No More Wrath for You
“For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
(1 Thessalonians 5:9)
On a summer day in 1741, a man named Jonathan Edwards stood up in a little New England town called Enfield and delivered what would become one of the most famous monologues in American history: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” In it, he told his listeners that God was holding them over the pit of hell “much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire.”
God was disgusted by them, he said, and the only thing keeping them from dropping in was His good pleasure. Eyewitnesses wrote that the moaning and crying in that building got so loud he had to stop before he could finish.
Nearly three hundred years later, that spider is still dangling in the minds of countless children of God.
When I was in the foster system as a kid, I was taken to all kinds of churches, and some of them were downright terrifying. Maybe you’ve sat through the same kind of scary traditions yourself. Sure, the details change from pulpit to pulpit, but the message stays the same: God’s wrath is simmering like a pot, ready to boil over, and the only thing keeping His rage off you is your next round of good behavior.
What makes that message so dangerous is that His wrath never stays in the past. It’s always just over the horizon. You might be fine today, but one “bad” weekend, one lost temper, one thing you swore you’d never do again? It’s coming back for you!
As a result, people who’ve already trusted Jesus think they need to make another trip to the front of the church to get back into God’s good graces, just in case the wrath they were saved from has found a way to circle back around.
Let me be clear before I go any further. I’m not going to tell you God’s wrath is a myth. God’s wrath is real. The question is, where did it go?
WRATH IS REAL. IT JUST WENT SOMEWHERE ELSE.
The Bible talks about two kinds of God’s wrath: the coming wrath and the wrath over sin. Let’s get the coming wrath out of the way first, because it’s simple to understand and it has nothing to do with you sinning.
The coming wrath is God’s wrath against this physical planet. One day it will burn up, and we will get a new one (see 2 Peter 3:10-13, Revelation 21:1). We will get a new neighborhood, so to speak. Let me ask you, if your child lived in a dangerous neighborhood and you had the power to bulldoze it and build them a better one, would you bulldoze your child along with it? Of course not. You’d move them somewhere better, because you love them.
That’s exactly what God will do with you. Paul calls Jesus the One “who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10), which is why he could write the verse we opened with: God did not appoint us to wrath (see 1 Thessalonians 5:9).
When we get a new planet, God will destroy the power of sin, sinners, Satan, demons, death, disease, sickness, decay, and everything else that entered this realm because of Adam at the Fall. That’s the coming wrath. The good news is that God’s desire is for everyone to trust Jesus and be saved from it (see 2 Peter 3:9).
Then there’s the second kind: the wrath over sin. That includes both the power of sin that entered through Adam—hamartia, a force like gravity that infects everything physical—and the actions and attitudes of sinning. The wrath over sinning is what people have been taught to fear, while they ignore what’s already been done to the power of sin for every believer.
This wrath isn’t a temper tantrum or a mood swing. It’s His settled, righteous opposition to sin. A holy God can’t shrug at the very thing that brought death into His creation and wrecked the people He made in His image. Ever since Adam, sin has been a force expressed in humanity, and it’s left a long trail of graves behind it.
Something had to be done about it, so God did something. He wrote Himself into His own creation and dealt with what Adam did. God had given dominion over this physical realm to man, so He became a man and solved the sin problem.
“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned… For if by the offense of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many… then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.” (Romans 5:12,15,18-19)
A few verses earlier, Paul spells out what that means for you: “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him” (Romans 5:9). God sent His Son to do what we never could. Every ounce of His wrath against sin was aimed at one place, at one time, on one Person:
JESUS, ON THE CROSS.
And when it landed, it didn’t miss, and it didn’t come up short.
That means the wrath you’ve been bracing for has already been poured out. It just wasn’t poured out on you.
JESUS DRANK THE WHOLE CUP
The night before the Cross, Jesus knelt in a garden called Gethsemane and prayed intensely, asking the Father, “If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39).
What cup? Any Jew who knew the prophets would’ve understood. All through the Old Testament, God’s wrath was pictured as a cup that had to be drunk. Through Isaiah, God made this promise to Jerusalem:
“Thus says your Lord, the Lord and your God, who pleads the cause of His people: ‘See, I have taken out of your hand the cup of trembling, the dregs of the cup of My fury; you shall no longer drink it.'” (Isaiah 51:22)
That promise was first spoken to a nation of Jews in exile, those who had rebelled against the Old Covenant they promised to keep. It found its full answer in the Messiah, who came not only for Israel but for the whole world (see 1 John 2:2). The only way God could take that cup out of humanity’s hands was to put it into His Son’s.
Moments after the prayer, the soldiers came to arrest Jesus, and Peter did what Peter did quite often. Attempting to control the situation, he grabbed a sword and started swinging. A servant of the high priest even lost an ear (see John 18:10). Jesus had to clean up after him by healing the man (see Luke 22:51), and then He corrected Peter: “Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given Me?” (John 18:11).
