Everything is possible for You

On Tuesday at Cru, we talked about God’s wrath. This has always been something that I struggled with because I didn’t really understand why our God is considered wrathful when we see Him as holy and perfect. Lance, one of the staff for cru, did an incredible job of explaining it.

So here is the question: “How can a loving God send someone to Hell?”

Picture this: God is a flower and all the petals represent some of His characteristics. Each petal represents love, grace, Holy, justice, peace, glorious, righteous, mercy, and wrath.

To better answer the question before, we are gonna to reword it to “How can a holy, righteous God allow anyone into Heaven?”

We see God’s wrath in John 3:36 and Romans 12:19

“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.” – John 3:36

“Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.” – Romans 12:19

To sum up these verses pretty well, we refer to John Piper: “The wrath of God is God’s settled anger towards sin expressed in the repayment of suitable vengeance on the guilty sinner.”

In the eyes of a righteous God, there is no innocent sinner. We are all deserving of God’s wrath yet we don’t receive it. Now why is that you may ask? Well our God is a God of justice, holiness, and righteous because he has dealt His punishment (His wrath) through His Son, Jesus Christ when He sent Him to the cross.

Romans 3:23-26 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished- he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”

To me, this verse says it all. Right off the bat it says that we are justified freely by his grace. Like how awesome is that?! SO AWESOME.

Okay, so here is another picture of God’s wrath. In the Old Testament, God’s wrath is described as a cup.

“In the hand of the Lord is a cup full of foaming wine mixed with spices; he pours it out, and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to its very dregs.” – Psalm 75:8

And now, if we flip to the New Testament, we see the cup again however in a completely different light.

“'Abba, Father,’ he said, ‘everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” – Mark 14:36

This is the sinner’s prayer. When you say this prayer, God says, “yes” because He told Jesus “no” and sent Him to the cross for our sins. HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!

1 John 4:8-10 says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

This right here is what it’s all about. God loves us more than we can EVER imagine and although He is a God of wrath, He is also a God of love, grace, holiness, justice, righteousness, gloriousness, and mercy. Because He sent his Son to die for our sins, we do not experience His wrath, but instead experience all the other characteristics of Him.

So going back to the flower, picture it in your head again. Except this time, replace the flower with a cross. It suddenly makes so much more sense where all of these characteristics are coming from.

I hope that this helps you understand God’s wrath a little bit more and I also hope it helps you realize just how much God loves you and how far He is willing to go because He loves you.

God Bless!