God is not mad at you

God is Not Mad at You

The Venerable William G. McLoughlin, Rector

All Biblical quotations are from the Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted:

by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.

Introduction:

A number of years ago a parishioner and I were having lunch together. It was a trying time for our parish, and I was struggling personally. Apparently this uneasiness was coming through clearly in my preaching because my dear friend turned to me and said, “Why is it that when the Good News comes out of your mouth it always sounds like bad news?” As much as that hurt, he was right. I was convinced that God was mad at me, mad at the church, mad at the world. I had lost sight of the truth of the Gospel.

The Gospel—the eu-angellion—is Good News. It is the message of salvation in Jesus Christ. The Gospel proclaims that “God so loved the world.” But over the centuries that message has been clouded under a message of judgment—a fiery indictment from an angry God against sinful man. If Jonathan Edwards’ sermon is to be believed, we are all “sinners in the hands of an angry God.” But is that the message of the Gospel? Does Scripture truly support that message?

In June of 2001, Archbishop Randolph Adler led a convocation for the Northeast Province at Lake George, New York. At the conclusion of the meeting he gave this benediction:

“As you go out from this place, always remember the Gospel: that God was in Christ Jesus, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting men's sins against them. God loves you, God has forgiven you, God is not mad at you and God will never leave you nor forsake you. And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit be with you and remain with you forever. Amen.”

“God is not mad at you” was a message these men of God needed to hear. But it was not a message for that convocation alone. If the truth of this message were to take hold in the Church today it would be a transforming work of God. But is it the Gospel?

Obviously, there is Scriptural basis for the assertions in this benediction. Paul tells us in his second epistle to the Corinthians (5:17-19) that God was in Christ Jesus, reconciling the world to Himself. John 3:16-17 affirms God’s love for the world. Colossians 2:13-14 tells us that He has forgiven us. And Hebrews 13:5 reminds us that God will never leave us nor forsake us. But how do we know that God is not mad at us? How can we make a blanket declaration to those both inside and outside of the Body of Christ that God is not mad at you? It seems that Scripture is full of references to the anger and wrath of God. How can we make the proclamation that God is not angry with us, and how can we support it Scripturally?

Scripture is intended to be taken as a whole. Scripture taken out of context can be used to support any assertion. For example, by taking a single verse from the epistle to Titus (1:12) out of context we can affirm that every person who lives on the Island of Crete is a liar, an evil beast, and a lazy glutton. And of course there is the apocryphal story of the woman who vowed to do whatever God told her to do. She decided to open the Bible, close her eyes and drop her finger on the page and do what the Word directed. She opened the Bible to Matthew 27 and dropped her finger on verse 5: “And Judas went out and hanged himself.” This was not what she had expected, so she closed the Bible and opened it again. This time it fell open to the Gospel of Luke chapter 10. She closed her eyes and dropped her finger on verse 37: “Jesus said, ‘Go and do likewise.’”

Scripture is not a handbook, a “how-to” manual; it is the Word of God and is intended to bring the revelation of God to man. It is an invitation to all mankind to live in loving relationship with the living God.

God’s Anger:

There is no question that the anger and wrath of God has been visited on mankind throughout history, and Scripture gives us numerous examples of this. The vast majority of references to God’s anger are found in the Old Testament. A quick glance at a concordance shows that references in the Old Testament to the word “anger” outnumber those in the New Testament 45 to 1. What caused the anger of God to well up in ancient times? And what caused it to abate—if it did? Let us look at some examples of the anger of God and what prompted His anger.

The overriding cause of God’s anger against His people was idolatry. In the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:5) God declares that He is a jealous God. He wants a personal relationship with His people, and He wants it to be an exclusive relationship. Just as in a marriage, the marriage bed must remain undefiled, so God wants His relationship with His people to remain undefiled. In Deuteronomy 4:25-26 Moses tells the people that

When you beget children and children's children, and have grown old in the land, if you act corruptly by making a graven image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the LORD your God, so as to provoke him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that you will soon utterly perish from the land which you are going over the Jordan to possess; you will not live long upon it, but will be utterly destroyed.

Idolatry, the worship of other gods, is what prompts the anger of God. If the people of God put anybody else, or something else, in the place of God, then they are “doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord, so as to provoke him to anger.”

The Old Testament is presented in three sections: the Torah (law), the Prophets, and the Writings. We have seen that the Torah declares the sin of idolatry as a prompt for the anger of God, but what about the Prophets and Writings? Jeremiah the prophet reiterates this message in chapter 32, verses 30-34 of his prophecy. He says:

For the sons of Israel and the sons of Judah have done nothing but evil in my sight from their youth; the sons of Israel have done nothing but provoke me to anger by the work of their hands, says the LORD. This city has aroused my anger and wrath, from the day it was built to this day, so that I will remove it from my sight because of all the evil of the sons of Israel and the sons of Judah which they did to provoke me to anger—their kings and their princes, their priests and their prophets, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They have turned to me their back and not their face; and though I have taught them persistently they have not listened to receive instruction. They set up their abominations in the house which is called by my name, to defile it.

