On God’s Wrath
Misplaced and Misunderstood
A lot of songs I sing in church have lines like
Till on that cross as Jesus died, The wrath of God was satisfied; For ev’ry sin on him was laid —Here in the death of Christ I live. – In Christ Alone
Unfortunately lines like this misunderstand the function of God’s wrath in the atonement: God’s divine wrath has not been poured out yet, and it will not be poured out on the Son.
Wait, what?
Yep, you heard me. It’s just not in Scripture at all. In reality, Scripture only ever talks about the future coming of God’s wrath, which is poured out onto all unrighteousness.
Romans 1.18: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those who by their injustice suppress the truth.
Romans 2.4–5: Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But by 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.
Romans 5.8–11:But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely, therefore, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Colossians 3.5-6: Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming.
1 Thessalonians 1.9–10: For they report about us what kind of welcome we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead — Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.
Notice the language of Scripture: it’s always future tense. We will be saved from God’s wrath, not we are or have been saved from it. When the day of judgment comes, and God’s wrath will be revealed, those with faith will be saved from it. But as that day hasn’t happened yet, God’s wrath is yet to come. No connection is made in these texts between the cross of Christ and the experience of God’s wrath.
What about…
There are several texts that people use to argue that God’s wrath was poured onto the Son on the cross in our place.
Romans 3.21–26: But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed and is attested by the Law and the Prophets, the righteousness of God through the faith of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to demonstrate at the present time his own righteousness, so that he is righteous and he justifies the one who has the faith of Jesus.
The argument from Romans 3 (and similarly in 1 John 2) is that Christ Jesus is put forth as a propitiation to appease God’s wrath. However, you’ll note here in the NRSV that the word “propitiation” does not show up, and opts to translate this it as “sacrifice of atonement”. Without that key word, it is clear that Christ did not take on the wrath of God on the cross, but served as an atonement for our sins like the sacrificial animals of the Old Testament.
Isaiah 53.4–5, 10: Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases, yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed… Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with affliction.When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.
The text of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant is a favourite for those who support the idea that God’s wrath was poured out on Christ. You may have even heard v. 10 used as justification for the phrase “it pleased the Father to crush the Son”. This passage, however, does not speak of the wrath of God. For sure Christ bore our sins, and it was the will of the Father that Christ would be an atonement. But note that the nature of this atonement is “an offering for sin”, once again just as the sacrificial animals of the Old Testament did.
At this point, you may be thinking: but weren’t the sacrificial animals taking on God’s wrath anyways? No, the Levitical text never says that’s what they did. Further, Hebrews 9.22 tells us that blood is used as a purification of the unclean, not as a propitiation of divine wrath.
Matthew 26.39: And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not what I want but what you want.”
A final argument that can be made is the connection between the cup Christ speaks about in the garden and God’s wrath. Each of the gospels record a saying about this cup, and there are passages that connect it to God’s wrath. However, never does Christ explicitly call it a cup of wrath (unlike Jeremiah 25 and Revelation 14). I would let the texts of Romans and 1 Thessalonians be controlling here and say that God’s wrath is still to come, and that the cup Christ refers to is a cup of suffering. Further, in Mark 10.39 Christ tells James and John they too will drink the same cup that He does. It would make little sense to say that James and John drank cups of God’s wrath, but it would make sense to say they drank cups of affliction and suffering.
Reframing of the Gospel
If you want to talk of God’s wrath in the gospel, you have to understand it properly. Genuinely no verse in Scripture explicitly says that (a) God’s wrath has been poured out and (b) that it’s been poured out on the Son. When we share the gospel in relation to God’s wrath what we can say is something like this:
God stands against all injustice in the world. Because of this, on the judgement day His wrath will be set against it. All of us participate in this suffering, and so we will be rightly condemned. However, if we have faith in Christ, God will declare us righteous by Jesus’ blood which was made an atonement for our sins.
Note that I’m not denying God’s wrath being on sinners, the reality of sin, Christ bearing our afflictions, nor Christ’s substitutionary atonement. I’m pointing out simply that God’s wrath was not poured out on the Son, nor will it ever be. The reason we will be saved from God’s wrath through the atonement is because we are declared righteous by Christ’s blood, not because Jesus took the brunt of it for us. The wrath of God will one day be laid on all unrighteousness, but those in Christ will be revealed to be hidden with Him. Christ bore our sins and died as an atonement for us, but God’s wrath was not poured out on Him.
