A Follow-up to My Post on God’s Wrath in John 3

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 that “everyone who believes in the Only Begotten has life,” but “everyone who rejects the Only Begotten won’t see life.” And that this will happen after Jesus’ resurrection. It was a judgement wrought on Israel and their whole dang system. 

I can see how this may not be talking about “eternal judgement.” But it’s judgement, and the dividing between those who are smacked and those who are spared is between “all the arrogant and evil doers” vs “those who revere God.”

I don’t know if you fall into this camp, but so many of the [Ultimate Redemption] people I’ve come across find that to be unacceptable on two counts:

1) Because it describes God in wrathful terms rather than in the love terms that are “like Jesus.”

2) Because there’s a requirement to “believe in the Only Begotten” in order to escape the wrath. 

The second problem could possibly be solved if we’re saying that the requirement applied only because it was happening at the end of the Old Covenant age, and that age still had “If-Then” stipulations. 

But here’s Jesus describing the wrath of Yaweh, and He seems to have no trouble reconciling it with the fact that God Is Love. He doesn’t seem to be saying, “This is false because it’s not demonstrating Love”. He’s saying it’s true, and He doesn’t condemn this characterization of Yaweh being wrathful. 

I know it’s not the point of your article. You’re showing how it’s not speaking of eternal judgement, but rather temporal judgement upon Israel. But it is judgement upon humans by God. 

Why is this OK in Jesus’ mind, but for some people, any judgement against humans in the Old Covenant (e.g. - Israel’s command to destroy every man, woman, child, and animal of an enemy camp) is intolerable, supposedly since it’s inconsistent with the gospels’ account of Jesus’ Love character and personality?

I see wrath, and I see requirements that must be met in order to avoid the wrath, and I see Jesus being OK with it. 

Whether I’m misguided or not, do you at least comprehend the questions I have?

Yes, I understand your questions and I appreciate you taking the time to read my post and mull over my thoughts. I think there are several things going on when we read these “wrath of God” stories:

1. We need to understand the way ancient Israel understood their history. As I say in one of my recurring notes: “While some of us may not believe that God (re)acts in this way, this is how the ancient peoples of the Bible understood God. Everything that happens in this life — whether good or bad — comes from God. See Lamentations 3:38; Job 2:10; Isaiah 45:7; Jeremiah 32:42.”[1]
   
   To me this is an important distinction. It also highlights a problem I have with the way some of us read those stories. We have a tendency, like you noted, to just write off some stories because we don’t like them for whatever reason. However much we don’t like the story, that’s the way the ancient people understood it (and, honestly, how some people still understand them). And we have to acknowledge that — we may not agree with their view, but it was still their view. We can even debate the “literal-ness” of such a view, but, nonetheless, that was their view and we need to be respectful of it.
   
   

2. When it comes to Jesus and his use of the “wrath / judgment of God,” I think there are a couple of other things going on:
   
   

1. Jesus is fulfilling the role of the ancient prophet of Israel who tried to move Israel to repentance while at the same time —
   
   

2. Seeing the natural (i.e., appearing in nature) outcome of their actions (or lack thereof). In doing so, Jesus and the prophets before him, attributed this outcome to God’s actions (see point 1 above).
   
   

3. Lastly, we have to assume that some of those stories in the Bible are human actions and consequences which are pushed off on God. The case you mentioned about “God” telling Israel to kill every living thing is a perfect example. When we hear someone today claim, “God told me to kill everyone and everything,” we would assume that person is mentally unstable, and we wouldn’t be wrong in our assumption. But, because we read it in the Bible (and because of the Christian traditions in which we’ve grown up), we never question it and think, “It must be true! God really did tell them to do that.” I think in those cases specifically, it’s more likely those people did those detestable things and, since they were God’s people, they believed God sanctioned their actions. As such, they stated it was God’s will for those things to happen.

The war between Rome and the Jews is a good example of point 2 above. I can say, unequivocally, that it was God’s judgement upon apostate Israel because that’s what Jesus and the NT proclaimed (see Matthew 23; et. al.).

At the same time, however, I see it as the natural consequences of Israel’s actions against an occupying Roman establishment. Rome pushed Israel’s buttons, Israel pushed back, then Rome pushed back, and this continued to escalate until there’s full blown war. Jesus, though, “sees” that this is a much deeper issue — 

Luke 19.41-44 (CEB; adapted): As Jesus came to [Jerusalem] and observed it, he wept over it. 42He said, “If only you knew on this of all days the things that lead to peace. But now they’re hidden from your eyes. 43The time will come when your enemies will build fortifications around you, encircle you, and attack you from all sides. 44They will crush you completely, you and the people within you. They won’t leave one stone on top of another within you, because you didn’t recognize the time of your gracious visit from God.”

To answer your question, then, I see “both / and.” The war between the Jews and the Romans was both the natural outcome of Israel’s rebellion against Rome and God’s judgement upon a rebellious and stiff-necked people who refused to be the people God needed them to be and rejected “the time of [their] gracious visit from God.”

I hope this makes some sense.

~~~

In the Love of the Three in One,

Br. Jack+, LC

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[1] Unless otherwise stated, all scripture quotations and references — and scripture quotations marked (CEB) — are taken from The Common English Bible. Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible. Used by permission.