The people had provoked God by what their hands had made. They had fashioned gods and worshipped them, even setting up these idols “in the house which is called by my name.” The prophets thus declare idolatry as abhorrent to God. And as an example from the Writings, Psalm 31:6 says, “Thou hatest those who pay regard to vain idols…”

But in each of these cases the message is for the people of the covenant. What about the people who are not part of the covenant? What did God say to the nations? Is He angry with them? Let us look at Isaiah chapter 12.

You will say in that day: “I will give thanks to thee, O LORD, for though thou wast angry with me, thy anger turned away, and thou didst comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the LORD GOD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.” With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: “Give thanks to the LORD, call upon his name; make known his deeds among the nations, proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. [emphasis added]

The relationship that God had with Israel was not for Israel alone. The relationship that He had with Israel was for all of the nations; He wanted to draw all mankind to Himself. He wanted to redeem everyone, to bring all of mankind back into relationship with Him. And the way He had chosen to do that was through His people, the nation of Israel. What made God angry was when Israel would not do what He had created them to do. All of these nations referred to in Isaiah 12 are waiting for the knowledge of the Lord which was to be proclaimed through God’s chosen people. These nations are still waiting, they are still hungry, they are literally dying for knowledge of the Lord. It is not that God is angry with those who are not in relationship with Him, He is angry with those who are in covenant with Him who are not doing what the covenant requires them to do.

God’s Identity:

A key to unlocking the truth about God’s anger is found in His identity. God’s identity is One Who is “slow to anger.” Continuing to look at the Old Covenant we can discern that there were very limited things which prompted the anger of God. To state this another way, even in an Old Testament understanding it takes a lot to make God angry. It is not in God’s nature to be angry—He is by nature slow to anger.

Before the exodus, before the Hebrew people came out of Egypt, they were not one people but a band of twelve tribes. It was not until they came to Sinai and received the Covenant given to Moses on the mount that they became the People of Israel. It was there on the mount that God declared, “You shall be my people, and I will be your God” (cf. Jer. 11:3-4). On Mount Sinai, God revealed his identity to His newly formed and newly covenanted community. In Exodus 34:6 we see that God passed before Moses and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” This is the identity of God; this is how He made Himself known to His people. He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

This message of God’s love and mercy is reiterated in the Writings:

But thou, O Lord, art a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Psalm 86:15

The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Psalm 103:8

The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Psalm 145:8

Thou art a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Nehemiah 9:17

And this identifying love is also found in the prophets’ words:

Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil. Joel 2:13

The Lord is slow to anger and of great might. Nahum 1:3

But the most clear and profound example of the mercy of God and His patience with all people is found in Jonah 4:2. Jonah had been called to go to Nineveh. He was at first reluctant to go for he did not want to prophesy to them—he wanted God to destroy this evil city. Jonah wanted God’s anger to burn hot against the Ninevites and completely eliminate them from the face of the earth. These were apostate people; people who did not follow or even acknowledge the God of Israel. But Jonah knew that God was going to be loving and compassionate toward them, and so he didn’t want to go there. Therefore, in Jonah 4:2, the prophet says to God:

I pray thee, LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repentest of evil.

Even though the Ninevites as a whole were evil, God was slow to anger and abounding in love for them. He was not mad at them. This is a God who wants them to come back to Him—a God who wants to redeem them. God wanted them to be in relationship with Him.

God’s Promise:

The next step in unfolding God’s promise of steadfast love is found in Isaiah 54:9. Isaiah gives a word of hope for his day, but this word is also the promise for the future, a promise for today.

For this is like the days of Noah to me: as I swore that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you and will not rebuke you. For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed, says the LORD, who has compassion on you.

He is not going to be angry. God is not going to rebuke. He promises: “So I have sworn that I will not be angry with you and will not rebuke you.” When is this going to happen? How is this going to come about?

What we have been examining is an Old Covenant understanding. There is a New Covenant yet to come. Jeremiah 31:31 gives us the fullness of hope in that promise:

Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it

upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

God promises that He “will remember their sins no more.” This is the promise of the New Covenant. How is this going to be accomplished? He will nail those sins to the cross in His Son Jesus. There, on the cross, all of our sins were covered in the Blood of Jesus and washed away. “I will remember their sins no more.” How can He forget them? He can forget them because they were paid for, washed away, in the Blood of His Son Jesus Christ. Those sins were nailed to the cross and died with Jesus.

God’s New Covenant:

It was this promise of New Covenant that Paul hearkened back to when he made his radical claim in the second letter to Corinth: “Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). If you are in Christ, you are a new creation. When God the Father looks at us, He doesn’t see the horrible, sinful people that we are; He sees His Son. We have died with Christ, through baptism, and we have been raised to new life, new creation, in Him. If you are alive in Christ Jesus, when the Father looks at you He sees the blood of His Son. He sees the forgiveness, He sees the love that He has for His Son, He sees the compassion of His Son. When He looks at you He sees Jesus. We have died, and now we have been made alive in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Later in that same pericope (5:21), Paul says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus took all of our sins upon Himself. He was sinless, but He willingly bore all of the sins of the world to Calvary, and there, Jesus “who knew no sin,” became sin for us. Jesus became our sin, “so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” This is the Good News! We are a new creation, and in Christ we have become the righteousness of God.

