Habakkuk handed us an incredible image of God’s lightning-filled-right-hand to help us grasp just how much power our God holds (3:4). However, with such a picture of God, we might be tempted to see Him as an enraged entity who impatiently waits to strike us down with one of those bolts the second we step out of line.
And, we’d be so wrong.
It’s imperative that we recall all of God’s character as we consider that He is also just, righteous, and wrathful. It’s wise for us to contemplate that God isn’t actually made of parts.
“You can’t break him down into things that are more fundamental than he is. There is nothing behind God that makes God what God is. He simply and absolutely is.”
Joe Rigney1
Our “I AM” is. Yet, we need to know Him, which is why we spend time reading Scripture and looking at Jesus – to help us align our ideas of who God is with truth.
Maybe it helps to think of God as all of these traits all the time. In other words, they don’t describe bits of the Almighty like pieces of a personality pie. Rather, together and completely, they contain the fullness of who He is.2
So, when we say that God is just, righteous, and wrathful, we keep in mind that He encompasses these and at the same time love, goodness, graciousness…. Knowing that God fully embodies all of these traits helps us see Him in a more holistic and transcendent manner.
To that end, we need to know that our Daddy-God doesn’t have a bad temper. He’s also not a push-over. He’s the God who knows when to step in to right the wrongs and when to offer His grace.
Doubt
If you had known me in my younger years, and some of you did, you would have seen a short-tempered girl who believed God always stood at the ready to strike me down with that fiery fist of His. Maybe because I didn’t know any differently, I believed God’s form of justice to be sourced by His own moodiness – that His anger would morph into blind fury, and His wrath would descend. I doubted He could be angry and good at the same time.
Dig
It’s true. I lived a lot of my life afraid of anger – because I’ve known its uncontainable, pressure-cooker-like force inside me. My anger would combust into rage in a blink. As a result, I exerted exorbitant amounts of energy stuffing anger in an attempt to keep it in check.
Perhaps that’s why it was so natural in my late teens to assume God’s anger worked the same way as mine. I knew about His omniscience. So, in my skewed and limited way of seeing God, it made sense to me that He’d get mad at me – zap, zap.
Cause and effect. Crime and punishment.
I doubted that God could control His anger – just as I could not. But, how wrong I was! I had put God on my level, in my skin, assuming that He was like me, when it’s actually the other way around. I am like Him, only in a much more human-in-flesh fashion.
Dig Deeper
There’s a verse in Exodus that captures five attributes of God in one foul swoop, and it gets quoted over twenty times throughout Scripture, which signals its importance:3
“The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and abounding in loyal love and faithfulness…”
Exodus 34:6 NET, emphasis mine
This is God talking about Himself as He passes by Moses. He’s letting us in on who He is.
Later, Moses says this about God:
I will proclaim the name of the Lord.
Deuteronomy 32:3-4
Oh, praise the greatness of our God!
He is the Rock, his works are perfect,
and all his ways are just.
A faithful God who does no wrong,
upright and just is he.
And, of God and His Son, John writes:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
John 3:16-17
These verses establish a key component of God’s character. He is a just God who is motivated by all His love and goodness and righteousness to do right.
Discovery
It was in my mid-twenties that I renewed my devotion to God – the same years that I became wife, teacher, and mother. My love for my husband and son – even for my students – would get twisted by the anger that so easily bubbled from within me. And I was tired of anger taking the reins of my life.
I also recognized that all my efforts to keep a lid on my ire fell short, so I turned to God, begging Him to help me get rid of anger. His response was to set me on a path of getting to know Him and His Word, of learning to see myself more clearly, of allowing Him to do a healing work in me. I stayed the path with Him by reading my Bible daily, journaling my questions and feelings, praying with women of great faith, and obeying when He pushed me to lay down the need to be right. And ‘in control’. I discovered God’s love for me had more power than my moods.
Over time, the miracle of holy love dousing fury’s flames left me freer than I’d ever been.
- And in the process I discovered God’s compassion – that ability He has to be deeply moved on our behalf, to suffer with us.
