Our topic in today’s meditation is once again the wrath of God.
God’s wrath is his judicial anger at our sin, which finds partial fulfillment in history and ultimate completion in hell. It is an expression of God’s absolute holiness, justice, and righteousness. At the present time, God’s wrath serves a remedial purpose, namely, to show us the error of our ways and thus lead us to repentance and eternal life in him. In the future, however, at the end of the age, God’s wrath will serve a penal purpose, namely, to punish without redemption those who turn their backs on him. Although it is uncomfortable to speak about the wrath of God, we must do so if only to be clear about the hell from which Jesus Christ saves us.
When describing the wrath of God, the Bible uses vivid, concrete images, often drawn from Israel’s history. Such is clearly the case in Revelation 16, which alludes to the Egyptian plagues of Exodus 7–12. The “seven bowls of the wrath of God” include “harmful and painful sores” (the first bowl); the sea, rivers, and springs of water turned bloody (the second and third bowls); excessive heat and sunstroke (the fourth bowl); darkness (the fifth bowl); drought and war (the sixth bowl); and “flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a great earthquake…and great hailstones” that destroy Babylon (the seventh bowl).
Such vivid, concrete images are gruesome to contemplate. They are supposed to be so. God intends them to be so. Why? I think because less vivid, more abstract language would not accomplish his purpose. I could speak to you endlessly about God’s judicial anger at sin and the eternal consequences of failing to repent, and you could sit there, mull over the ideas in your brain, yawn, and go to bed without every being emotionally gripped by the danger of sin. If I said, however, that you would be afflicted by painful sores, sunburn, thirst, war, and horrifying natural disasters, you might pay attention to me.
God uses these vivid, concrete images to arrest our attention, to wake us from our spiritual slumbers, and warn us of the dire consequences that will happen to us if we fail to repent and give ourselves wholeheartedly to God. Notice, after all, that the plagues fall only on “the people who bore the mark of the beast and worshiped its image.” Notice also that the plagues gave those very same people the chance to “repent and give God glory,” but they did not avail themselves of the opportunity for grace.
In my own life, I often find myself getting lazy about my relationship with God. I take it for granted. I put off repentance for another day. Because of this, I am thankful—despite their gruesomeness—for these vivid, concrete images of the wrath of God. They remind me of the awful things Christ has saved me from and spur me to be thankful for grace.
How about you?
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