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The Problem←⤒🔗

It is not my intention to discuss the topic of the wrath of God completely. I would like to concentrate on one aspect of it, the aspect I have summarized in the title of my speech: Can God be angry? Probably some of you hearing this title, have thought that the answer to my question is obvious. Of course God can be angry. Does not the Bible often say that God is angry? To quote the first example where the word occurs in the Bible, when Moses is still hesitant to return to Egypt and to confront Pharaoh, the Bible says: "Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses," Exodus 4:14. Why then the question mark: "Can God be angry?"

But it is more complicated than that. At least it is more complicated in the dogmatic handbook we use at the College, L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (4 ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949). In the part on the doctrine of God, you would not be able to find a section devoted to the wrath of God. It is just not there. Does not God have wrath then, according to L. Berkhof?

There is, however, one small reference to the wrath of God. It can be found in the section discussing the justice of God. Berkhof says here that there are several parts in God's justice. One part of God's justice is that God inflicts penalties. And then he mentions God's wrath: "It is an expression of divine wrath" (p. 75). The fact that God punishes, that is according to Berkhof how God's wrath shows. God acts angrily, He punishes. So to return to our question, does Berkhof say that God is angry? No, he does not dare to say that. He only says that God acts angrily, in punishing sin.

The History←⤒🔗

There is a very long history behind this traditional position of Berkhof. To understand it we have to go back all the way to the gods of the Greek. These gods could be angry! When someone incurred the wrath of a god, he was punished terribly, often out of all proportion. There is a story about a woman called Niobe. She was the proud mother of many sons and many daughters, and she boasted that she was a more successful mother than Leto, a woman who had two children by the Greek god Zeus. Then her children, who were gods, avenged their mother by shooting all the children of Niobe. That is what wrath does, according to Greek mythology. And that is only one example of many that show how the gods in Greek mythology are represented as acting viciously in their wrath.

Greek philosophy frowned upon this. There was a tendency to criticize the traditional stories about the gods. Representing the gods as having wrath, is portraying them like men. They thought the gods should be above base urges like wrath. This philosophical rejection of wrath in the gods was the prevalent opinion when Christianity went out into the Greek world. The Christians had a revelation, the Bible, in which the wrath of God is mentioned. In fact it is mentioned literally hundreds of times, especially in the Old Testament. What should they do with the biblical message in a world that disliked hearing about the wrath of God?

Someone who answered this problem, was the heretic Marcion. He had a very radical solution. He said:

We find in the Bible not one God, but two gods. One is the god of the Old Testament. He is imperfect. And you can see that he is imperfect, for example in the fact that he is an angry god. When someone does wrong, he will punish them. He requires sacrifices involving blood. But there is also another god in the Bible. He is the Father of Jesus Christ. He is perfect, he has no wrath. And in Jesus Christ He has shown the way to escape that other, angry God.

In this way Marcion adapted the gospel to the thoughts of his time. He presented a god who was acceptable for the cultured people. A god who was not angry, but had given the means to escape from this world, filled with the wrath of that other god. But he could do so only at the expense of breaking the unity of Old and New Testament and giving up the whole of Old Testament (and of course he had to amend heavily the New Testament too).

The Christian church rejected Marcion as a heretic. And they maintained the unity of Old and New Testament. Old as well as New Testament were believed to be revealed by God. And we just have to accept what is revealed there. But that meant that the 'problem' of God's wrath returned. When you accept the whole of Scripture, you have to accept God's wrath as a part of the message. That was a brave stand at that time.

Then they had to explain how God's wrath should be understood. Several solutions were presented. We cannot go into the details here, but the prevalent opinion was, that 'wrath' in Scripture means the punishment of God. So – they thought – it is not something God feels, but something God does. Over against Marcion they maintained that God is a God who punishes when man sins.

