The Wrath of God
By W.J Grier
One of the evidences of decay and departure
in the professing Church is the large-scale rejection of the teaching of the
Scriptures on the wrath of God. Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones
in his recently-issued Exposition of Romans draws attention to this and shows
that it is not only among Modernists and Ritualists
that this attitude prevails; it is evident too among some who are evangelicals
by repute.
Dr C. H. Dodd, for some 14 years professor
of Divinity at Cambridge and chairman of the panel of translators of the New
English Bible [New Testament section], deals in his Commentary on Romans with
the phrase ‘the wrath of God’ in Romans 1.18. He speaks of it as ‘an archaic
phrase’ which ‘suits a thoroughly archaic idea’. In other words, he looks on
the idea of God’s wrath as out-of-date, antiquated. Early in 1931 there was a
dialogue in the pulpit of Elmwood Presbyterian Church,
‘These ideas belong to the mentality and
outlook of bygone ages.’ It would seem as if these men believed that we come
into the world as little cherubs sprouting wings.
To adopt such views one would have to
repudiate a large part of Scripture from Genesis through to Revelation. In
Genesis 3 we find Adam and Eve thrust out of the garden for their sin and a
flaming sword set to keep them from the tree of life. Not only were they
affected, but the sentence of condemnation fell upon the race [Romans 5.12, 18,
19]. In Genesis 6 we find God saying: ‘I will destroy man whom I have created
from the face of the earth’ — and the deluge ensued. Then in Genesis 19 we have
the destruction of the cities of the plain by fire and brimstone from heaven.
I might go on citing countless examples of
the manifestation of divine wrath right through the Bible. Dr Leon Morris says
of the Old Testament in his The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross: ‘There
are more than 20 words used to express the wrath conception as it applies to
Jehovah’ and ‘these are used so frequently that there are over 580 occurrences
to be taken into consideration’ [p 131]. He adds that this conception
‘cannot be eradicated from the Old Testament without irreparable loss’ [p
156]. So the Old Testament is full of the concept of the wrath of God.
In his Commentary on Romans Dr Dodd says
that the wrath of God ‘does not appear in the teaching of Jesus’. One is
reminded of John Newton’s reply to Dr Taylor of
Dr Dodd speaks of the thought of anger as
an attitude of God to men as disappearing and adds: ‘His love and mercy become
all-embracing’. This really smacks of universalism. One suspects that
universalistic presuppositions are really in many cases responsible for the
rejection of the concept of the wrath of God.
Jesus spoke of the rich man in the torments
of hell and He warned again and again of ‘the weeping and the gnashing of
teeth’ and of hell fire and the unquenchable fire and the undying worm and the
outer darkness. Describing how He would act as King at His coming one day to
sit on the throne of His glory He pictures Himself as saying: ‘Depart from me,
ye cursed, into the everlasting fire which is prepared for the devil and his
angels.’ Surely the extinguisher is functioning when Dr Dodd claims that the
idea of the wrath of God is absent from the teaching of Jesus.
Nor is the wrath of God absent from the
teaching of the apostle Paul. He pictured that wrath as like a dark cloud
overhanging a guilty world and he proclaimed Jesus as the only deliverer from
this coming wrath [I Thess. 1.10]. He also describes
this wrath as evident in the heathen world of his day — evident in God’s giving
them up in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness and vile passions and a
reprobate mind [Romans 1.24, 26, 28]. And in Romans chapter 2 he warns of
‘wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God’.
These are but a few of the citations which might be given from Paul’s teaching.
We have the same testimony from John, the
apostle of love. What a tremendous picture he gives of Christ coming as King of
kings and Lord of lords ‘treading the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of
God the Almighty’ [Rev. 19.151! How can anyone that has read Jonathan Edwards’
comment on this verse ever forget it? ‘The words’, he says, ‘are exceeding
terrible. If it had only been said ‘the wrath of God’, the words would have
implied that which is infinitely dreadful: but it is ‘the fierceness and wrath
of God’. The fury of God! the fierceness of Jehovah! O
how dreadful must that be! Who can utter or conceive what such expressions
carry in them? But it is also ‘the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God’ — as
though there would be a very great manifestation of His almighty power in what
the fierceness of His wrath would inflict, as though omnipotence should as it
were be enraged and exerted as men are wont to exert their strength in the
fierceness of their wrath.’