Peter didn’t understand the cup, but Jesus did, and He was determined to drink it.
And don’t miss who handed it to Him: “the cup which My Father has given Me.” Remember that the next time someone tells you God is waiting to pour His wrath out on you. He already poured it, and He poured it into His Son’s cup, not yours.
You’ve probably heard the old question: Is the glass half empty or half full? The optimist says half full. The pessimist says half empty. The gospel says Jesus drank the whole thing and then turned the cup upside down.
There’s not a drop left for you, my friend. Not even a sip on your worst day.
MUCH MORE
Paul made an argument in Romans 5 that I wish every believer would memorize. You’ve already seen the second half, but back up one verse and read them together:
“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.” (Romans 5:8-9)
Paul is reasoning from the harder thing to the easier thing. The hard part was Jesus dying for people who wanted nothing to do with Him. If God loved you that much while you were still a sinner, how much more will He keep you from wrath now that you’ve been justified?
This is hard for the religious mindset to grasp.
Picture someone diving into a freezing river to pull you out while you’re thrashing around and fighting him the whole way. He drags you up on the bank, wraps you in a blanket, and gets you breathing normally again. Would he then turn around and shove you back in the water? Never.
That’s the “much more.” If He rescued you while you were fighting Him, He certainly isn’t going to throw you back in now that you’re His.
And don’t let the word shall trip you up. Paul isn’t saying, “Maybe later, if you can hold on.” Notice the phrase right before it: having now been justified. That’s done. The “now” guarantees the “shall.”
Also, look at how you’re saved from wrath: through Him. Your consistency doesn’t get a mention. Neither does your track record since you got saved, or how many times you’ve rededicated your life to God. Paul points to one Person, and it isn’t you.
Your good behavior was never the shield standing between you and God’s wrath. From the beginning, it’s always been Jesus, and He isn’t going anywhere.
STAND WHERE THE FIRE ALREADY BURNED
When pioneers were crossing the Great Plains, one of the most terrifying things they could see was a prairie fire on the horizon. With the wind behind it, those fires could race across the dry grass faster than a horse could run. In fact, outrunning the blaze sometimes wasn’t an option.
The settlers who knew what they were doing would set a small fire of their own, downwind, and let it burn off a patch of ground. Then they’d move their families and animals onto the blackened ash and wait. When the big fire finally arrived, it roared right up to the edge of that burned patch, and then went around them.
It couldn’t touch them there, because there was nothing left to burn. The fire had already been there.
That’s the Cross. The full fire of God’s wrath against sin already burned there, on Jesus, and there’s nothing left to burn.
When you first trusted Jesus, you didn’t get forgiveness handed to you from a distance with a behavior-improvement program to follow. Instead, God supernaturally placed you in Christ (see 1 Corinthians 1:30). That means you’re standing on burned ground, where it’s safe.
Performance-based religion will keep trying to push you off the safe ash and back into the dangerous, tall grass.
Do more. Try harder. Make sure you’re right with God. Be careful.
There’s a reason that kind of false teaching always produces fear. Paul said that “the Law brings about wrath; for where there is no Law there is no transgression” (Romans 4:15). Put yourself under a rule system to stay right with God, and you’ll feel the heat every time. Not because God is aiming at you, but because you’ve wandered back out into the dry field, in your mind.
The truth is, it’s impossible for you to actually get off that ash, because it’s your permanent spiritual location. Mentally? Sure, but your reality will always remain safe because you’re always in Jesus.
THE SONS OF THUNDER
One of my favorite stories about God’s wrath involves two men who actually wanted to use it.
Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem and sent messengers ahead to a Samaritan village to get things ready for Him. The village said no. They didn’t want Him there (see Luke 9:51-53). In response, James and John had what they thought was a great idea: “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?” (Luke 9:54)
They had been following Jesus for a while at this point. They’d heard Him teach and watched Him heal, and their big ministry idea was to wipe out an entire village because it wouldn’t host a sleepover for Christ.
I also love that they asked whether Jesus wanted them to call down the fire. They were pretty confident in their “abilities.”
Jesus had already nicknamed these two “Sons of Thunder” (see Mark 3:17). I can’t imagine why.
Here’s what happened next: “But He turned and rebuked them, and said, ‘You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.'” (Luke 9:55-56)
Plenty of box church pulpits are still run by Sons of Thunder. They’re always ready to call down fire on whoever doesn’t fit into their religious mold, and far too often, that fire lands on the very believers sitting in the seats. But Jesus never asked for that kind of help, did He? He didn’t come to destroy anyone. He came to save (see Luke 19:10, John 3:17).
Interestingly, that same John, the one who was ready to torch a whole village, lived long enough to write, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). The Son of Thunder became the apostle of love.
What changed? He watched Jesus go to the Cross and take the fire of God onto Himself (see John 19:25-27). Once you understand where God’s wrath actually went, you lose all appetite for calling it down on anybody else. And you stop calling it down on yourself, too.
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