What is God's Wrath?

Was God wrathful before He created the world? Is His wrath a necessary thing to always be displayed or to be God? Is God’s wrath necessary to be active all the time for all eternity for God to receive glory? Why does God even do things for His glory? Is it to stroke His ego? Is it to display His goodness? Is it something He chooses to do? Or is He obliged to do it and can’t do otherwise? We will examine these questions in this section.

In our American culture when we want to know more about who someone is, we often ask, “What do you do?” and “Are you married? Do you have kids?” and “Who do you know?” Our western idea of identity is often more wrapped up in what career we possess, the status of our relationships, and our responsibilities than it is in who we actually are. These are external things about us that even if they change, we are still the same individuals. When we begin to think about God, we must be aware of this and not bring our western mindset into the equation, defining who God is merely from His actions.

God is wrathful, yes, but is His wrath required to constantly be displayed in order for Him to be God? Some people might presuppose this. They might think that in order for God to be God, He must display His wrath for all eternity continually to maintain His immutability and God nature. But if we think about this, how does it make sense, considering that for all eternity past, God wasn’t displaying His wrath on anyone or anything since it was just Him in existence before He brought everything else into existence? Also, would it make sense if we said: “A father is a father because he disciplines his child. Therefore, if a father at any time stops disciplining his child, he is no longer a father because that’s what fathers do”? But what about when the child grows up and is no longer in need of discipline? Has the father lost his identity? Certainly not! He is still a father, isn’t he? Yes, of course. In the same way, we need to know God for who He really is—not merely the actions He performs. Here is another example: God is Creator but if He is not creating, is He still the Creator? Yes, because He created in the past and because His nature is creativity. God has a creative mind but just because He does not make anything else, that does not mean His mind has ceased to be creative. His mind will continue to be creative because in His essence, God is life. From Him, everything else comes. His creativity flows from His life-giving nature.

Some people may be of the opinion that God’s wrath is one of His attributes. But is it? Wouldn’t that be like saying to a father that discipline is one of his attributes? Does that make any sense? We need to make the proper distinction between actions and identity. Actions are reflections of and can point to identity but they do not in and of themselves define identity. For this, we need to look deeper.

Where do the actions of God’s wrath come from? They come from His sense of justice which comes from His holiness, which comes from the nature of His love and light. Famous Bible scholar, Ben Witherington III, has said that there are many adjectives that describe God but there are only five nouns that define God: God is love, God is light, God is life, God is Spirit, and God is One. Adjectives are descriptive words which modify and describe nouns whereas nouns are the identifier words. This means that all of God’s actions and attributes can be traced back to these five nouns which are God’s core essential nature.

Nowhere in the Bible will you see the phrase, “God is wrath.” God certainly displays wrath but that wrath comes because God is loving and therefore will punish sin for what sin deserves and for the harm that it has caused. He also punishes sin because He is pure. God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. He therefore remains upright in all that He does. For these reasons, it would be wrong to think of God’s wrath as fighting against or being in any way in friction against His love. God does not have a multiple personality disorder which inhibits Him from making decisions to produce the results that He wants. He is fully cognizant of what He is doing without His nature clashing up against itself. God does as He pleases and therefore is not required to display His wrath for an eternity just for Him to maintain His Godness or God nature.

Neither is it required for God to display His wrath for all eternity so that He will receive glory. Remember, God is not a God in need of anything since He gives to all men life and breathe and all things (Acts 17:25). God, therefore, does not need the praises of men and angels to feel secure or proud about Himself. Our God is all in all and lacks nothing. God does not need to prove Himself to anyone. Neither does He display His power out of an arrogant or domineering spirit. The essence of His nature is love and life. He is a life-giving God and He wants us to come into that life and experience that goodness with Him. God’s glory is Him sharing His goodness and truth with the world. In fact, the pinnacle crowning act of His glory was sending Jesus into the world to save us. He didn’t do it because He thought it looked cool. He did it for us—for our benefit. After all, what’s so glorious about a King leaving His throne to become a baby and live a life of suffering and hardship, even from the very start where his bed was an animal’s feeding trough? And His triumphant entry into the city of His chosen people was riding on a donkey with his chosen disciples being former swindlers, prostitutes, and the nobodies of the world. No horse. No crown. No army. Just a donkey.

God didn’t need to prove Himself nor did He do all this for show. He did it for the joy that was set before Him to save us (Heb. 12:2; Lk. 15:9). Even as He was bleeding over the road carrying His cross, He turned to those weeping for Him with such selflessness, saying, “Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children” (Lk. 23:28). The way God glorifies Himself is not by getting but by giving. Jesus even said that “If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing” (Jn. 8:54).

The Apostle John said that “God is love,” and the Apostle Paul said that love is “not arrogant” and “does not seek its own” (1 Cor. 13:4-7). Jesus exemplified this humility and said, “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and give His life a ransom for many” (Mt. 20:28). Psalm 84:11 and John 17:22 tell us that God gives of His grace and glory to us and in John 17:26 Jesus says to the Father, “I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” Our God is a giving God—a selfless God. Even when Jesus prays that the disciples would see His glory, it is for their benefit. He wants us to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps. 34:8).

Unfortunately, many people don’t want God and choose against Him. Therefore, the fate that is reserved for them is the absence of God and all that God is—for eternity. Just as it is written in John 3:17-18 “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God” (CSB).

Whenever God glorifies Himself, it is not a selfish or arrogant thing to do because He is the ultimate and only source from which all goodness comes and therefore, it is selfless and loving to seek to draw all people into that goodness and glory to be saved, transformed, and to delight in that glory. Remember also that God is a Trinity and as such, it is within the nature of the Spirit to shine the light on the Son, for the Father to shine the light on the Son, and for the Son to shine the light on the Father, etc. They have loved each other perfectly for eternity. In God’s being alone He is selfless, even without our existence.

As the humility, love, and selflessness of God has been described here, it is unreasonable to argue that God would torment people for an eternity because it would glorify Himself. But someone might argue, what about Romans 9:22 which says, “What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?” To be clear, this verse does not teach that God takes pleasure in beating people up or destroying them. Nor does this verse argue for the requirement of vessels of wrath so that God can be glorified. If you read this chapter and can only see the limitations of God’s mercy, you have completely misread it. The whole emphasis is that God is extending His salvation to the gentiles. It’s about the expansion of His mercy not the limitations of it. If we stop at verse 22 without reading the next verse, we have failed. So what does it say? “And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He called, not from among the Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.” It says, “And He did so to.” This is the purpose. This is positive result that God in His wisdom and goodness has decided to bring about. He uses those who have freely chosen to reject Him as vessels of wrath for destruction so that more people might come to know Him. Pharoah was the vessel of wrath described earlier in the chapter and the wrath that came upon him was the plagues and the red sea waves that drowned him. There was a purpose behind that and the purpose was so that God’s name “might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth” (v. 17). The world heard about these stories of God. This chapter cannot be used as a defense of why God would torture people in hell for an eternity because the result of Paul’s argument is that it has a redeeming purpose. But what redeeming purpose does hell have? It doesn’t. The ultimate end of God’s glory is to make His love, light, and life known because that is what glorifies Him. God does not need the flames of hell burning forever in order for this to be achieved.

In view of all the things that have been said here, I believe God displays His wrath for several reasons: (1) He displays His wrath because He is both love and light. (2) He displays His wrath because He is just and it is not good to let sin go unpunished. (3) He displays His wrath to glorify Himself in a way that will ultimately bring more people to salvation and eternal life. (4) He displays His wrath on the unrepentant because there is no room for sin in heaven.

Here is an article for further reading:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/wrath-not-attribute-god/