The Passive Wrath of God

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The Passive Wrath of God

It’s long been acknowledged that there are two ways that God’s wrath manifests itself: active and passive.  God’s active wrath is that anger of God expressed in his doing something to punish sin.  This active wrath manifests itself in things like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and in people like Ananias and Sapphira being struck down dead.
The other aspect of God’s wrath is of the passive sort.  This kind of wrath is when God lets people go on in sin leading to their own suffering and destruction.  God doesn’t have to do anything but sinful people themselves make their own decisions and basically self-destruct.
In Romans 1:18-32 is one of the clearest texts where God’s passive wrath is shown.  In it the apostle Paul explains that because people suppressed the truth (that they were perfectly aware of God) and ignored God instead by living in their own sinfulness, God gave them over.  There it is.  God’s giving over of someone to something (their own sinful passions and the like) is God’s passive wrath.  What Paul also says is that these people knew God.  To what depth they know God can be debated, but it’s clear that they knew at least about his “invisible attributes” – his “eternal power and divine nature” (v. 20) from creation, that is, nature itself.  Instead of responding properly to this knowledge about God by honouring and giving thanks to God, they opted to worship the creation instead of the Creator (v. 23).  The believed in the lie – that humans can be as God – a lie as ancient as Eden, and decided to serve the creature instead of the Creator.
God’s response?
God’s passive wrath is declared in at least three ways.  God gave them up…
1.  To impurity (v. 24)
2. To the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves (v.24) in their dishonorable passions (v. 26), that is, homosexuality.
4.  To a debased mind (v. 28) – such a mind that fills a person with envy, murder, strife, deceit… etc. (v. 29f.)
Lessons:
1.  God doesn’t always have to ‘act’ to punish sin.  Sinful humans can destroy themselves with their sinful behaviour.
2.  Homosexuality, commonly touted in our day as a human freedom may indeed be a sign of God’s passive wrath.  Sometimes it’s a worse punishment for God to leave people to destroy themselves instead him actively punishing them.
3.  A debased mind is a sign of God’s passive wrath.  A person’s mind characterized by the kinds of evil in verses 29-31, and one which encourages others to think and act in the same way, is one in whom God’s passive wrath is being manifested.
Grace overcoming wrath
The amazing thing is this: God is a gracious God.  God does forgive our sins in Jesus and in so doing, his wrath can be taken away from us.  God’s mercy is such that even his passive wrath does not have to last forever if we would repent and believe the gospel.  The gospel is this:  Jesus died on the cross to absorb the fullness of God’s wrath so that we could be freed from God’s wrath.  Jesus took on both God’s active wrath against sin by being brutally punished unto death for our sake.  Although Jesus had no sin to which God could give him over to, Jesus experienced what it was like to be abandoned by God.  On the cross in that moment of dereliction, he experienced being abandoned by the Father saying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Because he was bearing our sin, it was as though God the Father had turned his face away from Jesus, the sin-bearer.
The Lord will not stay angry forever.  He delights to show mercy and steadfast love. (Micah 7:18).  Find mercy and shelter from God’s wrath in Jesus Christ.

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