And this was often connected with God's governing of the world. They used an example to show the necessity of God's wrath. Imagine that an enemy would kill someone's wife, kill his children, and put his house on fire, so that he is left with nothing. If that man would say: "My enemy need not be punished," that would be the pinnacle, not of generosity, but of heartlessness. A society needs revenge and punishment, everyone can know that. What then is against ascribing wrath to God? In order to govern the world, He has to punish the evildoers. Wrath then is necessary in a God who really governs the world.

But then wrath taken in the sense of punishment, not in the sense of a feeling in God. To say it in the words of our theme: God is not angry, but He acts angrily. He punishes. And we have to remember what they rejected when they thought that God could not be angry. It was the idea that God can be influenced, and especially that He can be influenced into doing wrong. For that is what wrath does to people: it often leads to sin. Does not Scripture warn us several times against being angry? Then God Himself cannot be angry. He only punishes, acts in anger. But He is not angry.

This is the history behind that sentence of Berkhof, that punishing justice is the expression of divine wrath.

Back to Scripture←⤒🔗

We are now faced with the question: What does Scripture say about the wrath of God? For we believe that Scripture is the Word of God. If we want to know God, we have to listen to His Word, also His words about Himself. We cannot go by our impression whether it is fitting for God to be angry or not. Scripture tells us what is fitting for God. Or better, Scripture tells us how God is. The easiest way to do this, is asking some questions to Scripture. But then we have to realize that Scripture may not answer all our questions.

Is 'Wrath' Punishment?←↰⤒🔗

The first question we have to raise, is: Does the word 'wrath' in Scripture denote the action of punishment, or can it be something else? Our answer must first be: Indeed the word 'wrath' in Scripture often denotes no more than God's work of punishing. According to Numbers 16:46 Moses said to Aaron: Make atonement for the Israelites, "for wrath has gone forth from the Lord." Here the word 'wrath' denotes punishment. This is very clear, for the whole part reads: "For wrath has gone forth from the Lord, the plague has begun." 'Wrath' is the plague, the deadly illness which struck Israel as a punishment. This sense of 'wrath' also occurs in the New Testament. Paul says somewhere: "But for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury," Romans 2:8. 'Wrath' here means punishment, as is clear from the parallel of the preceding verse, and the explanation in the following verse: "There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil." In so far the early theologians who said that 'wrath' means the act of punishment, were right.

But it is not the whole truth. For 'wrath' is also used for something in God. Then it denotes something which is in God, preceding His action of punishment. We find this too in Numbers: "And the people complained in the hearing of the Lord about their misfortunes; and when the Lord heard it, His anger was kindled, and the fire of the Lord burned among them and consumed some outlaying parts of the camp," Numbers 11:1. Here the anger of God is prior to his act of punishment. First God is angry, then He reacts by sending heavenly fire. In the New Testament we find this sense of 'wrath' in the well-known text John 3:38: "He who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him." He who does not believe in Jesus Christ whom God has sent, has to know that God is angry at him as long as he does not believe. In Scripture 'wrath' can indeed mean something in God.

Is God Affected?←↰⤒🔗

This leads us to the second question: What is then this anger which is behind the punishment? Is God really affected by our sins? Is it possible for sinful man to influence God? We must be very careful in answering this question. We should not say less than Scripture reveals us. But at the same time we should not try to say more than Scripture reveals us, and overstep the boundaries God has set in His revelation.

It would be wrong to say, for example: "When we are angry, we begin to shout. We feel offended, grieved, we are unsettled. We have only one wish: to hurt the other as he hurt us. Something similar happens in God." For God is not like a man. We therefore cannot know what wrath means in the case of God, just by looking at what it means in man. This is evident. Some people become red and flushed when they are angry, other people become white with rage, some will clench their teeth, but all these things do not happen in God, since God has no body. We cannot go by what we know from experience about man, to understand the wrath of God. We have to look in Scripture, and see how the expression is used there.

Then there can be no doubt that man can affect God, can make Him angry. To give an example, when Israel would oppress the widows and orphans "My wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless" Exodus 22:24. Man's sin touches God, touches Him so deeply that it sets His anger aflame. Man's sins touch God to the very essence of His being. It is not so that God's wrath is only on the outside, only in the act of punishment. It is inside God; within God it flares up, and then it expresses itself in punishment.

