The Divine Wrath and the Death of Christ

Jeremiah 32:18 You show unfailing love to thousands, but you also bring the consequences of one generation’s sin upon the next. You are the great and powerful God, the LORD of Heaven’s Armies.

THE DIVINE WRATH is the natural expression of the divine nature, which is absolute holiness, manifesting itself against the willful, high-handed, deliberate, inexcusable sin and iniquity of mankind. God's wrath is just, proper, and natural expression of His holiness and righteousness which must always, under all circumstances, and at all costs be maintained. It is, therefore, righteous indignation and compatible with the holy and righteous nature of God. “Our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29); “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31); “The LORD is slow to get angry, but his power is great, and he never lets the guilty go unpunished” (Nahum 1:3)

But the element of love and compassion is always closely connected with God's anger; if we rightly estimate the divine anger we must understand it as the expression and measure of that love; He is also righteous; as we think of an affectionate, sentimental Fatherhood of God we must bear in mind of the manifestation of His just, righteous and holy anger against sin and the sinner because of his transgression; remember that the heavenly Father to whom you pray has no favorites. He is not some Celestial pushover we can manipulate and get our things done. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time here as “temporary residents.” (1 Peter 1:17). 

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the annihilation of lives on earth on Noah’s days when the whole world had become evil narrates God’s righteous indignation.   Habakkuk 1:13 says “Your eyes are too good to look at evil. You cannot stand to see people doing wrong – even stars not pure in His eyes”. Adam and Eve were both thrown out of Eden because His holiness demanded it. As the whole of mankind has inherited Adam’s sin, God had to either wipe it out or redeem it. Out of His mercy and compassion and since He had not altogether given up on man, He decided to redeem it.  As no blood of bulls or goats could atone for sin, no man or angel was worthy enough to pay the price of redemption and only a human can bleed and die to secure forgiveness, God did it by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. What does the scripture say about Christ’ death on the cross?

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Ephesians: 2.13
But now, in union with Christ Jesus you, who used to be far away, have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

           Mankind was no more destined for eternal death. Man was reconciled to God. God had broken into man’s life through the blood of Jesus.

Romans: 3.25, 26
God offered Him so that by his blood he should become the means by which people's sins are forgiven through their faith in him. God did this in order to demonstrate that he is righteous. In the past he was patient and overlooked people's sins; but in the present time, He deals with their sins, in order to demonstrate his righteousness. In this way, God shows that He Himself is righteous and that He puts right everyone who believes in Jesus.

Christ died in our place, for our sins. God is justifiably angry at  Sinners. They have rebelled against Him and cut themselves off from His life-giving powers. But God declares Christ’s death as an appropriate, designated sacrifice for our sins. Christ then                          stands in  our place having paid the penalty of death for our sin, and  through that                                  completely   satisfies God’ demands. His sacrifice brings pardon, Deliverance, and freedom.

Galatians: 3.13, 14
But by becoming a curse for us Christ has redeemed us from the curse that the Law brings; for the scripture says, "Anyone who is hanged on a tree is under God's curse." Christ did this in order that the blessing which God promised to Abraham might be given to the Gentiles by means of Christ Jesus, so that through faith we might receive the Spirit promised by God.

He who never knew sin became sin for us; Christ, the Anointed One became a curse for our sake; (according to the Levitical law, cursed is anyone who is hung on a tree). The Lord disregarded this law and turned the cross a blessing for us. We are not under God’s ceremonial law now. Our Savior has perfectly fulfilled them on the behalf of the Jewish people, whom He represented from His birth until His death. There is nothing for us to do but to trust in His finished work, and to enter upon the same heritage of blessed service as was unfolded to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-13.

Hebrews: 10.10
Because Jesus Christ did what God wanted him to do, we are all purified from sin by the offering that he made of his own body once and for all. 

The secret of our Saviour’s work lies in His voluntary identification with the divine purposes. It was not so much His outward anguish and blood-shedding that made reconciliation possible, as His cry, “Not my will, my Father, but thine.” His attitude reminds us of the ancient custom of boring fast to the door the ear of the servant, who desired never again to leave His master’s service.

Hebrews: 10.19
We have, then, my friends, complete freedom to go into the Most Holy Place by means of the death of Jesus.

The most holy place in the temple used to be hidden from view by a curtain. Only the High Priest could enter this section, and that too once a year on the Day of Atonement when he offered sacrifices for the nation’s sins. But at Christ’s death, the curtain tore from top to bottom symbolically so that anybody could walk in any time.

Hebrews: 2.14, 15
Since the children, as he calls them, are people of flesh and blood, Jesus himself became like them and shared their human nature. He did this so that through his death he might destroy the Devil, who has the power over death, and in this way set free those who were slaves all their lives because of their fear of death.

Christ’s death and Resurrection set us free from the fear of death because death has been defeated. Everybody has to die, but death is not the end. Instead, it is a doorway to a new life. All who dread death should be given the opportunity to know a new hope that Christ brings. This is evangelism.

Philippians: 3.10
All I want is to know Christ and to experience the power of His resurrection, to share in His sufferings and become like him in his death…

Paul gave up everything in order to know Christ and His resurrection power. When we are united in Christ, we experience the power that raised Him from the dead. That same mighty power will enable to live morally renewed, regenerated power. But before we walk in the newness of life, we must die to sin. Just as the Resurrection gives us Christ’s power to live for Him, His crucifixion marks the death of our old sinful nature. We can’t know the victory of Resurrection without personally applying the crucifixion to our lives.

2Corinth 4; 10

Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.

Paul reminds us that as we may think we may be at the end of the rope, but we are not at the end of our hope. Our perishable bodies may be subjected to sin suffering, God will not abandon us. Because we won over death, we have eternal life.

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Through the varieties of statements of truth expressed above it becomes clear why Jesus had to die that terrible, painful death on the cross in order to satisfy the demands of Father God’s holiness.  When we believe in His vicarious death, repent of our sins and are baptized in him, we are symbolically dead with Him and resurrected into a new life. See above.  

(Romans 6: 3, 5). The death He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life He lives, He lives to God. So you too must count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:10, 11). Our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin (Romans 6:6).

King Solomon, the epitome of human wisdom, investigated the life under the sun and came to the conclusion it was a wasteful experience like chasing after the wind.  But the King of Kings Jesus who arrived nine centuries later in the land--because He was not limited to ‘under the sun--declared “I have come that they may have life, and have it in all its fullness (John 10.10)”. And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son (1 John 5:11).  

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