IS GOD AN ANGRY GOD?
Is God an angry God? Some people think He is. If He is a God of love, how does anger fit in with His love? While God is indeed a God of love, that doesn’t mean He doesn’t get angry as well. Some remake God in their image as only love with never any anger. Others see Him as a fire-and-brimstone God who is watching us to find something to blame us for doing (or not doing).
So, does God get angry? The short answer is yes, God does get angry, and Scripture gives countless examples of God’s anger. But God’s differs from human anger in that ours can be for selfish reasons, while His is always righteous and to further truth.
God probably felt anger when He learned that Adam and Eve had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and hid from Him in guilt for their doings (Gen. 3). Even though God knew all that transpired, He was still angry with the serpent/Satan and also with Adam and Eve blaming one another and the serpent for their sins, as well as feeling they could hide what they did from God, who knows and sees everything.
Another time God’s anger is seen is when the Israelites were being led by Moses to the Promised Land, as recorded in the book of Exodus. They were rebellious and disobedient, but it wasn’t until they made the golden calf that God’s anger was aroused and death occurred as a consequence (Exodus 32). Other examples of God’s wrath are shown in the book of Judges, the four Gospels, and especially in the book of Revelation, as Jesus returns and God’s anger is unleashed on the devil to end his reign of darkness.
Is God angrier in the Old Testament than the New? Some say God acts differently after Jesus came, showing grace instead of judgment. While there are many instances of God’s anger in the Old Testament, He is just as angry with sin in the New Testament. We see that in Jesus when He turned over the moneychangers’ tables in the temple and when He experienced people not treating others in love as they should. Paul’s letters reflect a lot of God’s anger, too, in reprimanding churches for their sinful behavior and disregard for God. So, God’s anger was the same from the Old Testament to the New Testament; it was just reflected more through the emotions and actions of Jesus and His disciples and apostles.
But does God get angry with us today? Before salvation we were under His wrath and eternal judgment for our sin (John 3:36). Now our sins are gone and we are His children, His friends, His Bride and beloved by Him. Still, He gets angry at our sinful choices and disobedience. He still loves us, but is angry at what we do. That’s true of a good parent as well as our Heavenly Father. It would be good for us to remember, before we sin, that God hates it when we sin. That should motivate us to apologize to Him and turn from the sin.
Remember that God’s anger is not like ours. God has good reason to be angry, but practices more restraint than we do with anger. When someone wrongs us, we usually want to retaliate to get justice in some way for the wrongdoing. But God’s anger is different from us. Although He is upset with us, as we would be upset also, He knows trying to seek justice from us won’t help us in the long run. We won’t grow in faith and awareness of God’s teachings and direction if God exacted His anger on us as we try to do to others.
What does it mean that God is “slow to anger”? God’s love and mercy is greater than His anger. That doesn’t mean our sin in OK, only that He chooses to deal with us in grace and patience. Sometimes we take advantage of this, seeing Him as weak and not bothered by our sin.
God’s anger is righteous, in that it is always justified and He has every right to be angry. God uses other ways to show His love and correction without having to exercise His anger. Good parents are that way as well, withholding discipline for every error and showing patience and mercy to their children. God gets angry at sin because He knows what it does to those He loves. He loves us so much He can’t stand for anything to harm us and there is nothing more dangerous to us than sin!
1 John 4:8 “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love”.
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”
Do you ever take advantage of God’s love?
Do you ever do things out of fear of God?
Pray and ask God to help you have a healthy balance
cto Rev. Dr. JERRY SCHMOYER
Christian Training Organization
Jerry@ChristianTrainingOrganization.org
(India & Africa & Spanish Outreach, Spiritual Warfare, Family Ministries, Counseling, World View)
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