Terrible as the doctrine of God’s wrath is, it is a doctrine which, perhaps more than any other, wakes sinners up to appreciate the love of God in the gospel. Jesus puts it in these lovely words: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
The cross of Christ is the God-appointed solution to the sin of this world. If the doctrine of God’s wrath is awesome, the doctrine of the Cross is still more awesome. To provide salvation for hell-deserving sinners God has appointed His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to be our substitute.
Jesus took human nature into union with His divine nature that He might pay the price for our sin and offer us free forgiveness and, after death, a place in the glorious Kingdom of heaven above.
The God whose anger we have provoked threatens to punish us with eternal sufferings in hell. But at the same time He informs us that He will freely forgive us if we trust in His Son’s substitutionary death on the Cross.
There must be a message here surpassing all the wisdom of the ages and transcending in its loveliness all that our minds can imagine. The believer in Jesus can say: “God poured out His wrath on Jesus so that I shall never experience that wrath for myself! O blessed Christ!”
We cannot understand these sublime truths without a knowledge of God’s Covenants of Works and of Grace. The way the Bible puts it is this. There is no way a holy God could forgive guilty sinners except by opening up a new Covenant for mankind. Adam, as head of the Covenant of Works, has brought on all mankind these terrible judgements: sin, condemnation and death.
To save poor sinners God has opened up a new Covenant, called the Covenant of Grace. The Head of this covenant is the Lord Jesus Christ, the God-Man, whom we call the lost Adam. Christ, by His perfect life and by His sacrificial death, has brought to us these benefits: obedience, justification and eternal life. In other words, Jesus Christ, by His life and death, has made a way to appease the wrath of God so that those who deserve eternal punishment receive instead eternal blessing in heaven.
If one asks, How did Christ do this?, the answer is this: God’s justice has been satisfied. Christ, the God-Man, has paid a perfect price for our sins. Christ had a perfect life, sinless and perfectly holy. On the Cross Christ died a death of infinite value as the God- Man. Since Christ has paid the price to God’s justice there is no need for us sinners to suffer God’s wrath. Our debt paid in full. We may be fully and eternally forgiven without any dishonour done to the perfect justice of God. To make this clear, Jesus cried out this precious truth as He entered into death: “It is finished”. He means to tell us: “The debt to God’s offended justice is paid. The wrath of God is now fully satisfied.”
Is not this pardon of sin something which all men get automatically then? No. God’s Covenant of Grace has a condition in it. The condition is that we must repent and believe in Jesus Christ. Those who believe shall be exempted from God’s wrath. But those who ignore, or despise, the gospel will be given greater punishment than those who never heard the gospel.
Here is a warning which we in our modern world need desperately to hear. If we, who have access to Bibles and to good gospel teaching in books and in churches, ignore the true gospel and scoff at the doctrine of God’s wrath we shall be far more guilty than those sinners who never heard it.
God’s wrath is greatest against those who despise His gracious love declared to us in His gospel. No wonder Christ said of the false disciple, Judas Iscariot, that it would be better for him if he had never been born (Matthew 26:24). This is a truth we all need to weigh up carefully. God’s love is seen in His sending Christ to die for us. But if we despise this wonderful love by ignoring the gospel, God’s wrath will one day cast us into the deepest depths of eternal fire.