God’s Discipline:

One of the problems, though, for many people is that they cannot distinguish between the anger of God and the discipline of God. The relationship we have with God the Father is like the

parent/child relationship. In any parent/child relationship there is an element of discipline which must be enforced. As a parent we do get frustrated and angry with our children from time to time, but the anger is born of love, not hatred. As a parent most of us would be willing to lay down our lives for our children. The love we have far exceeds any anger we could imagine. But regardless of the relationship we have with our children there are consequences when the child does something wrong. In Hebrews 12:5-6 the author of the epistle, quoting from Proverbs, says, “And have you forgotten the exhortation which addresses you as sons?—‘My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage when you are punished by him. For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.’” Every parent gets frustrated from time to time when the child does not do what he or she is supposed to do. That does not mean that the parent is mad at the child, or that the child deserves the wrath of the parent. It means that discipline is called for and must be administered.

There are consequences to our actions and there are reasons that God does discipline us. It is not because He is angry, but because He loves. It is not because He wants to smite, but because He wants to restore. It is not because He wants to cast out the sinner, but because He wants to draw the sinner to Himself. The discipline is designed to bring us into closer relationship with God.

God’s Love:

Once again, as we saw with the Old Covenant, the Scripture references given above are for those who are part of the Body. But what about those who have not yet been grafted in, those who have not been baptized into the Body of Christ. The single most famous verse of Scripture tells us that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 [emphasis added]). Here is the promise: God sent His Son, not for those who were already saved, or who were already part of the Body of Christ, for until His Son came there was no Body of Christ—there was no salvation. He sent His Son so that “the world” might be saved through Him. Until the sacrifice on Calvary was complete and God had raised Jesus from the dead we were all dead in our sins, but now the way is open for all of mankind. Now the New Covenant is complete in Jesus. And let us not forget the second half of the promise: “For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17). He is not mad at the world. He did not come to condemn the world. He wants all of the world to be saved through His Son Jesus.

In Romans 5:8, Paul tells us that “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” God did not wait for us to become right with Him before He sent the Saving Victim; He sent His Son “while we were yet sinners.” While we were yet sinners Christ was nailed to the cross. While we were yet sinners Jesus took our sins upon Himself. Before we had done anything at all, Jesus did this for us. We were undeserving, and yet God the Father in boundless compassion for us sinners sent His own Son to die for us. Jesus loved the world so much that He came to sinful man to draw us back to the Father.

Just as Israel before us was created by God “for all of the nations,” the Church exists for the world—for those who are not yet part of it. The Church’s mission is to spread this Good News that “while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” The world needs to know that God is not mad at them. The world needs to know that He loves all of us, He does not condemn us, He sent His Son to save us. God is making His reconciliation known to the world through His Church.

And this brings us back to Paul’s message to the Church at Corinth. The heart of the Good News message is found in 2 Corinthians 5:19. Paul says that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.” But the key is in the second half of the verse: “not counting their trespasses against them.” God was in Christ Jesus reconciling us to Himself, not counting our sins against us. That is incredibly Good News for the world.

There is one other passage of Scripture which poignantly portrays the Good News that God is not mad at us. This is the parable of the Prodigal son. In Luke 15:20 Jesus says that after the young Prodigal wasted his inheritance in profligate living, he “arose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” It says that “while he was yet at a distance,” or as it is worded in the New International Version, “while he was still a long way off.” For most of us it would be safe to say that when God found us we were “a long way off.” Everyone who needs to be saved is “a long way off.” We all stray and find ourselves from time to time “a long way off.” But the Good News is that no matter how far away we may stray, God can always reach us.

It is also important to note that in this parable the Prodigal is the son who essentially robbed his father of everything. What the son took was his inheritance, but the father was still living when he took it. He seized what belonged to the father and wasted it all. The father had every reason to be angry with his son, but he didn’t pour out his wrath or smite his son. While he was still a long way off, the father “saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” His father wasn’t angry, he was filled with compassion. He didn’t wait for the son to come to him, rather he “ran and embraced him and kissed him.”

Conclusion:

God is not mad at you.

This is the Gospel. This is the Good News: God is not mad at us. God loves us. He sent His only Son to die for us. Whether we accept it or not, our Father loves us enough to send His own Son to die for our sins. There are those who would say that the loving thing for us to do is to accept everyone just as they are, and to respect their peculiar religious beliefs. But if we truly understand the Good News that God is not mad at us, we must understand that God’s anger is put to rest in Jesus alone. We need to not make apology for proclaiming the Gospel, for without the Gospel—without Jesus—there is no salvation. Without Jesus the message that God is not mad at you makes no sense at all.

This is the Good News: God was in Christ Jesus, reconciling the world to Himself, not counting men's sins against them. God loves you, God has forgiven you, God is not mad at you and God will never leave you nor forsake you. Let us together tell the world.

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