Jesus not only suffered God’s wrath, he satisfied God’s wrath against those who sincerely believe in him and accept his rule.

I spoke with someone last week who went to the dentist for a checkup that included x-rays. After examining the pictures, the dentist said the nerve for one tooth had died, and untreated it would eventually become infected, which leads to bigger problems. The treatment, he said, was a root canal.

Have you ever felt as though you needed a root canal? Probably not. You get a root canal because someone who knows more than you says you have a bigger problem than you realized. The person who told me this story said her tooth had been sensitive to hot and cold for some time but not painful.

Whether we are deciding about getting dental work, car repairs, home repairs, or surgery, the only thing that makes us willing to spend significant money and perhaps experience significant pain is the alternative of doing nothing is even worse.

Evil deeds are a bigger problem than we realize

To many lost souls, the gospel is like a root canal. It only sounds like good news when they understand the scope of their problem. People reject the gospel of Jesus Christ because they think their teeth have become sensitive to hot or cold, or just maybe they have a cavity. They don’t realize every nerve in every tooth of their mouth is dead, and their gums are infected, and as a result they have other serious medical conditions in the rest of their body. The disease in their mouths could literally kill them.

Oh come on, it’s not that serious.

Sure, it’s not that serious if we are distracted by the cares and pleasures of this life, by movies, sports, and news, by work and good times with family and friends; if we think more about money than about God; if we don’t read the Bible or take it seriously.

But if you read and believe the Bible, you can’t miss here, there, and everywhere a disturbing revelation about God. Namely that he hates evil—hates it, opposes it, constantly, fiercely. He is never indifferent to it. He feels about evil the way a dog or cat lover feels about animal cruelty, the way a nature lover feels about pollution or commercial development of wetlands and forests, the way an art lover feels about vandalism of public art, the way a humanity lover feels about sex trafficking and hunger and cancer and child abuse. Every single incidence is grievous, a cause for sorrow and outrage.

God feels about evil the way we should but generally don’t. We become dulled or exhausted by all the evil in our world and in ourselves. We can only remember or stomach so much of it. God, however, does not become dulled or forgetful of evil. He mourns every incidence of human evil.

God’s wrath

At some point, immediately or eventually, he feels and expresses what the Bible calls wrath. Romans 1:18 says, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” Romans 2:5 says, “Because of 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.” Psalm 7:11 says, “God is a righteous judge, a God who displays his wrath every day” (NIV).

Wrath is the right response of a good person—a healthy moral being—to evil. In other words, a person who sees someone torturing a dog and laughs about it or shrugs his shoulders and says “whatever” is sick. God’s wrath is the right response to human evil. It is the right response morally, emotionally, relationally. His response is never extreme or out of control. Scripture says he is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger” (Exodus 34:6). Although his opposition to evil never varies, his full wrath usually waits. The wrath he does feel and express is always perfectly right, the outworking of his justice, holiness, patience, mercy, perfect knowledge, righteousness, redemptive desires, love, and slowness to anger.

Why we don’t see our own evils

One big difference between us and God is he perfectly recognizes what is evil. Although we recognize many evils, we also miss and minimize many.

One reason God correctly recognizes many evils we miss is, we are part of the problem. We have evil in us that blinds us to evil. We do not see our own evil, or we minimize it. If our evil is lying, for example, we may see the wrongness of lying as a 2 on a scale of 10, as fibs rather than lies, and we rationalize that we only lie occasionally when we need to, and nobody is hurt by it. And then we forget our “fibs,” forget that we have told dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of lies over our lifetime.

Evils committed against God himself

In particular, we are blind to our evils committed directly against God our Creator, who gives us all we have and daily sustains us. Just as we can commit evils directly against other humans, so we can do toward God, and so we all have done. People use his name in vain, disobey his commands, ignore his Scriptures, don’t bother to give thanks to him and worship him, treat what God has created as if it were God by loving it above God himself, which is a form of idolatry, and even blaspheme him.

The greatest evils humans can commit are evils directly against God himself. To ignore God—the highest good and source of all good—is evil. Not to believe God—who is the truth and tells only truth—or not to believe in him, is evil. Such evils end in his proper wrath.

