GOD’S WRATH OR ANGER

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 25, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 12.

GOD’S WRATH OR ANGER.

“God is love;” that is his character. He loves all his creatures, even those who have sinned against him. All that he has given them, all that he has done for them, is in love for them. His holy law was a law of love. The gift of his Son was a gift of love. Willingly, freely, lovingly, has he given man all that he has given.

In response to this he requires from man a service of love, a willing service, gladly rendered, a choice of His will as against all others. That he might have such a service, God gave man the power and right of choice. On the one side was placed the obedience of faith in God, which is righteousness and life; on the other side, unbelief, self, sin, and death. Love can not in the nature of the case be compelled. It must be called forth by love. “We love because he loved us.” 1 John 4:19, R. V. If we desire his love, if we open our heart for his Spirit, it will come in, and the love of God will be shed abroad by its presence. Rom. 5:5. But that love will issue in obedience; “for this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments,” not of coercion or necessity, for to the heart of love “his commandments are not grievous.” 1 John 5:3.

Harmony with God is love and righteousness; for “God is love,” and “righteous in all his ways.” And the righteousness of God is life, “and in the pathway thereof there is no death.” It is God’s desire, will, pleasure, that man should be in harmony with him. He gave his Son for this purpose, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?” “Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”

The above scriptures reveal clearly to us what God’s desire is concerning man, concerning all men; for “God is no respecter of persons.” But Love can not compel, nor can loving obedience—the only true and acceptable service—be compelled. Infinite Love desires the happiness of his creatures. His way is the only way in which it can be secured. If man will not choose or accept it, God leaves him to take his own way, the way of self and sin, but warns him that he is missing the mark, and that inevitable death awaits the transgressor. “The wages of sin is death.” Not that God arbitrarily inflicts death upon the sinner and disobedient, but the death is in the very sin itself. Death is the fruit of the seed of sin. “Sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death.” James 1:15, R. V.

As God gave his Son to die to save man from this death, so will he use every power and resource consistent with man’s free choice to make Christ’s sacrifice avail with every one. He will speak through all nature, and through his Word; he will permit to come the consequences of man’s choice, strife, famine, pestilence, disease; he will send his Spirit, his angels, his earthly messengers, that amid all the discordant notes of the sin and misery of earth man may hear God’s invitation. “Come.” This Love will do and has done and is doing for every soul out of safety. Men may shut their ears to his voice, close their eyes to his light, harden their hearts to the sweet influences of God’s Spirit, but this does not change God. He is still Love.

But there comes an end, sometime. Sin perpetuates itself in ever-increasing sinfulness and injury to the sinner and others. Therefore when God has done all that he can do to save the sinner, and the sinner has rejected every call to mercy, righteousness and life, Infinite Love sadly turns away and leaves him to himself, and offers the new name, the white robe, the crown of life, to another. But the sinner left to himself pursues the road to death. It seems pleasant, flower bordered, and easy of travel at times, but it is ever nearing its goal, death.

Sin will be blotted out of the universe. It will be clean once more. Satan—himself an apostate, and reprobate to Eternal Love—with his works will be destroyed. All that God can save from the sin and its consequence he is saving, even at the eternal sacrifice of the Son of God. But those who will not be saved have their choice. They hated God, they loved sin, which is simply death in embryo. If Satan showed them the death, the end of sin, they would revolt from it through fear, but he deceives them. God warns of the death, and cites a multitude of examples that confirm his warnings. But some will not hear; they reject the love and wisdom of God. “He that sinneth against Me wrongeth his own soul; all they that hate Me love death.” Prov. 8:36. God gives them the thing they love.

If man would choose God’s law for what it was ordained, “to life” (Rom. 7:10), and which it still is in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:2), it would work out righteousness and life in man. But the sinner has thrown across the current of the working of God’s living law his own carnal heart (Rom. 8:6, 7) and the “law [to him and in him] worketh wrath” (Rom. 4:15). And this wrath is the end of sin or death. He who ultimately chooses the sin chooses the wrath. He who identifies himself with sin perishes with the sin. This is God’s wrath, God’s anger “not willingly” executed, but of necessity. None need fear it who choose goodness, love, light, righteousness; but those who hate these choose wrath, death, destruction, in the hating of the good.

Moreover, the end is merciful to the sinner. He who continues in sin knows less and less of peace and joy and happiness, and more of misery, strife, and wo. Is it not a mercy to close such a career? He sows discord and strife wherever he goes among others; in justice ought not his career to be stopped? Every consideration of mercy and justice—love—demand the death of the finally impenitent and reprobate. “Just and true are thy ways, thou King of ages.”