The Wrath of God as an Expression of the Love of God

So far from God's wrath being in opposition to God's love, the wrath of God is actually an expression of his love. Michael Reeves explains:

His love is not mild-mannered and limp; it is livid, potent and committed. And therein lies our hope: through his wrath the living God shows that he is truly loving, and through his wrath he will destroy all devilry that we might enjoy him in a purified world, the home of righteousness. 

 To illustrate, Reeves points us to the personal wrestlings of Croation theologian Miroslav Volf, who pens these powerful words:

I used to think that wrath was unworthy of God. Isn't God love? Shouldn't divine love be beyond wrath? God is love, and God loves every person and every creature. That's exactly why God is wrathful against some of them. My last resistance to the idea of God's wrath was a casualty of the war in the former Yugoslavia, the region from which I come. According to some estimates, 200,000 people were killed and over 3,000,000 were displaced. My villages and cities were destroyed, my people shelled day in and day out, some of them brutalized beyond imagination, and I could not imagine God not being angry. 

Or think of Rwanda in the last decade of the past century where 800,00 people were hacked to death in one hundred days! How did God react to the carnage? By doting on the perpetrators in a grandparently fashion? By refusing to condemn the bloodbath but instead affirming the perpetrators' basic goodness? Wasn't God fiercely angry with them? Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God's wrath, I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn't wrathful at the sight of the world's evil. God isn't wrathful in spite of being loving. God is wrathful because God is love.

—Michael Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 119-120.

The Biblical Doctrine of Judgment

Leon Morris:

The doctrine of final judgment . . . stresses man's accountability and the certainty that justice will finally triumph over all the wrongs which are part and parcel of life here and now. The former gives a dignity to the humblest action, the latter brings calmness and assurance to those in the thick of the battle. This doctrine gives meaning to life. . . . The Christian view of judgment means that history moves to a goal. . . . Judgment protects the idea of the triumph of God and of good. It is unthinkable that the present conflict between good and evil should last throughout eternity. Judgment means that evil will be disposed of authoritatively, decisively, finally. Judgment means that in the end God's will will be perfectly done.

—The Biblical Doctrine of Judgment, 72, as cited in J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1973), 144.

Jesus Hates the Fed

Doug Wilson posts on legalized governmental theft:

Christian preachers need to just cut to the chase. Obamacare is not just theft, and not just grand larceny, it is mega larceny. Life is simple. Taking money from one group of people in order to give it to another group of people is larceny.

And further on:

I would have no problem condemning our modern banking and finance system, from the Fed on down, and I would have no problem issuing this condemnation from the pulpit in the name of Jesus. Why? Thou shalt not steal, as someone once said. 

"But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. For all that do such things, and all that do unrighteously, are an abomination unto the Lord thy God" (Deut. 25:15-16). 

"Divers weights, and divers measures, Both of them are alike abomination to the Lord" (Prov. 20:10). 

"Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water" (Isa. 1:22).

This is why we can say that Jesus Christ hates the Fed. He hates it because it is an abomination to Him, and we can say this for the same reason that we can say He hates it when a butcher has his thumb on the scales. 

Pumping unbacked currency into the economy is the same sin in principle as having different sets of weights and measures. It is the same sin as mixing low-grade wheat into the silo, and pretending you didn't. It is the same sin as cutting the wine with water, and selling it as though you hadn't. 

It is the sin of putting copper into your quarters. That's not a little thing—the Bible calls it an abomination.

The whole post, which is quite good, may be found here.

Voltaire Versus the Apostle

Consider Voltaire:

"God will forgive; that's his business."

Now consider the apostle Paul:

"Because of your stubborn and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each according to their deeds" (Rom. 2:5-6).

Who're you gonna believe?

The Central Place of the Whole Bible

From the margin of the Luther Bible of 1534, Luther calls Rom. 3:21-26 "the chief point, and the very central place of the Epistle, and of the whole Bible."

—Mined from Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 218.

YHWH Alone Will Be Exalted in that Day

Speaking of that great day of the Lord:

"The haughty looks of man shall be brought low,
and the lofty pride of men shall be humbled,
and YHWH alone will be exalted in that day.
For YHWH of hosts has a day
against all that is proud and lofty,
against all that is lifted up--and it shall be brought low . . ." (Isa. 2:11-12). 

Don't you just love it when the word of the Lord speaks this way?

Divine Justice: Free Choice or Necessity?

Did God have to punish his Son for our sin, or is this simply the way that he chose to save us?  In other words, could God have made satisfaction for sin in another way?  This question is often posed as a difficult one, but really it ought not to be.  To suppose that God poured out his wrath on his Son when really it wasn't necessary makes this demonstration of God's justice merely an act of his will and not of his nature.  And if it was merely an act of his will and not of his nature, it follows that this willingness to punish Jesus in our place is rather an instance of injustice, if in fact God could have done otherwise.