In Wrath, REMEMBER Mercy (Wrath Part 3)

The Lord is gracious and merciful;
Slow to anger and great in loving-kindness.
The Lord is good to all,
And His mercies are over all His works.
Psa. 145:8-9

Goodness and Mercy Are Inescapable
The scriptures never say, “God is impatient and full of wrath with everybody, quick to anger and slow to show love and kindness.” They emphasize the opposite and even state, “God is good to all, and His mercies are over all His works.” God is clear that He will destroy the wicked that persist in wickedness, which is a very different thing than random destruction or spiteful punishment. This kind of destruction addresses injustice that refuses to cease, and is especially associated with redressing the suffering of the righteous (Psa 145:19-20),

“The Lord is good to all:” Not some. All. Everybody. The tyrant. The sex trafficker. The American congressman. Wise. Foolish. Kind or mean. Rich or poor. It doesn’t matter, because He is good to all. And furthermore, “His mercies are over ALL his works:” Not a few. Not a lot. All. Everything he has made. 400 billion galaxies. Hundreds of billions of stars and novas. Tens of thousands of innumerable angels. Six billion plus living human beings. Fifty thousand species of vertebrates. Ten quintillion squirming insects. And even every grain of dirt and sand whose atoms number approximately 133,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Whew! All of creation is saturated with eternal, constant and unchanging mercy, but the most stunning day of mercy (and wrath) ever to break across history was when Jesus chose the way of the cross.

Wrath is a Place and Jesus is the Way Out
Wrath is a brief, decisive response to the ungodliness and injustices of men (Rom. 1:18). Not the men and women themselves, but their destructive alignment with what is at odds with relationship with God and creation’s freedom from the curse (Rom. 8:21). When Paul speaks of wrath he usually says, “The wrath,” not “God’s wrath.” In many ways wrath is distinct from God in that it represents a place that is as devoid of God as a place can be that is still within His reach. When we occupy a position that is outside of relationship to the Creator and His creation we have really slipped into the trap of living where wrath is already engaged in its terrible work. Jesus’ death and resurrection, however, paved an indestructible superhighway from that deathly place where we were stuck. It offers escape from our mired position in injustice, which is in the cross-hairs of the wrath of God, and into the arms of our warm-hearted Father in heaven.

Wrath may be God’s instrument but it is not His friend. That the wrath of God demands sacrifice to be satisfied may be true, but Jesus satisfies justice by compassionate mercy: “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire compassion, and not sacrifice,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matthew 9:11 & Hosea 6:6). God knows full well that we feel guilty as a consequence of sin and that we feel the need to offer a sacrifice to alleviate that. Clearly, the Law engenders guilt and requires atonement. So, covering our need to be atoned, not God’s “need” for sacrifice, Jesus acted distinctly apart from the Law (Rom 3:21), and offered Himself as a mercy sacrifice. Fulfilling the Law, He moved us from rules to navigate our brokenness into a grace that enslaves us to the glorious freedom of fabulous, covering love.

The Cross is More About Mercy and Less About Judicial Wrath
The judicial act of the cross is focused on a potent demonstration of restorative mercy, not the punitive satisfaction of God’s wrath, as many of us were taught in Protestant circles. The Atonement was meant to give us an ultimate, unclouded picture of Father God in the face of Jesus’ forgiving love and compassion on a cross. It was the satisfaction of God’s mercy! It was a masterpiece demonstration of justice by giving complete restoration of our access to the Father’s Spirit by which we cry, “Daddy, Daddy!” So, God cleansed all humanity through mercy (Rom. 3:23-25) in one massive act of forgiveness shown through the cross. He sent Jesus not to judge, but to save and to offer us a real way out of the dark place of judgment by simple faith in an amazing God (John 3:16-21).

The governmental wrath of God is a reality we should not deny, nor should we allow it to become the centerpiece of the cross. Now, I wouldn’t want you to draw the wrong conclusion here and think that I believe God never felt anger about the Atonement. The day Jesus was fastened to the cross may have been one of the angriest moments of God’s existence. He could have been outraged that humanity just killed His perfect and loving Son. He should have been livid at the devil, the evil powers and all the fallen angels. He may have been explosively furious when He saw the sins of the entire earth and death itself burying Jesus. But the fact is that God the Father radically chose to forgive us through Jesus’ humility and mercy while He was suspended on that dead tree. The resulting promise of resurrection that Jesus attained for us is simply mind-boggling good news!

Conclusion
So as the Psalmist says, “Surely goodness and mercy will pursue me,” we are the pursued on this earth. Not by wrath but by divine goodness from which all things spring. Though we face tremendous evil in this world, God’s passion is to rescue and give us help. And even if we may find ourselves in a dark place where wrath dwells, never forget His wise mercy: “His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for a lifetime” (Psa. 30:5b). There was room for a moment of the Father’s own godly anger over Jesus death. But that dark moment has passed us as we run into the Father’s outstretched arms of favor, which the cross of forgiveness represents. It will cover our lives by Jesus’ resurrection life in mercy and grace all our days.