22. INTERRUPTION (e) - HOW GOD SAVES US FROM HIS RIGHTEOUS ANGER

In meditation 21 we saw that according to the Bible, God’s passion for love, truth and righteousness arouses his righteous anger.

Consequently, our first question today is: Has there ever been a human being who lived a perfectly righteous life according to God’s standards (see meditations 15 and 17) and would therefore be excluded from God’s anger?

The book of Ecclesiastes reminds us: "There is not a single person in all the earth who is always good and never sins.”
(Ecclesiastes 7:20)

The prophet Isaiah puts our human condition into the following words: “All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God's paths to follow our own” (Isaiah 53:6).

The same prophet continues by saying: “We are all infected and impure with sin. When we proudly display our righteous deeds, we find they are but filthy rags. Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall. And our sins, like the wind, sweep us away” (Isaiah 64:6).

Speaking about the whole of mankind, the apostle Paul states: “All have sinned; all fall short of God's glorious standard.”
(Romans 3:23)

The apostle John points out in one of his letters: “If we say we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth. ... If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.”
(1 John 1:8 and 10)

As we notice from the above texts, the Bible concludes that all humanity is so lost in rebellion and disobedience to God’s law of love (see meditations 15, 17, 19 and 21) and that therefore we deserve his righteous anger.

That leads us to the question: can a loving God save us from his righteous anger? How could he ever declare us innocent without ‘bending' his own righteous law?

The apostle Paul explains to the Roman Christians how God solved that insurmountable problem within himself. He did so by sending his own Son into our world: “God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins” (Romans 3:24).
(See meditations 4, 5 and 11).

The apostle John wrote about God’s love for our rebellious world in his famous words: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it” (John 3:16-17).

To the followers of Jesus in the Greek town of Corinth, Paul expounds: “God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

It was already ca. 700 BC that the prophet Isaiah foresaw the substitutive punishment of God’s ultimate Messiah for the rebellion of the whole of mankind when he declared: “The Lord laid on him the guilt and sins of us all” (Isaiah 53:6).
(See meditations 4, 5 and 11)

The apostle Peter shows how the substitutive punishment of Jesus Christ takes away God’s righteous anger at our rebellion and restores our fellowship with God: “Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (1 Peter 3:18).

We can read in the Bible that God is willing to forgive our wrongdoings and save us from his righteous anger. Are we then ‘automatically’ saved and forgiven, or is there anything we need to do?


All Bible verses are quoted from the ‘New Living Translation’ except 1 Peter 3:18 (‘New International Version’).