DO BELIEVERS EXPERIENCE THE WRATH OF GOD?

Interesting article from Grace Evangelical Society exploring the concept of the wrath of God and how it may be administered to unbelievers and believers.

All who teach the grace message know the importance of defining concepts and words in order to interpret the Bible correctly. For this reason, grace advocates are serious when it comes to clarifying God’s message of grace. Yet, how serious and clear are we when it comes to understanding God’s message of wrath? Unfortunately, many Christians assume that whenever the expression “God’s wrath” appears in the Bible it usually means eternal judgment that falls only upon the unregenerate (Rom 1:18–3:20). This common interpretation surfaces two questions that will be answered in this article: “Do the Scriptures reveal the subject of God’s wrath to be temporal in nature and does God’s wrath fall equally on sinning believers as well as unbelievers?” The Greek word for “wrath” (orge„), with God as its executor, appears in Romans far more than any other NT book. Because Romans is written to Christians (1:7, 15), it will be vital to examine each passage where wrath appears in the epistle in order to meet this article’s objective. But first, it will be nec­es­sary to survey the OT and NT occurrences (outside of Romans) in order to see whether God’s wrath is temporal in nature and whether it falls equally upon sinning believers as well as unbelievers...continue reading