- I got to know God’s graciousness – His way of giving us what we don’t deserve, like grace and love.
- I learned to trust His faithfulness – because if He stayed with me through that season fraught with failures, He could be trusted to never leave, never zap.
Perhaps my greatest lesson was learning that God does get angry, but it’s not an out-of-control rage that causes Him to act irrationally or impulsively. I began to see what God meant when He said He is slow to anger – He gives so many chances for us to come to Him, to repent, to change. I lived this truth and sought to understand it better. And what I discovered as I gobbled up Bible study after Bible study is that “God’s anger is a measured and reasonable response to injustice and evil.”3
I saw that (what some people call) the “God of the Old Testament” is just as patient, caring, and bent on righting injustices as Jesus is in the New Testament.
For example, when humanity got to the point that they had only evil in their hearts all the time (Genesis 6:5), God finally removed His hands from the floodgates of chaos’ dark waters, giving people over to the consequences of their wicked desires.
When Pharaoh failed to free God’s people after TEN chances, God finally allowed the waters of the sea to swallow him, the one who had drowned the sons of God’s people.
When the people of Israel consistently, continuously broke their covenant with God by seeking the gods of other nations, God would remove His hand of protection, giving His people what they wanted, allowing those other nations to defeat them. Then God would rescue them. And they’d do it again. And again…
Our slow-to-anger, just God “wouldn’t be good if he didn’t have strong reactions to evil and injustice.”4 Sometimes the only and best response to evil is anger – it’s the force that pushes God, and us, into action.
Like the time my son was falsely accused of a crime by our school district’s superintendent. As my husband and I sat in front of this man’s desk listening to all his assumptions and baseless accusations, it became obvious to both of us that this man only wanted someone to pin the crime on so he could move on.
But this Mama Bear wasn’t having it. My anger was warranted. It wasn’t rage. It wasn’t uncontrolled fury. It was an energy that pushed me to become assertive, asking clarifying questions and, finally, telling this man that he needed some actual evidence before he dragged our son through anymore mud. Yup. I actually did that. And my husband just sat back smiling.
I felt this type of righteous anger recently as I listened to a podcast series about a time in American history where justice was so unbelievably thwarted that I had visceral reactions just listening to it.5 The truth is I’m sure we could sit down at a table together to discuss all the injustices of our lives and world, and we’d get really animated. Our passion and compassion would energize us. Our responses to such wrongs would make us want to do something to make things right.
And don’t we want God to be the same way? Picture a god who sits on his throne, who blandly nods his head as he observes human traffickers take another child. Or who refuses to look upon the plight of the millions of refugees on our planet. Or who never steps in to right any wrongs. That kind of god is not only useless but absolutely not good.
But our God is good. And that ‘goodness’ motivates Him to respond to human evil.3 Which makes Him just! He is led by His righteousness – that part of His personhood that is only ever right and true and just.6 We can trust that “God is morally and ethically right” because it’s His actual nature.6
Maybe doubts still churn because it’s hard to imagine that God-who-is-love can pour out wrath like He does against the nations who occupied the Promised Land. But instead of dismissing our doubts, or God, we dig into Scripture – where we find this little line, “the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure” (Genesis 15:16). God is telling Abraham that he cannot take possession of the land promised to him because “the sins of the Amorites do not yet warrant their destruction” (same verse, NLT). But a time – four hundred years, in fact – was coming when they would.
God is slow to anger.
History tells us that the nations of the Old Testament, like the Amorites, lived brutally – killing for pleasure, defiling the innocent, taking what they wanted. And, God saw it all. He gave them time to come to Him until God could no longer ignore their evil ways.7,8
God’s wrath is measured and sourced by His own goodness and righteousness. His holy, hot anger burns only when justified so that He can amend all the awfulness. Paul understood this – it’s why he laid out the truth of ‘God’s wrath against sinful humanity’ (Romans 1:18-32). God is patient, but His very goodness will push against evil. “When God is angry and brings justice it is because He is good. And He is extremely patient, working out His plan to restore people to His love.”3
Just look at the cross and tomb – Christ’s death and resurrection – as proof. Out of His great love for us and His great anger toward evil, God gave His Son to die for us.3 So that we could be saved. So that death could be defeated. So that evil can be fought against – and one day vanquished completely.
