. Heck, Bell says we don’t have to be Christians to get to heaven and even if we’ve been rejecting Christ all our lives, we still get our heavenly rewards. That would suggest to me that those who were responsible for 9/11, for the Benghazi attack, for massacring people including Christians, for creating the Holocausts, for suicide bombing, for honour killings should all be in heaven. When we get there, we should be shaking hands with them.

Without God’s wrath, we patently don’t need to be Christians. I don’t see any reason why we should be in church this morning. So what is it that tells us that this doctrine is so wrong? In other words, do we really need God’s wrath around?

With people like Bell serving as reminders, we note there are at least eight reasons why we need God’s wrath:

1. We need God’ wrath to keep us honest about Evangelism (Acts 24:25)

How many of us even evangelise in the first place? What more if there is no God’s wrath in place? Most of us will more likely use the time to do everything else but the great commission. We have been exhorted by Christ to spread the Word but evidently that is a job left to a few to do for the many who don’t.

In the time we have remaining in our lives, God expects us to do our part just as Paul did with Felix (Acts 24:25) when he spoke of righteousness, self-control and the coming Judgement. This is what we should be doing. Of all the things we say to others, the one thing we must be reminded to do is to urge sinners to be reconciled to God.

As it was with Felix, he might have trembled at what Paul said, but inevitably he was not changed by it. For those unfamiliar, Felix was an oppressive judge and his wife, Drusilla, a profligate mistress who was probably more into bling and a richly material life.

2. We need God’s wrath in order to Forgive our enemies (Rom 12:19)

Many of us do so little of this. Forgiving is very difficult; forgetting even more so. Imagine a world without God’s wrath. Forgiveness would be non-existent as we take matters in our own hands to avenge our hurt and humiliation. It wouldn’t have mattered the extent of the vengeance because nothing would be there to stop us.

God says, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay.” That is God’s wrath set to play in time to come. It is His promise that we trust Him to deliver, to repay the wicked and to balance the ledger of life.

How could we reconcile what we learn from the Bible if we are left to our devices to pay evil with evil? How are we to stay humble and not react when we know that anything we take into our hands to commit will not bear God’s wrath? Check out Romans 12:20, which says, “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Without God’s wrath, I doubt any of us will do any of that.

In light of God’s wrath, we ARE reminded that every sin against us has been paid in full on the cross and/or will be punished in hell. As God’s children, we have the privilege not to do the heavy lifting – seeking vigilante justice is Hollywood fantasy, our lives are set straight and clean because we have a God who is a just judge and whose wrath is yet seen until the Final Judgement.

3. We need God’s wrath in order to Risk our lives for Jesus’ sake (Rev 6:10)

Most of us have yet to come to that stage in our lives when we are called upon to risk our lives for Jesus’ sake but millions of others through generations till today have. Many have lost their lives proclaiming their faith in Christ, knowing that all they had to do to save their own lives was simply to renounce.

These people are crying out with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Right now, John describes them as beneath the altar where their souls are. They have been slain because of the word of God and the testimonies they had maintained.

If you knew that there is no wrath of God to exact on your killer, would you give your life for the cause? If God had other things to do than to account for those who sacrificed for His cause, you wouldn’t feel vindicated in the end, would you?

Millions paid the ultimate price for their faith in Christ. Their blood-stained cries have yet to be answered but one day, God will. Because His wrath will say He will.

4. We need God’s wrath in order to live Holy lives (Matt 10:28, Gal 6:6-7)

Paul reminds us that we reap what we sow. That’s another way of telling us that we must spur ourselves to live a holy life for God’s promise is just reward for the obedient and damnation for the disobedient. To live a life that fulfils purely the pleasures of the flesh will invite God’s wrath, to reap eternal destruction but to live to please the Spirit is to guarantee us the joy of eternal life.

As it is said, fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. In fearing God alone is to know of His wrath for He alone has the ability to destroy not just the flesh but the soul as well.

To put that into proper perspective is to occasionally shake ourselves down in order that we are reminded of God’s awesome wrath. Too much of today’s churches talk incessantly of His loving nature but that misses the point of His ability to have His anger stoked by our evildoings. When we do not live holy lives, we provoke His wrath.

