Hear Anything Lately About the Wrath of God? The Silence Is Deafening

It is a major theme throughout the Old Testament. It is found throughout the New Testament as well. John the Baptist clearly taught it (Matthew 3:7). Jesus preached about it (Luke 21:23). So did Paul (Romans 1:18; 9:22; Ephesians 5:6; Colossians 3:6). John mentions it once in his gospel (3:36) but makes it a central theme of the Apocalypse (Revelation 14:6 ff). But in our day and age–so it seems–no one wants to touch the subject. It is too controversial, too divisive. It often goes unmentioned in our pulpits. The very thought of it is repulsive to many Americans. I am talking about the wrath of God.

There are reasons why Christians (especially preachers) steer clear of mentioning God’s wrath. No one wants to be labeled a “fundamentalist” or identified as a hellfire and brimstone preacher like those lampooned by comedians or film. Sensitive to such stereotypes, ministers are under great pressure to distance themselves from the perception that they are illiterate bumpkins, self-righteous moralists, or bound to irrelevant dogmas of the past. The image of the minister as a puritanical prude out to ruin everyone else’s fun is a common theme in American culture—think of H. L. Mencken’s oft-repeated words, “Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” A stern message and serious demeanor must be shed for that of a successful entrepreneur, someone who is conversant with the pop culture (the latest Netflix series or social media drama), someone who is not afraid to cry in public, and who can motivate his congregation on to bigger and better things. It is far better for the minister to look and sound like a Tik-Tok star or Influencer than to do anything which might conjure up images of Jonathan Edwards preaching about sinners in the hands of an angry God.

There are some ministers, no doubt, who believe with all their hearts that the doctrine of God’s wrath is a fundamental article of the Christian faith. But they are worried about how their congregations will react if the subject is broached. They know that members of the outreach and evangelism committee will probably not be amused by sermons which are not oriented toward those targeted groups their church is trying to attract. The wrath of God is not exactly the kind of thing a church should mention as a fundamental Christian belief if the congregation’s focus is upon social justice and righting society’s obvious wrongs.

Then there are those–including some who fill pulpits–who simply do not believe in the wrath of God. Divine wrath is often redefined as a sort of divine reciprocity principle—if you do bad things, bad things will come your way—a Christianized version of Kharma. Wrath, we are told, is not an act of a loving God. A God of love would never react angrily to any of his creatures, or consign them to a destiny which includes eternal punishment. Therefore, it is understood, ministers have no business misrepresenting a loving God as a sadistic ogre waiting to send people to hell if they don’t believe in Jesus. Enlightened preaching should unite people around the message of God’s unconditional love, a sense of community, and the task of fixing societal wrongs, rather than dividing people with outdated articles of faith.

The great irony in all of this is that Yale theologian H. Richard Niebuhr lamented that the essential message of Protestant liberalism of the 1920’s was nothing more than this: “a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of Christ without a cross.” Much the same thing can be said about contemporary American evangelicalism. “A God without wrath . . .” is the God of much of American Christianity. Since no one believes in God’s wrath any more, it is rarely mentioned. Besides, to broach the subject will surely generate blow-back. The silence is deafening.

The paucity of teaching in contemporary American Christianity about the wrath of God is not a sign that Christians have liberated themselves from fundamentalist dogmas and are now ready to face the challenges of a hostile and divided America. Rather, the silence is a sign that many of our preachers have capitulated to the spirit of the age. Either they are afraid of what people will think of them, or they no longer believe the doctrine to be true. Then there are those who think that mentioning the wrath of God is an unnecessary impediment to the task of evangelism and the building up of Christ’s church. It is just better left unsaid.

Granted, some of the apprehension people feel about the subject of God’s wrath is a consequence of bad Christian preaching. Many of us can recount sermons we have heard in which the threat of the wrath of God was used to terrorize the congregation. Burdened consciences are often the unintended but painful consequence of those sermons in which the minister, however well-intentioned, failed to preach the whole counsel of God.

Yes, the whole counsel of God certainly includes God’s wrath—a very biblical, if frightening declaration. Yes, the last day (judgment day) is sure to come. Jesus said so—repeatedly. But the whole counsel also includes the message of God’s love for sinners who deserve his wrath—people who come to see their guilt before God and need of forgiveness, and who understand that Jesus welcomes repentant sinners who trust in him to save them from their sins. John 3:16 comes to mind. A God of love who does not hate sin and punish it with an eternal vengeance, is not the God of the Bible. But neither is a God of wrath without his long-suffering mercy being displayed in the suffering of the sinless savior on Calvary’s tree. It is through his suffering upon the cross that Jesus turns aside God’s wrath towards his people. If we preach God’s wrath, we must also preach the cross. The two are inextricably linked in the Scriptures. The preaching of the law (and the ultimate penalty for breaking it—judgment) must be followed by the preaching of the gospel.

Ministers of the gospel are not called to be popular or successful. We are called by God to faithful. We must preach those things which God reveals in his word–tactfully, carefully, and charitably to be sure–no matter how difficult such things may be for our contemporaries to accept. There can be no truly good news of the gospel without the bad news of human sin and God’s wrath against it. As Paul puts it in Romans 5:9, “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” Jesus died for us and rose again to save us from the wrath of God which is to come, the “good news” which permeates the New Testament. Think of passages such 2 Thessalonians 1:2-10 and Colossians 3:1-11, where God’s wrath is every bit as much the teaching of the Bible as God’s redemption of sinners.

Even though the gospel was described as foolishness to a Greek and a stumbling block to a Jew, the proclamation of this unpopular message was the means by which God built his church in the age of the apostles (Acts 17:30-31). It should be the means by which we must seek to build Christ’s church in ours. Preaching the whole counsel of God means ending the deafening silence. And ending that silence means telling people that they will indeed face God’s wrath if they be not found in Jesus Christ in that great day of judgment, yet to come. But if we are found on that day in Jesus Christ through faith, God’s wrath towards our sins has been forever turned aside! The good news is that the “good news” has the last word.