We studied this point in Sunday School briefly this past Lord's Day and discussed some worthwhile reflections on the anger of God. As with the rest of His attributes, God is purely righteous in His anger (Rom. 2:5). He is wholly justified and strictly blameless. This is difficult for us to comprehend because our anger is usually sinful. As we considered in Sunday School, our anger is an emotion that often arises out of sin. That's why Paul has to counsel in Ephesians 4:26, "Be angry and do not sin."
But God's anger is totally other-than ours. My dad defines His anger in a way that I think is very rich. He calls it God's "settled disposition toward His enemies." And God's enemies are all who willingly choose to reject Him. Thus God's disposition toward them is settled. It's not come upon Him in a fit of frustration. He doesn't blow a fuse. He righteously hates the evil.
"The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies" (Nahum 1:2).
"The Lord is at your right hand; he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath" (Psalm 110:5).
But people with a deeply skewed understanding of the Bible like to see two different Gods - one in the Old Testament and one in the New. The Old Testament God is angry, a God of blind and bitter judgement. His fingertips itch for fire and brimstone. Punishment is what He does best. And then this vindictive God disappears for four hundred years and Jesus suddenly steps onto the scene in the New Testament, meek and lamb-like and simply nice. The flannelgraphs never lie; Jesus always carries around a smile and a vision to reduce physical suffering. He's so sweet.
Sadly, these people don't understand the character of God. Jesus is not a mild manifestation of an Old Testament dictator. He is a member of the unified trinity. He is God. And God does not have split personalities or mood swings, good cop, bad cop, furious one day, cheerful the next. There is no angry God in the Old Testament, nice God in the New. God's anger operates within the rest of His characteristics. And the unified Bible presents one God who is perfect in love and perfect in justice. He is holy, thus He must execute judgement as a just judge.
This theme of God's anger winds through the entire narrative of Scripture, Old and New. Sometimes I see His anger more bluntly in the New.
"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth" (Romans 1:18).
"Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming" (Colossians 3:5-6).
But the good news about God's anger is that, though it is fierce against God's enemies, it is removed from God's people.
"For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. 5:9).
"Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God" (Rom. 5:9).
This is very good news for today. It gives us hope for tomorrow! We can live in a right relationship with God, all because "For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21). Because of the blood of Christ, our blood need not be shed. Because of the righteousness of Christ, we are free from having to live a perfectly righteous life (a task we could never accomplish). Because Jesus endured the wrath of God, we are free from it. Because Jesus was resurrected from the dead, our eternal life is secure.
Because of Jesus, God is not angry at us.