Theological glossary · FaithLogic

Wrath (of God)

God's settled, holy opposition to sin and his judicial response to it — not a loss of temper, but righteousness reacting against evil.

Hebrew charon aph ('burning of the nose/anger'), qetseph; Greek orgē, thymos.

Exodus 34:7; Numbers 25:11; Psalm 7:11; Nahum 1:2–6; John 3:36; Romans 1:18; 2:5–8; 5:9; Ephesians 2:3; 5:6; Colossians 3:6; Revelation 6:16–17; 19:15.

Distinguished from human anger: God's wrath is constant (not capricious), just (proportioned to the offence), and directed against sin rather than persons as such; it is the necessary corollary of his holiness and love (indifference to evil would not be love). C. H. Dodd's attempt to reduce it to an impersonal 'process of cause and effect' has been widely rejected as not fitting the personal language.

The cross is where God's wrath against sin and his love for sinners meet — Christ, as propitiation, 'turns away' the wrath (Rom 3:25; 1 John 2:2); believers are 'saved from the wrath of God through him' (Rom 5:9).

Whether to speak of divine 'wrath' as an emotion or only a judicial disposition (bearing on impassibility); how it relates to God's love; its role in the atonement (central for penal substitution, minimised by its critics).

Open in the glossary for related terms and the doctrines this concept appears in.