Wrath for the Beloved

"Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God."

I've been waiting for this week. How I love the wrath of God! If you've talked to me anytime in the last 3 months, I have told you a thousand reasons why divine wrath is good and essential. I have waited to tell you all about it and declare it good and righteous and holy.

But, having written a twenty page document on the subject matter, I thought I would steer this week a different direction.

Saints, you are beloved. Paul does not use this word flippantly, he is speaking a profound theological truth. You are loved by God. Not our secular love that is mere kindness and permissiveness. As C. S. Lewis says it in The Problem of Pain, God's love is "not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as man's love for a dog, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes."

Saints, you are loved by God in that way. God's love is not passive. It is not common or like anything you experience. God's love is wholly other, fully consuming and deeply concerned with who you are. Therefore, since you are loved, let your love be genuine and act according to the promises of God.


For those of you who want to hear me affirm the wrath of God, you can read my paper here.