We seem to have a hard time reconciling love and anger within God. We want to say things like: “If God is so full of love, then how can He have anger and wrath?” We seem to forget that even in our own lives anger is often manifested due to love.
If someone says an unkind word toward one of our family members, we rightly get angry. And it is because we love them.
If someone bullies one of our children, we rightly get angry. And it is because we love them.
If someone tries to harm our spouse, we rightly get angry. And it is because of our love.
When we stop and thinks about it, we realize that in our own lives, anger is often a function of love. Righteous anger is anger that is justified because of how someone is mistreating someone we care about. And this is the type of anger that God displays.
The root cause of our unhappiness seems to be a disquieting suspicion that ideas of wrath are in one way or another unworthy of God. Thus, God’s love, as the Bible views it, never leads him to foolish, impulsive, immoral actions in the way that its human counterpart too often leads us. And in the same way, God’s wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is. It is, instead, a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil. God is only angry where anger is called for. Even among humans, there is such a thing as righteous indignation, though it is, perhaps, rarely found. But all God’s indignation is righteous.
–J. I. Packer
All God’s indignation is righteous. And I’m glad he loves me so much that he is willing to be angry over the evil and sinfulness that has the potential to harm me, one of his beloved children.
