God Has a Name

by John Mark Comer

Passive wrath is when God does not act, and that is the judgment.

All God had to do was step back and remove his protection.

The Civil War was outright, flagrant disobedience to the teachings of Jesus. But could it be that it was still an expression of God’s wrath over slavery?

God’s passive wrath is when he doesn’t act to keep us from evil. Usually it’s when he lets us royally screw up our life.

He takes away his hand of blessing and covering over your life, steps back, and says, “You’re on your own now. Good luck.”

most of God’s wrath is either present/passive or future/active.

It turns out that sin is its own punishment, and obedience its own reward.

They are far more frustrated with God’s mercy than his wrath.

One of the most frequent prayers in the Bible is, “How long?”

For a lot of people, love has come to mean tolerance.

clearly tolerance has a limit, even in our late-modern world.

Classic tolerance is the idea that we can agree to disagree rather than kill each other or go to war over some petty thing.

modern tolerance is the much newer idea that right and wrong are elastic.

love and tolerance are not the same thing.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”24 At some point, tolerance starts to slide dangerously close to apathy.

In Jesus we see that Yahweh’s anger is born out of his love. The truth is, if you don’t get angry occasionally, then you don’t love.

That’s why Yahweh’s love is an attribute, but his wrath isn’t.

Wrath, or anger, is Yahweh’s response to evil in the world.

it’s because of Jesus’ love, and because of his wrath, his passionate antagonism against evil in all its forms, that we can look forward to this glorious future.

For you, it’s that you just can’t get your act together. There’s a sin in your life—a bent toward what you know is wrong. It’s like a rut in the road—no matter how hard you try, you keep slipping back and getting stuck in the mud. You’re inching forward, but man, it’s slow going. And you’re scared that God is ticked at you.

is that how you imagine God? With a laissez-faire shrug at life?

Could it be that you value love as tolerance and even the progressive view of the world, in part because it gives you a free pass to do whatever you want? To be your own god?

allow him to define your vision of God?

God is not a permissive parent; neither is he an angry jerk of a dad. He’s a good Father—compassionate, gracious, and slow to anger.

how you think about God, well, it will shape the way you relate to him.

how we relate is how we relate.

The way we relate to people close to us is probably a good barometer for...

Yahweh is slow to anger, so we’re to be slow to anger.

it leaks unhealth all over themselves and the people they lead.

“What are the generational sins I carry forward? Is there anything I’m blind to? Weak points in my character I don’t even see?”

But there’s a trajectory I’m on—away from anger and toward mercy.

But we all have a gap. Between who we are and who God is. Between the way we live and the way of Jesus. Following Jesus is about closing that gap, one step at a time.

because very soon Yahweh will set all the crooked things straight—we don’t have to.

Yahweh is the judge, not us. Our job is simple: be like Yahweh. Compassionate, gracious, and slow to anger.

“Abounding in love and faithfulness” is called a hendiadys.

A hendiadys is a literary device where two nouns are smashed together to help define each other.

At times it’s hard to reconcile God’s love and faithfulness with, well, life.

Often we look at the promises of God over our lives and then compare them to our circumstances, and they just don’t line up.

It’s Yahweh’s way of saying that even if Abraham and his children don’t keep their end of the bargain, he’ll still keep his promise. He’ll rescue and save the world through this soon-to-be nation. No matter the cost. And if blood has to be spilled, it won’t come from Abraham. It will come from Yahweh himself. He’s willing to die and become like these animals just to keep his promise to bring the world back to life.

And in a famous prayer, he says this: “You are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore you did not desert them.”

hope is the absolute expectation of coming good based on the character of God.

Great definition of hope!

“If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.”

Yahweh’s faithfulness is intrinsic to his name, his nature.

God is more concerned with your long-term character than your short-term happiness. And he’s more than willing to sacrifice the one to get to the other.

God quickly becomes a scapegoat for the immature or confused.

And he has the judo-like ability to turn evil on its head and somehow co-opt it for good.

Our hope isn’t that nothing bad will ever happen to us. Or that everything that does happen to us is “the will of God.” Our hope is that no matter what happens to us, Jesus is back from the dead, and anything is possible.

when people take a principle in the Bible and turn it into a promise.

these whispers often come years before they turn into Isaacs.

There will be many days when it seems like everything in your present contradicts God’s promise over your future.