In other words every now and then, we need to literally scare the living hell out of people. Including ourselves.

5. We need God’s wrath in order to understand what Mercy means (Rom 5:10)

What is mercy if it is not the call to be spared of punishment? When we know we have done wrong, we face the prospect of being punished. When we plead for mercy, it is because we wish to be given the chance to atone for our sins.

Therefore divine mercy without divine wrath makes no sense. It is meaningless and it does not mesh with the rest of the Bible. To live under God’s grace is to live under His mercy. Here’s what we should know when it comes to mercy:

-          We are objects of God’s wrath (Eph 2:3)

-          We’ve long been condemned and we stand condemned (John 3:18)

-          Were it not for His mercy, we would long have faced hell as God’s enemy (Rom 5:10)

God’s mercy offers us the opportunity to live our lives to please Him and the best chance to begin our painful journey of sanctification. There is much that is wrong with our individual lives but with His mercy at hand, we can expend our effort to bring about remedy. The obverse side of mercy would be God’s wrath and between His wrath and mercy, we all know which we’d choose.

6. We need God’s wrath in order to Grasp how wonderful heaven will be (Rev 21:8)

Jonathan Edwards’ much-celebrated ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ was staple reading during America’s early pioneering days and is still required reading today as part of the legacy of American Literature. It paints a vivid picture of the terror of hell that resembles a fiery lake of burning sulphur (Rev 21:8).

Yet set diametrically opposed to hell is a heaven that is often too wonderful for words to describe accurately. Yet it is there. But the heavenly New Jerusalem is also a reminder of what is on the other side of eternal joy – for eternal damnation is the result of God’s wrath for those who are cowardly, unbelieving, vile, immoral, idolaters and liars.

We go through one death but at the next junction we either experience God delivering His promise of heavenly delights or we go through yet a second death in a lake of fire. In one we remember nothing of the sorrows we left behind; in the other we are reminded of the sorrows we cause.

7. We need God’s wrath to be Motivated to care for the Impoverished (Matt 25: 31-46)

In case we forget, we live in the moment. While we are inspired by promises of a heavenly future, we must be grounded enough to know that we must do earthly goodness. So long as God keeps us alive, we have things to do and NOTHING is ever beyond any of us to fulfil no matter what your age is.

Matthew strikes at the heart of this issue, reminding us that eternal damnation awaits us if we fail to care for the least of our brothers and sisters. John then suggests correctly that with God’s wrath in place, we are encouraged and motivated then to be compassionate because a life without love would become a life with no eternity (1 John 2:17).

In the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, Jesus was clear about the love we must abundantly share with others for what we did in caring for others, we do so to Him be it in hunger or in thirst, as a stranger or in need of being clothed, or when in sickness or incarcerated. We end up inheriting the kingdom that is prepared for us.

But when we desist from doing any of these in kindness to others, we inflict the same upon Christ. In verses 45-46 (Matt 25), Jesus says, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.

“These will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.”

Matthew Henry in his commentary perhaps says it best:

“Thus life and death, good and evil, the blessing and the cursed, are set before us, that we may choose our way, and as our way, so shall our end be.”

8. We need God’s wrath in order to be Ready for the Lord’s return

Are we really ready? If Jesus are to steal into the darkness of night, will we be at His beck and call to leave or will we find ourselves unprepared for that day of reckoning?

Are your lamps full? Are the wicks trimmed? Are our houses clean? What about our vineyards – are they tended? Have we settled and tied up loose ends? Have we paid our accounts in full? Have we packed our bags?

Most of us would simply stare at these questions and cast doubt at the urgency in answering them. Unless we remind ourselves in the coming wrath of God, that is.

When we consider His wrath and then tremble at the very thought of eternal punishment, we may then think more about staying awake, keeping alert and getting all prepared for Jesus’ second coming for isn’t that what we’ve been waiting for?

And when we find ourselves doing all of that, put them into perspective of the fallacies that Rob Bell has been telling us.