Because of God’s wrath, we need the gospel

The gospel brings God’s wrath into sharp focus. It is one of the gospel’s prominent ideas because at the center of the gospel is Jesus Christ and his substitutionary death on the cross. The cross, and the scourging that preceded it, was a horrific, bloody, gruesome event. It only makes sense if we understand the wrath of God. Although Jesus had never done evil, he suffered God’s wrath against evil humanity—as a substitute—to save humanity from wrath. What you see at the Cross is God’s wrath.

Jesus not only suffered God’s wrath, he satisfied God’s wrath against those who believe in and accept his rule. He changed God’s attitude toward the followers of Jesus from wrath to favor.

Romans 5:1–2 says, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand” (ESV).

Our way and God’s way

Our way: We do not see human evil for how heinous it actually is.

God’s way: The gospel teaches us that the Lord rightly sees evil for its wrongness, vileness, and corruption, and hates it.

Life principle: Mankind’s biggest problem is the wrath of God. Every person needs to be saved from it, and the only way that happens is by God’s grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, who alone at the Cross dealt with the problem of God’s wrath.

Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)

We are the unworthy beneficiaries of a generous-hearted God. We are the recipients of his gracious love.

“The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love’” (Exodus 34:6).

God’s love is gracious. Because of his grace, God loves us before we are good, before we are lovely.

Grace means giving to others what they do not deserve or have not earned. Grace is the overflow of God’s infinite love, goodness, and kindness, which is so great that he delights to bless even those who have offended and rejected him.

When God loved us in our sins, it was not as though he was a dog lover who walked by a pet rescue center, saw a cute, sad-eyed puppy in the window, and just couldn’t help himself but had to take that puppy home to the family. No, God’s love for sinners is his overflowing grace that delights to extravagantly love and show immeasurable kindness to those who least deserve it. In his grace, God chose to love people who were an abomination to him. He didn’t feel good about fallen sinners. Far from it.

For example, read the story of how God felt about the people of the world prior to his sending the deluge in Noah’s time: “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them’” (Genesis 6:5–7 ESV).

I’m going to give some Scriptures now that may shock you. You may even think I have lost it theologically, but please read to the end so you get my full, balanced explanation, and why it is important to understand and believe what these Scriptures say if we are to understand his love, grace, and gospel. If you don’t read to the end, you will misunderstand me.

Here we go. Notice in Scripture how God feels about both sin and sinners: “There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers” (Proverbs 6:16–19). Notice that it is not just lies that God abominates; it is also the false witness who speaks them. It is not just discord that God hates; it is also the one who sows it.

As Psalm 5:4–6 says: “You are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies; the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.”

It sounds shocking to say God “hates evildoers,” but it cannot be otherwise. God is perfectly good, and perfect goodness cannot be indifferent about evil. Perfect goodness must hate and oppose evil. For example, a perfectly good father wants the good of his child and therefore hates any evil that could harm his child.

To use another example, no one would suggest that God could be indifferent toward the evil of Adolf Hitler or the mass shooters who plague American society. If God is perfectly good, he must hate the evil of a sociopath, or any other evil that God recognizes as such but that we often minimize or overlook because we are guilty of these evils or know someone who is guilty. (See Hebrews 1:8–9, in which God says of Jesus, “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness.”)

You may be thinking, Wait a minute; the Bible says God hates the sin but loves the sinner. That is an appealing saying, but it is not in the Bible. There is certainly a sense that God loves the sinner, but it is emphatically not that he feels good about them. God loves sinners in the sense that he cares about them, wants them to be saved from the guilt of sin, offers his Son Jesus to them as Savior, and for the present time patiently shows undeserved kindness to them in hope that they will repent and become children in whom he delights.

So when God loves sinners, it is an act of grace, not attraction. He gives love and chooses (Exodus 33:19) to have compassion on and show mercy to those who do not deserve it and in fact actually provoke his holy and just wrath and hatred. He gives extravagant love to his enemies (Matthew 5:43–45). In love he gave his beloved Son Jesus for sinners. That was the greatest expression of gracious love in human history (John 3:16–19). Jesus came to express and display the gracious love of God and his choice to show compassion and mercy to sinners (John 1:14–18).

But Jesus loved sinners

Still, this just does not sit right. If God loathes stubborn, proud, unbelieving sinners and regards them as his enemies, why did Jesus in his lifetime not express that? Jesus was the friend of sinners. He hung around tax collectors and showed kindness to prostitutes. He expressed compassion for those in bondage to Satan’s torments.