Friends, what a treasure to discover that God’s anger isn’t blind fury that spews unnecessarily nor indiscriminately. We can confidently claim God’s righteous, just, and wrathful nature because we know He can be trusted to stand up for the helpless and hopeless – in His way and His time. We can have faith that the seemingly impossible situations around us are not only observed by our God but they’re being worked out as part of God’s great rescue plan.
We can walk in the truth that our righteous God is not yet finished!
Father God, we confess that we’re wrestling with who You are – your nature is complex and beyond our full comprehension. But we’re also coming to understand that by your Word and Spirit, we are able to get an idea of your character. We can trust your Word to show us all the ways You have spoken and acted and dealt with people since the beginning. We can trust the narratives of Jesus to illustrate more of your nature. And we can trust your Spirit to speak truth into our hearts and lead us into your presence where we can sense for ourselves your absolute goodness – your love and holiness and righteousness. Lord Jesus, Your life, death, and resurrection is our ultimate demonstration of God’s love, power, and heart for justice. Thank You for revealing the Father to us. Thank You for continuing to make the Father known to us so that His love for You will also be in us. Holy Spirit, how easily we give in to anger. How easily we fear anger. We ask that You would lead us into the Father’s presence so that His love can shape us into His image, giving us self-control and a gentleness that becomes a witness to Christ in us. We ask that You would develop within us a healthy fear of God’s righteous anger that gives us the assurance He is fighting for justice – while also believing He is good and that everything He does is good and for good. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
(inspired by John 17:3,6,26; 1 John 4:6-7,16; John 14:9; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; John 16:13; Psalm 23:4; Psalm 31:19-20; John 3:16-17; Romans 5:6-8; Psalm 143:10; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Galatians 5:22; Psalm 119:68)
*I could have written a second post about God being just – because we can also doubt that He’s out in the world righting wrongs. It’s easy to see all the bad, all the evil and wonder where God is. So, I’ll address some of that in this week’s “Teacup Video” — on my Facebook Author Page, Instagram or YouTube.. 😉 In truth, much of what is written in this post also speaks to our doubts about God working for good in the world, to fight the injustices. He is working – through people and organizations who have taken up the mantle to stand up against evil in their corners of the world. People like Carole Ward and organizations like A21 are making a difference in big ways. And so are people, like you and me, who touch one life at a time through the power of love and prayer and goodness. Let’s not give up! Our God is up to so much good – and He’s not done!
Resources: I love sharing with you the books, podcasts, articles, and anything else that has inspired, encouraged, or taught me. These are humble offerings with no expectations.
- 1 – Quoted from this article on desiringgod.org.
- 2 – If you’ve ever done any sort of dive into understanding the Enneagram (an ancient personality typing system), you know that nine types are identified, and each of us has one core type. I’ve told you I’m a Two, a ‘helper’. But the Enneagram doesn’t pigeonhole us into one category and tidily leave us there to struggle. Rather, it equips us to learn how to tap into every type – to be whole. And, guess who embodies all nine types perfectly? Yup, Jesus. Just as He is all nine fruit of the Spirit, He is also holistically every personality. Balanced. Whole. These are images we can use to help us see that God is fully every attribute given in Scripture. They are who He is – holy and wholly the God of goodness and love and justice and righteousness and wrath.
- 3 – This Bible Project video breaks down Exodus 34:6-7 in beautiful ways, giving us a bigger picture understanding of who God is. It’s the first in a series – the other five videos take on each attribute of God’s character as listed in verse six. So good!
- 4 – This Bible Project article about God’s anger.
- 5 – Sharon McMahon’s podcast Here’s Where It Gets Interesting has a series called “Vigilantes” that lays out all the details and stories behind a Georgia girl’s murder in the early 1900s and the mass mob that decided to get ‘justice’ their way. I’ll just warn you – your blood will boil. As it should. Here’s a link to the first episode.
