Even those with more traditional views of God are afflicted by a divine weightlessness that wafts through modern evangelicalism.

4Įnter the twenty-first century, and “expressive individualism” has made God’s love into absolute affirmation of the individual. Instead, they built ministries with the power of positive thinking, which only added to disinterest in this biblical doctrine. Robert Schuller’s and Joel Osteen’s television ministries, as well as the panache of the seeker-sensitive movement, eschewed God’s wrath.

God becomes a personal friend who assists us in all of life’s difficulties. Without a clear understanding of God’s hatred for sin, the character of God becomes misshapen and the universe bends towards human individuals-regardless of their character. This indictment highlights what happens when God’s love is divorced from his holiness. Speaking to churches and pastors devoid of God’s wrath, Richard Niebuhr famously described Protestant Liberalism’s gospel: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” 3 Jonathan Edwards warnings against hell have been replaced by Dale Carnegie’s positive message of winning friends and influencing people.

2īy contrast, God’s wrath was eliminated from many (or most?) twentieth-century pulpits. 1 This kind of preaching ignited revival as it set salvation in the context of God’s holy wrath. Those without Christ dangle over the flames of hell, like a spider over a flame. In the Great Awakening Jonathan Edwards famously preached a sermon entitled “Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God.” The passage is a vivid exposition of Deuteronomy 32:35, which reads, “Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly.” Focusing on the second line (“their foot shall slip in due time,” KJV), Edwards illustrates the perilous position of the lost. From Jonathan Edwards to Joel Osteen: The Elimination of God’s Wrath from the American Church Nevertheless, the wrath of God is a theme that runs through the Bible, one Christians must consider to know the God who is love, light, and life. In our secular age, God’s wrath is a foreign and unwanted truth.

The Cross of Christ by John R.W. Stott