How Do You React?
How do you feel toward the man who murdered
that helpless little girl in such an unspeakably
cruel way? Are you angered? I hope so. I hope
you are outraged. If you were completely indifferent
to her fate, it would reveal something
horrible about your character.
Do you think that God is indifferent to such
acts of evil? You can bet your precious soul He
is not. He is outraged by them.
The fury of Almighty God against evil is
evidence of His goodness. If He wasn’t angered,
He wouldn’t be good. We
cannot separate God’s goodness
from His anger. Again,
if God is good by nature, He
must be unspeakably angry
at wickedness.
But His goodness is so
great that His anger isn’t confined
to the evils of rape and
murder. Nothing is hidden
from His pure and holy eyes. He is outraged by
torture, terrorism, abortion, theft, lying, adultery,
fornication, pedophilia, homosexuality,
and blasphemy. He also sees our thought-life,
and He will judge us for the hidden sins of the
heart: for lust, hatred, rebellion, greed, unclean
imaginations, ingratitude, selfishness, jealousy,
pride, envy, deceit, etc. Jesus warned, “But I
say to you, that every idle word that men shall
speak, they shall give account thereof in the
day of judgment”6 (emphasis added).
The Bible says that God’s wrath “abides”
on each of us,7 and that every time we sin,
we’re “storing up wrath”8 that will be revealed
on Judgment Day. We are even told that we are“by nature the children of wrath”9 (emphasis
added). Sinning against God comes naturally to
us—and we naturally earn His anger by our
sins.
