Is God a God of Wrath?

Nahum 1:2-3:  "The LORD is a jealous and avenging God; the LORD takes vengeance and is filled with wrath.  The LORD takes vengeance on his foes and maintains his wrath against his enemies.  The LORD is slow to anger and great in power; the LORD will not leave the guilty unpunished."

So often in today's nefarious climate, there is an attempt by many in our world to redefine God into a deity that always loves, always supports, and always condones the behaviors of people, even when those actions clearly contradict His prescriptive will in the Bible.  To be sure, God is love; in fact, His love is great and He is rich in mercy (Ephesians 2:4-5).  His love is so wonderful, that we should understand that it is better than our very lives (Psalm 63:3).  Still, God is not the grandfather-like figure that sits on His throne and just winks every time that we engage in sinful behavior.  He too is not One who encourages us to live our lives however we choose, wanting us to experience solely what our own hearts desire.  If God indeed were like this, then we should shutter in absolute fear, for we would have to conclude that God is duplicitous and unrighteous.  He would be a God of contradiction, who in His capricious whims would allow people to engage in thoughts and actions that were noticeably dissimilar (digressing from any standard of righteousness and consequently destructive) and yet be equally sanctioned by His ultra-permissive disposition. This fickleness of character should incite the greatest insecurity within humanity, as we never would know what God deemed to be good; in fact, goodness would no longer be such, because it is not based upon a standard of righteousness but a whim.  So too, we would have to acknowledge that God was not loving and righteous, for in His impulsiveness and unpredictability, He would be inconsistent with Himself and would leave us in a darkened world of uncertainty of what was right, just, holy, and true.

In the above cited verses, the LORD identifies Himself as the supreme covenant God, who is filled with wrath against those who would defy His will.  He is "jealous" (the Hebrew word here suggests a protective zeal) for His declarative standard of righteousness, and He will maintain His vengeance upon those who are His enemies.  There is no fickleness here!  God is a God of constancy, as He is unchanging in the "perfection of His character, nature, purposes, and promises" [see John Davis, Handbook of Basic Bible Texts (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan Publishing, 1984), 24].

God is not reactive, having a knee-jerk reaction to our ways; for the passage tells us that the LORD is slow to anger.  Because the LORD is rich in mercy, He is patient with us; and He gives us opportunity to repent of our sins and turn to Him.  Still, He is great in power and will not leave the guilty unpunished.  To allow those who defy His will to go unpunished would be to contradict His own righteousness and holiness . . . and this will never happen.  Praise the Lord for the immutability of our Lord.

This is a good word for us.  As much as we often attempt to justify our sins by conjuring up in our minds a God that is hyper-tolerant of our behaviors and actions, let us never forget that to have such a God would be the most chaotic and insecure reality we would ever face.  Let us celebrate that we have a God who is righteous and holy, who has a standard of righteousness and has given it to us in the Holy Scriptures, and who maintains His wrath against those who defy His will through their wicked pursuits.

Let us too humbly understand that we all are due His wrath, because we all have defied His will.  So let us thank Him for His mercy afforded through the death and resurrection of His Son.  Let us receive His forgiveness by receiving His grace through Christ Jesus, and let us press on through the power of the Holy Spirit to live our lives in obedience to His Word that He has given to us.