In this video, Grace@Work leader Cortney Alexander answers the question of “How does God feel about sin?”
We hear a lot of different opinions about how God feels about sin these days, even within the church. Some say that while sin angered God in the days of the Old Testament, he feels differently about sin now—that these days, sin just breaks God’s heart because sin breaks people. While that might sound appealing at first, when we think about it, I think we’ll find it doesn’t sound so good after all.
For example, people often ask why God allows so much evil in the world. That’s a good question that we address in a separate post. However, think about the premise underlying that question: it assumes two things (1) there is objectively evil behavior; and (2) we should be upset about it when it occurs.
If we are rightfully angry at the evil that exists in the world, why would we think that God wouldn’t be? Don’t we want God to be angry at things like rape and murder? Do we want God’s attitude toward a serial rapist to be, “I’m not angry at you, but your behavior just breaks my heart because this behavior isn’t good for you.”
Common sense tells us that God is angry at sin, and the Bible says the same thing.
In considering how God feels about sin, it helps to start with who God is. He is the Creator of the universe, and by virtue of being the Creator, he is also the King of the universe. The King gets to set the rules. Human kings sometimes set rules that harm society, but God is not a man: “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne” (Ps. 97:2). His rules are perfectly just and righteous, so they lead to human flourishing rather than oppression.
But as with human kings, the Creator-King doesn’t like it when people thumb their noses at his rules. And that’s what sin is. It involves people effectively telling the King that they don’t care about his ways; they’re going to do it their own way.
The Old Testament says this makes God angry and so does the New Testament. In Colossians 3, the apostle Paul writes that “the wrath of God is coming” because of sin. So sin not only still angers God; his judgment is coming because of it. In fact, Jesus himself will execute that judgment. Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 1 that the Lord Jesus will be “revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2 Thess. 1:7).
So God is clearly still angered by sin. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. God isn’t just sitting around, looking over the balcony of heaven, waiting for a chance to smite someone. While every person deserves God’s wrath due to sin, he didn’t leave us without hope. He sent his Son, Jesus, into the world. “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself . . . For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:19-21).
Whether we experience God’s wrath on account of our sin depends on whether we accept the reconciliation he offers through Jesus. As the apostle John records in John chapter 3, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (Jn. 3:36). Those who reject Jesus will indeed experience God’s wrath. But that’s not the case for those who receive Jesus. As John 1 states, to those who receive Jesus, God “gave the right to become children of God” (Jn. 1:12).
To be clear, even after someone becomes a child of God by receiving Jesus, God still doesn’t like his sin. No father likes it when his child disobeys him. God the Father is no different in that respect. And like an earthly father disciplines a disobedient child, so God the Father disciplines believers who disobey him to train them in righteousness. But, as believers, we can rest assured that even when we experience God’s discipline, it is because he loves us (Heb. 12:6-11). We won’t experience his wrath (1 Thess. 5:9). We will remain in his house forever (Jn. 8:35).
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