We may even go a step further, and say that wrath has a strong emotional side to it. Our sins move God. Sometimes it is thought that God can have no emotions. But that cannot be true. For it would mean that God also cannot love. And the Bible says clearly that God has a fatherly love for His people, and even a love as of a man towards his wife. God has emotions. God has also the emotion of anger. And He can be moved into showing His wrath.

But what does God feel when He is angry? Sometimes it is said that God feels pain. This is based on a particular expression in the Bible, which we find, e.g., in Judges 2:12: "They provoked the Lord." It is sometimes thought that this verb means "to cause pain" or "to cause grief." Does God's wrath mean that God suffers under human sins? But this is not the meaning of the verb. The same verb (in a different theme, without apparent change of meaning) is used for king Asa after he was rebuked by the prophet Hanani (2 Chronicles 16:10). Asa then certainly was not grieved. He was exasperated that the prophet dared to attack a strategy which had proved successful. That he was not grieved but aggravated, can be seen in the result: Asa did not repent, but put the prophet in jail. That is also the meaning in Judges 2:12. It does not say that the people cause pain to God, but that they exasperated Him.

How is the Anger of God Described in the Bible?←↰⤒🔗

The most elaborate description can be found in Isaiah 30:27ff.

Behold, the name of the Lord comes from far burning with His anger, and in thick rising smoke His lips are full of indignation and His tongue is like a devouring fire His breath is like an overflowing stream that reaches up to the neck…

The whole description of God's wrath is about the appearance of it, and nothing is said about the inside of it. We do not know what God feels when He is angry. He lets us know only so much as we need to know: that our sins touch Him personally. But we need not know how He feels about them. We probably would not be able to understand that emotion.

Is "Wrath" Not a Sinful Emotion?←↰⤒🔗

One more question has to be answered. It is in fact an objection. Does anger not often lead to sinful deeds, deeds we afterwards have to regret? Can we, considering the results of wrath in this world, say that God is angry? We will remember that this was one of the reasons which caused the problems about God's wrath in the patristic church. Seeing what wrath often led to, they thought they had to deny that God could be angry.

They could even use arguments from Scripture to defend this view. The Old Testament warns for wrath: "A man of wrath stirs up strife, and a man given to anger causes much transgression," Proverbs 29:22. And a similar instruction can be found in the New Testament: "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you," Ephesians 4:31. If we are not allowed to be angry, does not that imply that God's anger should not be taken literally?

But two arguments prevent this conclusion. In the first place, there is no absolute prohibition of human anger. The same epistle to the Ephesians says: "Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger," 4:26. In the second place, even when man should not be angry, God is and can be angry: "Beloved, never avenge yourself, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord," Romans 12:19.

To be sure, God is perfect, He does not sin. But that does not mean that He has no wrath. It means that He is perfect, also in His wrath.

Conclusion←⤒🔗

That brings us back to the question of the beginning: Can God be angry? Yes, He can. He has wrath. Our sins touch Him deeply. They cause His anger to burn, and He will react to our sins with punishments.

Relevance←⤒🔗

It is very important that our students, and all the believers too, are deeply convinced of this truth. When we sin, we not only bring over ourselves the punishment of the Lord. We also affect Him, our sin does not leave Him unmoved. He is aggravated by every sin of ours. The very love we have towards God, should prevent us more and more from making Him angry. Before we sin we should be aware, not only of God's punishment, but also of God Himself, as He is affected by our sins.

Also, and here we near the deepest truth about God's wrath, when we realize how deeply we touch God by sinning, the more remarkable becomes His love for us. A love that was so great that He sent His only Son into this world to suffer under His wrath. God's love is all the more miraculous considering the fact that we day by day offend Him. A deeper understanding of God's wrath leads to a greater realization of the depth of His salvation work.