Celtic Odyssey

After posting my article on God’s Wrath in John 3 , I received some follow up comments and questions from a dear friend. After getting their approval, I’ve created this post to address some of the things they brought up. I hope this helps you, too. This has been edited for clarity and brevity. My friend said —  I’ll need to read this a second time, Jack, but I appreciate how thoroughly you’ve thought about this.  May I ask you this (and I’m beginning with the assumption that your understanding of that passage is entirely accurate): Would that mean that there really and truly is a wrath of God that is or was contingent upon the heart decision of humans? Much of the [Ultimate Redemption] people I’ve read [will say] passages like those in Malachi or elsewhere where God’s wrath is discussed, must be wrong or misstated by the authors because that wrath doesn’t look like Jesus.  Further, it sounds like this wrath that is defined as “the coming war between Jews and Rome” really is wrath! And

  John 3.36 (TIB; adapted): Jesus said, “Everyone who believes in the Only Begotten has [the Life of the Ages]. But everyone who rejects the Only Begotten won’t see life, for God’s wrath stays on them.”   In the Reformed groups I used to frequent this verse was “proof” of God’s judgment as understood by the “L” of the TULIP (Limited Atonement). That is, God had already chosen to save some people but had condemned the rest of the world’s population throughout all time to eternal, conscious torment. Oh, and this took place before the creation of the cosmos. But that’s not what Jesus was talking about.   “God’s wrath” was the then coming war between the Jews and the Roman Army. Rome, like Assyria before them, was God’s “rod of anger” against the rebellious Jews of the first century (see Isaiah 10.5-11 ). This is further seen in the book of Malachi. While I could quote all of Malachi, I’ve selected a few passages and italicized the crucial bits.   Malachi 1.1, 6-8; 2.1-2; 3.1-3a, 5-7; 17-1