God's Wrath

God’s wrath is the just manifestation of His righteous and holy judgment against all unrighteousness. God’s wrath is not one of His attributes in the same way that His love, justice, or holiness are. In other words, God had no wrath to express before sin entered His created world, for there was no reason for wrath. But after the entrance of sin, God’s wrath is seen and expressed as a reflection of His love, justice, and holiness. Scripture correlates God’s wrath with His holy jealousy, indignation, and vengeance. God’s wrath is not uncontrolled passion; rather, it is His just response toward everything that impenitently opposes His holy character. The Old Testament commonly likens God’s wrath to fire or burning both by ceremonial types and shadows and by the prophetic warnings.

Additionally, a variety of metaphors are used to denote the wrath of God. In the New Testament, John the Baptist, Jesus, and the Apostles repeatedly warn the unrepentant of the forthcoming wrath of God. The infinite and eternal Son of God came into the world to offer Himself up as a substitutionary sacrifice for sin and bear God’s infinite and eternal wrath against sinners. As the Lamb of God, Jesus endured God’s justice and wrath when He hung on the cross in the place of His people. By His obedient life and sinless sacrifice, Jesus satisfied God’s justice and propitiated His wrath for those who would trust in Him. The New Testament reveals that the same Christ who suffered God’s wrath in the place of sinners on the cross to redeem His people is the divine judge who will Himself execute judgment on the wicked on the last day. Hell is eternal punishment under the righteous judgment of God.

Scripture uses nearly twenty different words to express the idea of divine wrath. Particularly significant is the Greek word orgē, the most frequently used term in the New Testament to denote God’s wrath and righteous anger (Matt. 3:7; Luke 21:23; John 3:36; Rom. 1:18; 2:5, 8; 3:5; 4:15; 9:22; 12:19). The various biblical words for anger essentially convey the idea that God must act in vengeance and execute righteous justice against everything that opposes His holy being and character. Since man has sinned against the infinitely and eternally righteous God who made him, all sin necessarily requires infinite and eternal punishment. Accordingly, eternal punishment in hell is the ultimate manifestation of God’s wrath. Christ, because He is an infinite divine person, can suffer divine wrath in His humanity and exhaust the demands of God’s justice for the elect.

In both the Old and New Testaments, God reveals Himself to be the perfectly holy and just Judge who must punish the wickedness of men according to His righteous judgment (Gen. 18:25). Scripture reveals that God’s wrath is already revealed in the present in temporal judgments such as natural disasters, wars, and disease that He sends on the wicked (e.g., Num. 16:44–50; Rev. 16). One purpose of these manifestations of God’s wrath is to bring men to a place in which they will turn to God through Christ in faith and repentance. God’s wrath is also revealed in the present when He punishes the unrighteous by giving them over to their sin and idolatry (Rom. 1:18–32; 9:17–22). Geerhardus Vos explained, “There is a well-known Scriptural law of sin being punished by irretrievable abandonment to sin, a law by no means confined to the Old Testament but found in the New Testament as well.” These temporal manifestations of God’s wrath are judicial precursors to the forthcoming wrath that God will send on the wicked for all eternity.

In the Old Testament, God’s wrath is associated with “burning” and “fire” (Lev. 10:6; Deut. 32:22; 2 Kings 23:26; Pss. 2:12; 21:9; Isa. 30:27; Jer. 15:14; 17:4). The wrath of God was typified in the old covenant sacrificial system, especially in the fire that consumed the burnt offering. The Old Testament also refers to God’s wrath under various figures of speech and metaphors. One of the recurring symbolic descriptions of the wrath of God is the metaphor of “the cup” in the oracles of judgment in the Prophets (Ps. 75:8; Isa. 51:17, 22; Jer. 25:15; Ezek. 23:33; Hab. 2:16). In this metaphor, God likens the outpouring of His wrath on the wicked to people drinking the wrath in His cup to the full. Jesus became a curse for all whom He came to redeem by drinking the cup of God’s wrath in their place and for their forgiveness (Matt. 26:42; Gal. 3:13).

In the New Testament, Jesus and the Apostles recurrently warned about the forthcoming wrath of God. While the warnings about the “wrath to come” are reflective of the final judgment, there is an already/not-yet structure to the biblical revelation of God’s wrath, especially discerned in the New Testament revelation (see Rom. 1:18–32). Herman Bavinck helpfully explained the way in which the present and future manifestations of God’s wrath work together: “The New Testament says that, though God’s wrath rests on the wicked now already (John 3:36; Eph. 2:3; 1 Thess. 2:16), the manifestation of that wrath in all its terror is reserved for the future.”

On judgment day, God will pour out His wrath on the wicked for all eternity in hell. As R.C. Sproul noted, “Hell, then, is an eternity before the righteous, ever-burning wrath of God, a suffering torment from which there is no escape and no relief.” Though Jesus became the substitutionary sacrifice to propitiate God’s wrath and satisfy His justice on the cross for His people, He will act as the just divine Judge who will pour His wrath out on the last day on the wicked, all those who have not received Christ (Rev. 6:16–17).