Many more Scriptures could be appealed to,
but sufficient evidence has been produced to show that the witness to the idea
of the wrath of God is pervasive in the Scriptures.
When the doctrine of the wrath of God is
denied, other great truths are affected by this denial. First among these is
the historic doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures.
I.
THE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES
Anyone who denies the wrath of God strikes
a blow at divine revelation — for, as we have seen, God’s wrath is plainly
revealed in His Word. His holy indignation against sin is one of the great
‘burdens’ of Scripture, one of the Bible’s great oracles; and he who denies
this holy indignation is flouting the verdict of the Judge of all the earth, a
verdict repeated times without number in His Word. Professor T. J. Crawford was
right when he said: ‘A great part of the Bible would need to be written over
again before we can expunge from it the broad and palpable evidence of God’s
holy displeasure against sinful men and of His righteous purpose to inflict
judgment for their iniquities.’ The effect then of the denial of the divine
wrath then would be devastating in its effect upon the doctrine of the
inspiration of the Scriptures.
II.
THE DOCTRINE OF GOD
If we preach the wrath of God, we are
sometimes accused of representing God as a Being of fitful passion and
vindictive fury. In other words, we are accused of blackening the character of
God. But we plead ‘Not guilty’. The God of the Bible is not subject to sudden
and irrational fits of anger. His wrath is His settled indignation against sin.
Dr Leon Morris rightly speaks of it as ‘a burning zeal for the right coupled
with a perfect hatred for everything that is evil’.
When men reject the idea of the wrath of
God, it is evident that they really do not believe in the perfect holiness of
God, for that holiness involves a settled and burning indignation against sin.
Moses could say of the adversaries of
III.
THE DOCTRINE OF SIN
There is a close connection between the
denial of God’s wrath and a light view of sin, as Dr J. G. Machen
said: ‘The modern rejection of God’s wrath proceeds from a light view of sin
which is totally at variance with the teaching of the whole New Testament and
of Jesus Himself’. It is the sight of the infinite holiness of God which leads
a man to a true sense of his sin and depravity. When Isaiah viewed God as
sitting on a throne high and lifted up, and worshipped as the perfectly Holy
One by the seraphim, then he cried ‘Woe is me, for I am undone’. When men see
God’s righteousness and His wrath, it is then that they become earnest seekers
after grace.
Once when Whitefleld
was preaching at
IV.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT
In his commentary on Romans chapter 1, Dr
Dodd denies divine wrath. It is small wonder that he proceeds in his commentary
on chapter 3, verse 25-26, to repudiate the idea of ‘the propitiation of the
wrath of God’ and of ‘the satisfaction demanded by His justice and afforded by
Christ’s vicarious endurance of the penalty of sin.’ Small wonder too that the
word ‘propitiation’ was removed from the New English Bible as well as from the
Revised Standard Version. One of the RSV translators, Dr C. T. Craig of Oberlin
School of Theology, commenting on the omission of the word ‘propitiation’,
said: ‘Any attempt to show that there was something in the essential nature of
God that demanded satisfaction for sin ends only in blackening the character of
God.’ So the doctrine of the atonement must go in the interests of the Modernist
view of a flabby deity!
Dr Dodd admits that in classical Greek and
in the Koiné [or Hellenistic Greek] the word
‘propitiate’ has the idea of placating or appeasing wrath. But he seeks to
argue from the Septuagint [the Greek translation of the New Testament made
a few centuries before Christ] that a change had taken place in the meaning of
the word. Dr Roger Nicole of
Dr Leon Morris in his The Apostolic
Preaching of the Cross says that Dr Dodd ‘totally ignores the fact that in
many passages there is explicit mention of the putting away of God’s anger, and
accordingly his conclusions cannot be accepted without serious modification.’
Indeed, Dr Morris produces arguments to show that ‘it is manifestly impossible
to maintain that the verb [propitiate’] has been emptied of its force.’
One must be supremely thankful for the labours of these two fine scholars of a younger generation
for their labours in putting up such a capable defence of, and devastating argument for, the historic
Christian doctrine of the atonement as a propitiation of divine wrath and a
satisfaction to divine justice.
V.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE LOVE OF GOD
Those who reject the wrath of God often
plead that their rejection is in the interests of the love of God; but actually
their rejection of divine wrath inificts a grievous
wound on the doctrine which they profess ardently to espouse. This is so
because Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and
propitiate God’s wrath is the greatest exhibition of divine love. We read in
Scripture: ‘Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and
sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins’ [1 John 4.10].