What’s more, it was the Pharisees—the bad guys of the Gospels—who despised sinners, while Jesus loved sinners and defended them from the Pharisees. And Jesus said he was the perfect reflection of God the Father.

So the idea that God in one sense loathes and—in another, limited sense—graciously loves sinners seems unthinkable.

Understanding the seeming contradiction

Three truths explain the paradox.

1. Jesus introduced a special period when God is offering mercy. In the salvation offered through Jesus, God opened a window of opportunity that will one day shut. In Jesus, God offers his gracious love (hence the topic of this post). God is offering his love to all, to the undeserving, the idol worshipers, the arrogant and rebellious, inviting them to humble themselves, repent, follow Jesus, and be saved. This is the gracious era of salvation, and Jesus offered it during his ministry. For this limited era, Jesus came not to condemn, but to save.

But this is only a season. This is not a permanent state of affairs. This door will close.

The New Testament says: “‘In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.’ Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).

Again, the New Testament says, “Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of 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. He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil” (Romans 2:4–9)

The Book of Revelation also makes clear that this period of God’s gracious, loving welcome to sinners will come to an end. When it does, the wrath of God that never left his heart but has been stored up against unrepentant sinners will finally be expressed in a great and terrible judgment. And it will be expressed not just by God the Father, but also by Jesus (see Revelation 6:16; 14:10; 19:11–21). As always, Jesus is perfect theology.

2. Jesus came to be our mediator and high priest. He came to mediate between us and God. Even though in his hatred of evil, God was against us, in gracious love he chose also to be for us (Romans 8:31–32) by sending a mediator who could satisfy his holy wrath, turning it away from us by taking it upon himself at the cross. The cross is the unmistakable evidence that God never lost his hatred of evil and evildoers, but in gracious love chose to save evildoers through the blood of Jesus.

So, Jesus showed kindness rather than hostility to sinners because that was his special role as the Mediator, the High Priest, the Savior, and the Lamb of God. Sinful humans could not come near to God without a mediator and Savior. This merciful, mediating role does not deny God’s wrath toward sinners, but rather emphatically affirms it. There would be no need for a mediating high priest if God felt good about sinners.

3. During his earthly ministry, Jesus actually did display God’s wrath and hostility toward some sinners. These sinners were of course primarily the Pharisees, and Jesus did not treat them warmly because most of them were beyond salvation, for they knew better and had hardened their hearts.

Jesus felt anger toward them: “Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, ‘Come here.’ And he said to them, ‘Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored” (Mark 3:1–5).

In his words he expressed utter loathing for them: “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?” (Matthew 23:33) (Read the full-length, scathing declaration of Jesus’ loathing for the Pharisees here: Matthew 23:15–35).

Pharisees were not the only ones toward whom Jesus expressed the wrath of God: “In the temple [Jesus] found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables” (John 2:14–15). That’s not nice, nor is it warm and welcoming, nor is it merciful.

Avoiding the pharisees’ error

As important as the truth of this post is, it can lead to error. Again, it was the error of the Pharisees. They hated sinners, even though they themselves were grievous sinners, blind to their own wickedness. Jesus condemned them for hypocrisy, selfishness, greed, hardness of heart, self-righteousness, injustice, godlessness. They thought they were good enough for God. They imagined they had kept the requirements of the law of Moses and judged others for not keeping it.

Why this is important

The reason this difficult truth is important to believe is it compels us to speak the gospel to lost people and urge them to come to Christ. If we believe God has warm and fuzzy love for everyone regardless of what they do or believe, we easily assume that God will certainly forgive and accept everyone but the most hardened sociopathic killers. It reminds us that apart from Jesus, the people you know and love are lost and facing eternal condemnation. You need to risk offending them by talking to them about the good news of Jesus.

And these truths give the proper warning to non-Christians that all is not well between them and their Creator. In fact, they are living under the shadow of a coming storm worse than any hurricane (Romans 1:18; 2:5, 8). God loves them, but he does not accept them and will certainly judge them if they do not trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins.

Our way and God’s way

Our way: We think God loves us because we are lovable, because we are good.

God’s way: God gives you his love based not on your merits or your loveliness but rather based solely on his grace. He gives love you do not deserve.

Life principle: We must respond to God’s gracious love by repenting of breaking God’s commandments, by trusting in Jesus Christ to be our Savior from the guilt of our sins, and by following him from now on as our Lord.