"...through which is coming the wrath of God (upon the sons of disobedience)."
-The wrath of God. The wrath of God. Orgé in the Greek. Anger. There are two kinds of anger - one which flames up suddenly but which soon dissipates (thymos in the Greek), and this one, which rises gradually and becomes more settled. God tells us repeatedly that He is slow to anger (Exodus 34.6 and 8 other times in the OT). We are to be similarly slow to anger and actually to put it completely aside (James 1.19-20, Ephesains 4.31, Matthew 5.22, Titus 1.7; cf Proverbs 14.29, 16.32, 19.11, 22.24, 29.22). Paul says so just two verses from now (Colossians 3.8). There is, however, one clear exception, in that Scripture distinctly authorizes the dispensation of wrath specifically to punish and correct disobedience and unrighteousness. God’s righteous wrath this, coming directly from Him (John 3.36, Romans 1.18, 2.5, 12.19), or through government leaders and parents and others He has put in authority over us as His divine agents (Romans 13.4, Proverbs 23.13, 22.15, 13.24). In theory these are in this life merely adminstering consequences, aka discipline, preemptive strikes whose primary intent vis a vis discipline is to correct our course and head off any experience of the full blown orgé on the day of judgment. But make no mistake, the wrath of God is coming (Matthew 3.7, 1Thessalonians 1.10, Romans 2.5, Ephesians 5.6), a day in which He will fully and finally punish the sins of men. On that day you and I will most certainly want to be on the Lord’s side, having been rescued from the full force of His wrath poured out on sin. WHICH in fact He actually already did on Calvary, so in reality there is no good reason why anyone should have to face this wrath which is to come. One might even suggest that the primary sin which will be punished at the apocalypse will be the obduracy of those who have stubbornly refused God’s offer of grace and forgiveness through Jesus. But that day of wrath will be something great and terrible, something to definitely avoid at all costs (Revelation 6.16-17), and in fact it is completely avoidable in Jesus (Romans 5.9). But for those who resist God’s offer of grace in this life, there will be no place they can hide, nowhere they can flee to escape God’s wrath.
-And incidentally, is it not our failure to acknowledge and embrace the terrible reality of wrath, the certain destruction which awaits the world God so loves, which robs us of urgency and resolve as it relates to the business of heaven? The masses do not want to hear about wrath (even as they stumble ahead on a course straight for it) - they won’t come back to our church, they won’t be our friend anymore, they will call us names like intolerant and narrow-minded - it's offensive, politically-incorrect, and so we don’t talk about it. People prefer to consign God’s wrath to the OT, to a less-evolved antiquated deity who somehow no longer exists or has become irrelevant and who has been supplanted by a god who is somehow incapable of any negativity whatsoever. Toothless. Harmless. A sage grandfatherly figure who perhaps wags his finger and winks at disobedience and sort of lets most everybody of the hook except for those who really don’t deserve it. But this dichotomous deity is a mirage, a dreamy concoction propped up by those desperate to avoid any accountability for how they live their life. Look through the pages of Scripture with an open mind and see that it has always been a both/and with the holy triune God Who made us in His image to be in relationship with Him and to reflect His breathtaking goodness - love and wrath, forgiveness and punishment, eternal life and eternal death (Exodus 34.6-7, Deuteronomy 7.9-10, Daniel 12.2, Matthew 25.46, John 3.36, 5.29, Romans 2.7-8, 6.23, 2Thessalonians 1.7-10, Revelation 21.7-8), and our Heavenly Father has even given us a choice as to which side of Him we get to experience (John 3.16, Ephesians 2.8-9). Eternal life, God’s grace and forgiveness, is a free gift, but it must be received. We must receive Jesus, put our faith and trust in Him, in His death on the Cross where He stood in our place and took on the wrath and punishment which we justly deserved for our disobedience (1John 5.11-13). He is the Way, the only Way that we sons of disobedience can escape this coming wrath (John 14.6). Yes, every one of our forefathers disobeyed and we were born into the same disobedience, born to sin as sparks fly upward. Selfishness and rebellion and idolatry oozes from our pores and permeates every fiber of our being from the day we are born. A child needs no instruction in the art of me-first, in the use of the word ‘mine’, to know how to disobey, to be unkind, to hide from consequences. Disobedience must be painstakingly trained (and some times beaten) out of us, and even then we are unable to eradicate it on our own efforts. Yes, we all need a Savior - thanks be to God for His indescribable gift...!
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