Knowing God

by J.I. Packer

Paul’s expectation that the Lord Jesus will one day appear “in blazing fire” and “will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord

and from the majesty of his power on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people”

is sufficient reminder that Nahum’s emphasis is not peculiar t...

Clearly, the theme of God’s wrath is one about which the biblical writers feel no inhibitions whatever. Why, then, should we? Why, when the Bible is vocal about it, should we feel obliged to be silent?

We are thinking, rather, of the many who count themselves “insiders,” who have firm beliefs about God’s love and pity and the redeeming work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and who follow Scripture robustly on other things, yet who boggle at robustly echoing it on this point.

The root cause of our unhappiness seems to be a disquieting suspicion

that ideas of wrath are in one way or another unworthy of God.

To some, for instance, wrath suggests a loss ...

There seems to be here a misunderstanding of the anthropomorphic language of Scripture—that

when Scripture speaks of God anthropomorphically, it does not imply that the limitations and imperfections which belong to the personal characteristics of us sinful creatures belong also to the corresponding qualities in our holy Creator;

God’s love, as the Bible views it, never leads him to foolish, impulsive, immoral actions in the way that its human counterpart too often leads us.

God’s wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is. It is, instead, a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil. God is only angry where anger is called for.

all God’s indignation is righteous.

Would a God who did not react adversely to evil in his world be morally perfect? Surely not.

to others the thought of God’s wrath suggests cruelty.

“Therefore, let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come.”

God’s wrath in the Bible is always judicial—

Cruelty is always immoral, but the explicit presupposition of all that we find in the Bible—and

on the torments of those who experience the fullness of God’s wrath is that each receives ...

God will see, says Edwards

“that you shall not suffer beyond what strict justice requires”—but it is precisely “what strict justice requires,” he insists, that will be so grievous for those who die in unbelief.

can disobedience to our Creator really deserve great and g...

those whose consciences have not yet been awakened to consider, as Anselm put it, “how weighty is sin” are not yet qualified to give an opinion.

God’s wrath in the Bible is something which people choose for themselves.

The decisive act of judgment upon the lost is the judgment which they pass upon themselves, by rejecting the light that comes to them in and through Jesus Christ.

The basic choice was and is simple:

either to respond to the summons “Come to me.

to “save” one’s life by keeping it from Jesus’ censure and resisting his demand to take it over, or to “lose” it by denying oneself, shouldering one’s cross, becoming a discip...

Gehenna (“hell” in Mk 9:47 and ten other Gospel texts), the valley outside Jerusalem where rubbish was burned;

the worm that dieth not

an image, it seems, for the endless dissolution of the personality by a condemning conscience; fire for the agonizing awareness of God’s displeasure; out...

merely of God, but of all good and of everything that made life seem worth living; gnashing of teeth for self...

The unbeliever has preferred to be by himself, without God, defying God, having God against him, and he shall have his preference.

The essence of God’s action in wrath is to give men what they choose, in all its implications:

God is hereby doing is no more than to ratify and confirm judgments which those whom he “visits” have already passed on themselves by the course they have chosen to follow.

1. The meaning of God’s wrath.

The wrath of God in Romans denotes God’s resolute action in punishing sin.

it is the active manifesting of his hatred of irreligion and moral evil.

God’s wrath is his reaction to our sin,

As a reaction to sin, God’s wrath is an expression of his justice, and Paul indignantly rejects the suggestion “that God is unjust to inflict wrath on us”

2. The revelation of God’s wrath.

No one is entirely without inklings of judgment to come.

3. The deliverance from God’s wrath.

Paul is concerned to force on us this question: If “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,” and a “day of wrath” is coming when God will “render to every man according to his deeds,” how can any of us escape disaster?

The law cannot save us, for its only effect is to stimulate sin and show us how far we fall short of righteousness.

how do we come to be justified? Through faith—that is, self-abandoning trust in the person and work of Jesus.

What is a propitiation? It is a sacrifice that averts wrath through expiating sin and canceling guilt.

this is the real heart of the gospel: that Jesus Christ, by virtue of his death on the cross as our substitute and sin-bearer, “is the propitiation for our sins”

Between us sinner...

thunderclouds of divine wrath stands the cross of the Lord Jesus. If we are Christ’s, through faith, then we are justified through his cross, and the wrath will...