- 6 – Gospel Coalition definition of God’s righteousness
- 7 – This “Got Questions” article addresses the reasons for Canaanite destruction, giving some of the historical understanding of the ways they lived – including but not limited to sexual depravity and child sacrifices.
- 8 – Lynn Austin wrote a three-part series of novels about King Hezekiah that is well researched and written. The second book, Song of Redemption,^ packs a punch when it comes to portraying how brutal the Assyrians were – and it helped me grasp with greater clarity just how evil other nations could’ve been in those days.
- Our Backpack of God’s Attributes is our virtual bag for collecting every characteristic of God we find in all our hunting. We’re loading up all we discover about Him. So far:
- God is Worthy — He deserves all glory and honor and praise.**
- God is Glorious — He displays His greatness and worth.**
- God is Transcendent — He is not like humans. He is infinitely higher in being and action.**
- God is Truthful — Whatever God speaks or does is truth and reality.**
- God is Incomprehensible — God is beyond our understanding. We can comprehend Him in part but not in whole.**
- God is Love — God feels and displays infinite, unconditional affection toward His children. His love for them does not depend on their worth, response, or merit.**
- God is Gracious — The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love (Psalm 145:8).
- God is Good — God is what is best and gives us what is best. He is incapable of doing harm.**
- God is Comforter — the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).
- God is Deliverer — God rescues and saves His children.**
- God is Redeemer — Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine (Isaiah 43:1-2).
- God is Omnipotent — God holds all the power. Nothing is too hard for God.**
- God is Almighty — What God wills, He can accomplish.** “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16).
- God is Infinite — God has no limits in His person or His power.**
- God is Sovereign — “O Sovereign Lord! You made the heavens and earth by your strong hand and powerful arm. Nothing is too hard for you” (Jeremiah 32:17).
- God is Just — God is fair in all His actions and judgments. He cannot over-punish or under-punish.**
- God is Righteous — God is always good and right.**
- God is Wrathful — God hates all unrighteousness.**
- **many thanks to Jen Wilkin and her list, “Attributes of God,” present at the back of every study
- It’s been a stressful week around here, so it’s been a great opportunity for me to remember and to live from the truth that God’s love casts out all fear, even anxiety and nervousness and worry. Katy Nichole’s song, “God Is Love” — the final song on our playlist, “Hidden Treasures” — helps me reorient my mind and realign my heart so that I can receive His love and release my fear.
He is good, and He is God
What I earned, it’s not what I got
And He is just, yet oh so kind
What I deserve, it’s not what I find
What more could I say about Him?
My God is love
Thank You, Lord!
- The next issue of my newsletter, The Abiding Life hits inboxes THIS WEEK! I’m excited to share more thoughts with you about God’s goodness, suffering, and our tendency toward striving for control. You can subscribe to future newsletters here.
Rhythms: As my newsletter’s title infers, we seek to develop an abiding life in this space — a place where we can get informed but also be transformed as we learn to abide in God’s presence throughout our days. I like to think that developing rhythms is one way to aid us in our desire to become more Christlike.
Praise, our summer rhythm, is the speaking of truths about WHO GOD IS. It lifts our eyes off our circumstances and back onto the One who can walk us through them. And the Psalms are packed with poems that will lead us through this ritual of reflection and remembrance — until it becomes a rhythm that we fall into naturally.
- This week, let’s read Psalm 103. It’s such a Psalm of praise! At the same time it’s a Psalm that anchors us in the just and righteous nature of our Father in heaven. Use the words of this Psalm as a prayer — one that lifts God and glorifies Him but also builds our faith in the truth of who He is. Watch for our Exodus 34:6 verse tucked into its stanzas!!!!
- And while it’s not a spiritual practice or rhythm, I invite you to share this site. Summer is a great time to ask someone else to join us here — it is a shared journey of faith, for sure!
Featured Photo from Canva, by utah778 on Getty Images. “All the Bits and Pieces” photo by Zrng N Gharib on Unsplash.
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