Be Careful What You Wish For

Photo by Micah Tindell

“And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper,  being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them” (Romans 1:28–32 NASB).

While the idea of God’s anger is for many unpalatable, it is for the apostle Paul a crucial part of the good news that Israel’s Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, is now Lord of the world. Accordingly, a coming “Day of the Lord” will mean not only the world’s salvation but also its judgment in which God’s wrath will be revealed.

In the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans, he explains how God’s anger is set against those who do wicked things. Paul, like other Jewish writers of the period, describes here how the nations of the world had turned their back on the Creator and instead committed themselves to worthless idols of their own choosing. Consequently, instead of reflecting God’s good purposes for the creation (love, joy, peace), their collective lives were consumed with self-gratification even at the expense of others.

Making matters worse, Paul suggests that their turning away from God and active participation in degrading acts eventually degraded their thinking, so that their minds became conditioned to embrace what is evil over the good. The result: a downward spiral of evil begetting more evil.

What was God’s response to all of this? Paul basically says that God left them to it. God let the nations continue in the course they have chosen for themselves.

Though being “free” to think and do what is right in one’s own eyes may appear to be a coveted, idyllic situation, the biblical witness suggests, rather, that people should be careful what they wish for.

God’s forbearance has limits. Paul declares that God has appointed a time whereby the nations of the world would be given a final opportunity to repent—to accept the truth of the Creator and change their ways—and a final day of judgment when “each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10 NIV). In the judgment “God will repay according to each one’s deeds . . . . for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil” (Romans 2:6–9 NRSV).

It is true that God loves everyone and seeks to save those who are lost. But God does get angry. God hates sin. A day of reckoning is coming. Vengeance belongs to God and “[he] will repay” (Romans 12:19 NRSV). Indeed, salvation means precisely that God will rescue his people and all creation from those who do them harm.

 Liberation theologian James Cone aptly remarks, “A God without wrath does not plan to do too much liberating, for the two concepts belong together. A God minus wrath seems to be a God who is basically not against anybody” (Cone, A Black Liberation Theology, 131).

For the genuinely oppressed and victimized, what would be worse than a God who refused to take your side—who didn’t see any difference between you and your experience of suffering at the hands of others and those very same people who sinfully treated you with such unfair disdain?  

Thankfully, God is not indifferent. So where does that leave each of us—particularly those who do acknowledge God?

While it is equally true, then, that in punishing unrepentant evildoers God necessarily takes sides, as the prophet Amos proclaimed to Israel, “What sorrow awaits you who say, ‘If only the day of the LORD were here!’ You have no idea what you are wishing for. That day will bring darkness, not light” (Amos 5:18 NLT).

Righteous indignation toward the evil acts of others notwithstanding, there is a dire need for each of us to reflect upon our own wickedness. God is an equal opportunity Judge and sees all sides. Be careful what you wish for.