Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones was a great preacher at the Westminster Chapel in London for 40 years. The year before his death in 1981when he was 81 years old Christianity Today asked him, "Do you have any final word for our generation?" He answered simply by quoting 1 Thessalonians 1:10, "Jesus delivers us from the wrath to come." Oh what a difference it makes when one believes in the wrath of God with trembling and with tears. There is seriousness over all of life, urgency in all our endeavors, and a flavor of blood-earnestness that seasons everything we do and makes sin feel more sinful, and righteousness feel more righteous, and life feels more precious, and relationships feel more profound, and God appears weightier.
Paul was overjoyed that the Lord from heaven is “Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonian 1:10). But he warned that “for those who…don’t obey the truth…there will be wrath and fury” (Romans 2:8).
What Is God’s Wrath?
Simply put, God’s wrath is his settled hostility toward sin in all its various manifestations. To say it is “settled” hostility means that God’s holiness cannot and will not coexist with sin in any form whatsoever. God’s wrath is his holy hatred of all that is unholy. It is his righteous indignation at everything that is unrighteous. Paul says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness…for those who don’t obey the truth there will be wrath and fury” (Romans 1:18; 2:8). Wrath is what happens when holiness meets sin! Wrath is what happens when justice meets rebellion! Wrath is what happens when righteousness meets unrighteousness! Wrath is what happens when perfect good meets pure evil! As long as God is God, he cannot overlook sin. As long as God is God, he cannot stand by indifferently while his creation is destroyed. As long as God is God, he cannot dismiss lightly those who trample his holy will. As long as God is God, he cannot wink when men mock his name.
There are four characteristics of the wrath of God:
The final wrath of God will be eternal having no end. In Daniel 12:2 God promises that the day is coming when “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” Jesus spoke of the eternity of God’s wrath in numerous ways. In Mark 9:43-48, he said, “And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, 48 where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.” Notice that twice he calls the fires of hell “unquenchable” that is, they will never go out. The point of that is to say soberly and terribly, that if you go there, there will be no relief forever and ever.
Second, in Matthew 25 he told the parable of the sheep and the goats to illustrate the way it will be when Jesus comes back to save his people and punish the unbelievers. In verse 41 he says, “Then [the king] will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’” And to make crystal clear that eternal means everlasting he says again in verse 46, “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” So the punishment is eternal in the same way that life is eternal. Both mean: never ending. Everlasting. It is an almost incomprehensible thought.
Oh, let it have its full effect on you. Jesus did not intend to speak this way in vain. After the teaching of Jesus, the apostle Paul put the eternity of God’s wrath this way in 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9: “The Lord Jesus [will be] revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.”
Finally, the great apostle of love, the apostle John, who gives us the sweet words of John 3:16 (Even there he uses the word perish to those who do not believe), used the strongest language for the eternal duration of the wrath of God: “And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night” (Revelation 14:11). And Revelation 19:3, “The smoke from her goes up forever and ever.” These are the strongest phrases for eternity that Biblical writers could use. So the first thing we must say about the wrath of God at the end of the age that comes upon those who do not embrace Christ as Savior and Lord, is that it is eternal, it will never end.
The final wrath of God will be terrible, indescribable pain. Consider some of the word pictures of God’s wrath in the New Testament. When the Bible uses symbols such as hell-fire some people minimize it by saying that it is only a symbol. I don't know about you, but it seems to me that if they are symbols than that means that the reality is worse than fire, not better. The words the bible uses like “fire” are not used to make the easy sound terrible, but to make the exceedingly terrible sound something like what it really is. Jesus says in Matthew 13:41-42, “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”. Then he adds at least three more terrible images of God’s wrath besides fire. He pictures it as a master returning and finding his servant disobeying his commands, and he “will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 24:51). The wrath of God is like cutting someone in pieces. Then he pictures it as darkness: “The sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12). The wrath of God is like being totally blind forever. Finally he quotes Isaiah 66:24 and says “Their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48). In Revelation 6:15-16, the apostle John adds that the wrath of God—indeed the wrath of Jesus himself—will be so terrible that every class of human beings will cry out for rocks to crush them rather than face the wrath: “Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb."
Then we have a picture of horror that is the final one of the Bible, namely, the lake of fire. It is called the “second death” in Revelation 20:14, “Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.” Revelation 20:15 makes that explicit: “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” Then verse 10 adds, “They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” The final wrath of God will be terrible, indescribable pain and it will last forever. There will be no escape.
