Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News

by Brian Zahnd

What the Bible does infallibly is point us to Jesus. The Bible itself is not a perfect picture of God, but it does point us to the One who is. This is what orthodox Christianity has always said.

We also need to keep in mind that the Old Testament doesn’t give us just one portrait of God but many. It’s impossible to make the Old Testament univocal. The Old Testament is a chorus of voices, and they’re not always in perfect harmony. The Old Testament is often a theological debate with both sides making their case. Proverbs and Job have differing stories to tell. Proverbs says if you fear God and do what is right, good things will happen to you. And there’s truth in that. But Job says that’s not always the whole story by telling his tragic tale showing how bad things can happen to good people.

The wrath of God is a biblical metaphor we use to describe the very real consequences we suffer from trying to go through life against the grain of love.

“The wrath of God is understood as divine consent to our own self-destructive defiance.”

What I want you to know is that God’s attitude, God’s spirit, toward you is one of unwavering fatherly-motherly love. You have nothing to fear from God. God is not mad at you. God has never been mad at you. God is never going to be mad at you. And what about the fear of God? The fear of God is the wisdom of not acting against love. We fear God in the same way that as a child I feared my father. I had the good fortune to have a wise and loving father, and I had deep respect, reverence, admiration, and, perhaps, a kind of fear for my father, but I never for one moment thought that my dad hated me or would harm me. God does not hate you, and God will never harm you. But your own sin, if you do not turn away from it, will bring you great harm. The wisdom that acknowledges this fact is what we call the fear of God. Sin is deadly, but God is love.