Gentle Jesus meek and mild,
look upon this little child
Pity my simplicity
Suffer me to come to thee
I grew up with pictures (photos even!) of a blonde-haired, permed and well-shampooed Jesus with a sweet little lamb draped over his forearm. The implicit message was that the Son of God would never harm a fly—except to discipline the little winged friend in love.
There’s no shortage of bliblical support for the truth that we serve and follow a God who is all love.
There’s a similar weight of support for the truth that we serve a God who is all wrath. Doesn’t get as much press, doesn’t preach so well…and, I’m guessing, has a fairly negative effect on the Sunday morning offering.
This is Psalm 50: the creator-God whose love is higher than mountains and deeper than oceans is also a God of wrath. And this is the moment we all get pretty twitchy and start sqirming in our seats.
The mighty one, says the worship leader in 50, commands all creation. A fire devours all before him and around him is a mighty storm as he prepares to judge His people.
It turns out that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. The God of all justice is, by implication, a God of wrath. Because He’s holy, He hates sin. His holiness would be diminished and nullified if wrath were absent. After all, how could God look on perfection and sin, wisdom and foolishness, virtue and vice withough displaying his anger/wrath towards sin…and still remain holy and undefiled?
The wrath of God is His displeasure and indignation towards sin – it testifies to His perfection.
(It’s worth mentioning here that it’s a little dangerous boarding the ‘wrath-train’ for too long and that googling it is an invitation to a whole bunch of crazies to climb aboard…and a whole lot of animated flames!)
Psalm 50 proclaims: God is all-powerful, God is to be reverently feared, God owns everything, God is undiluted righteousness and justice and, by holy necessity, utterly intolerant and full of wrath towards sin.
Enter the incarnate God…the first coming. Jesus comes as the Lamb of God who carries the sin of the world. He is the lamb that was slain to secure our righteousness. And maybe, at an almighty theological stretch, He’s your homeboy/best friend/mate/boyfriend.
But he’s coming again. His mercy endures for now but His persevering patience restrains His response towards sin…for the moment. When he returns though, it won’t be ‘gentle Jesus meek and mild’, but a warrior-king returning to judge all people and take back what’s His.
Romans 1:18 says: ’For the wrath of Godis revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
Should this scare the pants of you? Well, it should make your pants a little nervous – that’d be understandable. But while one of the bottom lines of the second coming is “Jesus wins”, an equally compelling bottom line is that those call Him ‘Lord’ and have been adopted into his family are co-heirs with Him and inherit an imperishable crown that, by his grace alone, grants us the full measure of God’s riches.
Thank God for that!
– Simon Elliott