The final wrath of God will be deserved, totally just and right.
Paul labored to show this in the first part of this letter to the Romans. “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18). Wrath does not come without good reason. It is against sin. It is deserved. Understanding sin is the foundation that upholds the preciousness of the gospel, not vice versa. I have found the difficulty that most people have in understanding the wrath of God is related to an incomplete and inadequate understanding of both how awful sin is, how glorious God is and the infinite chasm in between. We do not see what a great evil is in the least sin. If we could comprehend God's holiness and what it means to be holy, pure, perfect, upright, and untainted by the least sin, we would have a better idea of why God hates sin so much. Paul gives us the evidence of why mankind deserves and is under the just wrath of God:
- The truth of God is known (Romans 1:19-20).
- The truth is suppressed. And the fruit is ungodliness and unrighteousness.
- And on that comes wrath (Ephesians 5:6; Colossians 3:6).
He says it even more explicitly in Romans 2:5, “Because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.” We are responsible. We are storing up wrath with every act of indifference to Christ. With every preference for anything over God. With every quiver of our affection for sin and every second of our dull affections for God. Then he says it once more in Romans 3:5-6, “If our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world?” Nothing was clearer for the inspired apostle than that God is just and God will judge the world in terrible wrath.
Perhaps some of you readers might think that your sins do not deserve this kind of wrath. I ask you to ponder these four things:
1. First, it was one sin alone that brought the entire world under the judgment of God, and brought death upon all people (Genesis 2:17; Romans 5:12). And you have not committed one sin, but tens of thousands of sins.
2. Second, consider James 2:10, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.” Not only have you sinned tens of thousands of times, but each one had in it the breaking of the entire law of God.”
3. Third, consider Galatians 3:10, “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.’” The wrath of God’s curse falls on us for not obeying all that is commanded. One failure and the curse falls.
4. Finally, consider that any offense and any dishonor to an infinitely honorable and infinitely worthy God, is an infinite offense and an infinite dishonor. Therefore, an infinite punishment is deserved. In short, the punishment fits the crime. It is fair, it is just, it is deserving. There are only two things I ever receive from God: Justice or mercy. Eternal life or God's wrath and fury. These are the two alternatives. This leaves one last point to make. And oh, how crucial it is! How precious it is! How infinitely beautiful it is!
The final wrath of God is escapable through the curse-bearing death of Christ, if we would take refuge in him. God’s wrath is escapable right now. No one has to spend eternity under the wrath of God if they will receive God’s Son as Savior. Why is that? How can that be? Because Jesus Christ is our wrath bearer. He is the Propitiation for our sins! (Romans 3:25; Hebrews 2; 17; 1 John 2:2; 4; 10). Because God so loved the world that he sent his own infinitely valuable Son to absorb the infinite wrath of God against all who take refuge in him (John 3:16). A holy God unleashed on Him all the fury of divine anger that we deserved. Listen to this precious statement from Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.'" God‘s love sent his own Son to absorb His wrath and bear the curse for all who trust in Him. Christ bore the curse of God’s wrath for all who come to him and believe in Him. The redemptive wrath of God, unleashed at the cross, means we need not face eternal wrath in hell. When we put our faith in Christ alone, we escape the wrath to come.
The Bible asks, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation...?" (Hebrews 2:3). The unstated answer to this question is that there is no deliverance from God's final, eternal wrath if we do not believe in Christ. But, in the truest sense of the word, He is the Savior come to rescue us from the wrath to come
Oh how we need an overwhelming conviction of the reality of the glories of heaven and horrors of hell that make our lives and our mission and our evangelism utterly serious, earnest, and intense. If we are to love God and love sinners, then we cannot treat the awesome realities of sin, judgment, and eternal punishment lightly, nor can we truly love if we don’t speak of the cross of Jesus that rescue sinners from wrath! Spurgeon said, ““Think lightly of hell and you will think lightly of the cross. Think little of the suffering of lost souls, and you will soon think little of the Savior who delivers you from them.”
Oh how much heaven and hell are at stake every day and everywhere! May the horrors of wrath and hell and the glory of heaven cause us to ache for the souls of others. May we dedicate ourselves to live to the glory of Christ and to stop the carnage of hell by rescuing lost sinners proclaiming “Jesus saves us from the wrath to come!”
Pastor Bill
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