Dr James Denney said: ‘If the propitiatory
death of Jesus is eliminated from the love of God, it might be unfair to say
that the love of God is robbed of all meaning, but it is certainly robbed of
its apostolic meaning’ [Denney’s Death of Christ, p 152]. And this is
the meaning that supremely matters.
VI.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE JUDGMENT
If there is no wrath of God, then the
tremendous terrors of the judgment are eliminated. Then that ancient hymn loses
its significance which says:
That
day of wrath, that dreadful day |
Take away the concept of the wrath of God
and we strip the great day of assize of much of its tremendous awe.
VII.
THE DOCTRINE OF HELL
In 1930 there was a book issued with the
title What is Hell? There were twelve contributors.
Among them were two novelists, a Spiritist, a
Theosophist, a pagan, a Roman Catholic, a Congregationalist who became a Roman
Catholic two years later, an Anglican bishop and an Anglican dean. The dean, Dr
W. R. Inge, though not
thoroughly orthodox, could be quite caustic and penetrating in his comments on
the Modernists and he had many true words to say about hell. Indeed, he was the
one in this volume who came closest to the Scripture doctrine. He said that
‘heaven and hell stand and fall, together’ and pointed out that our Lord spoke
in perfectly plain language about its duration. He added: ‘Modernist
Protestantism, though it may be reluctant to admit it, believes in Purgatory,
but not in hell.’ When Dr Inge ceased to be dean of
St. Paul’s in 1934, his successor was Dr W. R. Matthews and it is interesting
to note that he says in his book The Hope of Immortality that to him purgatory
‘has great attractions’; he also says that he believes it ‘right to pray for
the dead’ and it would seem that universalism also has ‘attractions’ for him.
So it again appears, as we have already noted, that many of the objectors to
the concept of God’s wrath are really universalistic in their outlook. A
distinguished theologian of the Presbyterian Church,
In conclusion, I would point out that when
men deny the wrath of God, they are cutting one of the vital nerves of
evangelism. It was the thought of the wrath of God, as well as His love, that
lent such earnestness to the pleadings of the preachers of the gospel. The thought
of the overhanging cloud of God’s wrath lent earnestness to the preaching of
Paul. Knowing the fear of the Lord, he persuaded men. It was the same with
Whitefield and Brownlow North and R. M. M’Cheyne and Henry Martyn. Of
North his biographer wrote: ‘The immortality of the human soul and its endless
existence in a state of holiness and blessedness, or of corruption and misery,
were subjects constantly on his lips.’ Listen to M’Cheyne
also as he says: ‘As I walked in the fields, the
thought came over me with almost overwhelming power, that every one of my flock
must soon be in heaven or hell. 0 how I wished I had a tongue like thunder,
that I might make all hear; or that I had a frame like iron, that I might visit
every one and say, ‘Escape for thy life’. Ah, sinners! you
little know how I fear that you will lay the blame of your damnation at my
door.’ And it was he who said that the preacher should never speak of
everlasting punishment without tears.
What gratitude should surge in our hearts
because God has not appointed us unto wrath but to the obtaining of
salvation through our Lord Jesus! R. M. M’Cheyne
stressed this too when he wrote:
Chosen
not for good in me, |
By nature we were once ‘children of wrath’
— exposed to the dread wrath of God [Eph 2.3]. But we have been saved by grace
through faith, that we might do the good works which
God has before ordained for us [Eph 2.8, 10]. We are under a tremendous
obligation. This was how Paul saw himself. He said: ‘I am debtor both to
Greeks and barbarians . . . So, as much as in me is, I
am ready to preach the gospel to you also . . . . for
I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation . . .
. : for therein is revealed a righteousness of
God from faith unto faith . . . . for the wrath
of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of
men’ [Rom 1.14-18]. Note the four ‘for’s’, especially
the last one — ‘for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven’. The
divine wrath was revealed in God’s judgments on the heathen world of that day
and it overhung that world like a dark cloud. That same wrath is evident in the
world of our day and overhangs it like a dark cloud. We too should have the
tremendous sense of obligation which Paul had. We too are debtors — debtors to
men of every race and condition. May the spirit of concern fill our hearts as
it filled the heart of the apostle — that we may give an account of our
stewardship one day with joy and not with grief. Amen.