Love and Wrath Not at Odds

Love and Wrath Not at Odds | Devotional

Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed.

Psalm 85:10

God’s love cannot be isolated from His wrath and vice versa. Nor are His love and wrath in opposition to each other like some mystical yin-yang principle.

Both attributes are constant, perfect, without ebb or flow. God Himself is immutable—unchanging.

He is not loving one moment and wrathful the next. His wrath coexists with His love; therefore, the two never contradict. Such are the perfections of God that we can never begin to comprehend these things.

Above all, we must not set them against one another, as if there were somehow a discrepancy in God. God is always true to Himself and true to His Word (Rom. 3:4; 2 Tim. 2:13).

Both God’s wrath and His love work to the same ultimate end—His glory. God is glorified in the condemnation of the wicked, and He is glorified in the salvation of His people.

The expression of His wrath and the expression of His love are both necessary to display His full glory.

Since His glory is the great design of His eternal plan, and since all that He has revealed about Himself is essential to His glory, we must not ignore any aspect of His character.

We cannot magnify His love to the exclusion of His other attributes.

How have you been tempted to ignore God’s love or His wrath?
The God Who Loves, 18–19