Divine Plagiarism

‘Only in understanding the vastness of God’s wrath can we understand the enormity of His redemption.’

Most of us only know wrath in ugly terms. The same way we know love. What our society calls love is a mixture of about 98% lust and maybe about 2% real love. We breathe over the embers of something that used to be beautiful, and the smoke that rises is hardly recognizable as something that once was fire. So we have the torrid love affairs which burn for about two hours on the silver screen, and burn out two years later in a tepid divorce. Or the fraternity guy who uses his smooth, well-rehearsed lines to snag another girl who will actually believe that he’s not like all the others. Because this is all we know, we try to convince ourselves that it is love. With such a flawed definition, I wonder if the nihilists aren’t correct for data.

The same applies to wrath. What we call wrath is about 98 percent rage. The verbally abusive parent screaming at his wife and child, the high school bully all to ready to fight whenever the slightest provocation offers itself, the vindictive woman determined to make everyone around her feel her pain. They defend themselves primarily through offense, generally out of proportion to any legitimate provocation. And they defend only themselves, never another. Unmeasured, flailing, reckless, it is not surprising that we are loathe to respond when this is all we know of responding. With this conception of wrath, I’d almost have to side with the pacifists.

Rage invalidates wrath no more than lust invalidates love. We do need to get our definitions straight, though, if we are to find a pure wrath. ‘God is love.’ Yet, ‘God is a wrathful God.’ Therefore, wrath must be a function of love. So if lust is fallen love, and rage is fallen wrath, then rage and lust must be wrapped around each other. And so it is. ‘Hell hath no fury’ and all. Lust is suffocating, controlling and selfish. When denied, consumed with jealousy, it rages at its rivals and its intended object. By nature, rage intertwines itself around lust. Therefore, love and wrath must embrace each other somehow.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us to love our enemies. He tells us to turn the other cheek to a man who strikes us. He does not tell us to volunteer another’s cheek. If a man punches you in the chest, then bless him. But if he tries to punch your wife in the chest, knock him the frick out. This is wrath. Like love, it is unselfish. You are defending your wife, whom you love. Like love, it is gentle. As gentle as it can be: to show indifference to cruelty is to show cruelty to the innocent. Like love, it is patient. It responds only when its hand is forced. Ultimately, wrath is an aspect of love. Your love for your wife inspires you to respond to those who would hurt her. Wrath is a defending love, and it is rightly just as passionate as a giving love.

Wrath is love, and love is patient. Love waits for an appropriate time to express itself, in obedience to God and in submission to His plan. God places different limits on different expressions of love. Agape love is to be given freely to all. Sexual love is to be confined to the marriage bed. Without restrictions, the unrestrained power of sex would leave a trail of carnage and death in its wake. As it has in our society. It is simply too easy to get it wrong, too easy to confuse sexual love with the myriad forms of lust. So God protects it by placing it in the context of a exclusive lifelong commitment between a man and a woman. Similarly, it should not surprise us that God gives us a context for the defending love. ‘Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.’ Paul reminds us to make room for God’s wrath. We are not at liberty to practice the defending love at whim. It is a love so powerful, so easy to get wrong, that God reserves it for Himself.

Yet His chosen instrument is man. When the Law came, God revoked the right of vendetta. Man was no longer the arbiter of life and death, for only the Creator gives life and only He can take it away. Yet just as soon as He did so, He established the boundaries of His justice, and assigned death to those who trespassed them. And then He established a government of men to enforce His penalties.

Jesus Christ completed the Law. He did not revoke it. Under the Law of Grace, we are freed from the penalties of the Law of Death. That is, if we accept that freedom. If we do not, we are still subject to Death. This world rejected Christ. Therefore, this world is still subject to the Law of Death. A glance at the headlines of the last two millennia should confirm this fact. Romans Thirteen tells us that God still establishes the governing authorities. ‘They do not bear the sword in vain, but they are God’s agents of wrath to put fear into the heart of the evildoer.’ Agents of wrath, authorized by God to bear the sword. And accountable to God for their conduct.

The Law of Death will be undone one day. All the swords will be beaten into ploughshares, and all who bear them will find new work. Praise God for that. On that day there will no longer be a need for the love that defends, for there will never again be anything to defend from. But until that day, let us pray that the merciful would always be better armed than the cruel.