All Christians, before salvation, we’re sitting under His wrath. The only reason we are now in God’s good pleasure is because of Jesus—not anything we did. As much as we should talk about God’s wrath—for it is absolutely neglected today—we should talk all the more about redemption found in Christ. We simply must not dance around God’s wrath because, without His wrath, we lose redemption.
The wrath of God gets a bad rep. Not because His wrath is somehow deficient or immoral, but because humans don’t like talking about hard things. We hear one sentence about God’s wrath and we’re preaching fear-mongering.
Here’s the issue, though: we need to talk about the wrath of God. It’s too important to ignore. Skirting around it only brings more wrath. We need to face it head on, as eternity hangs in the balance. There are several reasons we must talk about the wrath of God, but let’s just cover three of them.
We need to talk about God’s wrath because it is real. Scripture is abundantly clear on the reality of His wrath (Romans 1:18; John 3:36; Romans 2:5; Nahum 1:2). There’s no getting around it or ignoring it. We must come to grips with what the Bible clearly teaches: God has wrath and, if we do not repent of our sins and trust in Christ, it abides on us (John 3:36).
There will be naysayers and those who try to deny it because they believe in a “God of love.” But a God of all love and no wrath is an idol—it doesn’t exist.