God’s Holy Hatred of Sin

 The Doctrine of God’s Wrath

Most people today ignore or reject the thought of God’s wrath, preferring to believe that God accepts anything and everyone equally. Like everything God is and does, God exercises His wrath in perfect balance with His entire nature. God loves everything that is good and right. Therefore, He opposes everything that threatens what and whom He loves. God’s wrath represents a deliberate response of His justice, holiness, and love against all that dishonours Him. Whereas God’s love flows intrinsically from His nature, His wrath represents His holy response to the ravages of sin. God does not exercise wrath in gleeful retribution or to “get even.” God’s holy anger stands as a protective and purifying expression of His divine love. 

The Bible offers many manifestations of God’s wrath: the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the plagues of Egypt to name a few. Nahum and Zephaniah warned of God’s wrath and impending action against unrepentant evil and idolatry. Judah, Israel, and foreign nations alike encountered God’s just judgment of their sin. Today, God’s wrath is being revealed against sin and ungodliness. In the future, God’s wrath will be poured out on the earth as He removes Satan and evil forever. Every person is born with a sinful nature and deserves God’s wrath. Anyone who puts their faith in Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice receives eternal salvation because He absorbed God’s wrath on their behalf. 

Despite Satan’s attempts to hide this truth, God’s wrath against sin cannot be dismissed or ignored. Without an understanding of God’s just response to sin, Jesus’ cross and the gospel do not make sense. Failure to recognize this truth minimizes the gravity of both personal and corporate sin and universal accountability to God. We cannot maintain a right view of God without understanding the seriousness of His wrath. Psalm 90:11 says, “If only we knew the power of your anger! Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due.” 

The truth about God’s wrath helps us comprehend the amazing beauty and wonder of Jesus’ cross. God’s own Son came to earth as a man, lived a sinless life, and died a sacrificial death for sinners. In His infinite perfection, Jesus absorbed the full force of God’s wrath against the sins of countless people who trust Him for salvation. For every believer, God’s wrath has been fully satisfied – the debt of sin has been paid in full. As those spared from God’s wrath, believers should be particularly motivated to share the gospel with others. Multiplied voices in heaven will proclaim: “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for true and just are his judgments” (Revelation 19:1-2a).

Resource: Bible Study Fellowship, People of Promise: Kingdom Divided, Lesson 24

Jesus, the Coming King

The Doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ 

Old Testament prophets saw end-time events from afar. Jesus’ first and second comings merged like two mountain peaks viewed together from a great distance. The Old Testament presented God’s entire timeline. The New Testament explains Jesus’ first and second comings as two distinct events. From where we stand today, we clearly differentiate between the two. We know that Jesus first came to earth to pay for mankind’s sin. Jesus Christ will come again to judge the earth and reign in great glory. 

“Her Sin Has Been Paid For”

 The Doctrine of Salvation 

Salvation means deliverance from danger, distress, destruction, or harm. This concept incorporates being saved, rescued, preserved, and even victorious. Throughout the Bible, especially the Old Testament, the word “salvation” often depicts deliverance from physical danger. For example, God brought Israel from slavery in Egypt and Judah from exile in Babylon. Ultimately, the Bible’s examples of physical deliverance point to humanity’s greater need for spiritual rescue. Salvation, in the spiritual sense, refers to deliverance from sin’s penalty, power, and presence. 

Questions to Ask

 • Do you believe in God?

Yes

• What kind of God do you believe in?
• Why do you believe in God?
• Do you identify with any organized religious group?
• Do you think your religious beliefs are true i.e., factually accurate such that if others disagree, then they're mistaken?
• Do you think that morality--what's good and bad--is fixed and objective, or is it just a matter of opinion, and people with completely different moral views can be equally right at the same time?
• Do you think it's possible to know the truth about God or religion, or is that just a guess or a leap of faith?
• What do you think happens when you die? Why do you think that?

No

• Why don't you believe in God?
• Who do you think Jesus is? What are your reasons for that?
• Do you think that the material, physical world is all there is, or do you believe in immaterial, non-physical things? Why, in either case?
• Do you think that morality--what's good and bad is fixed and objective, or is it just a matter of opinion, and people with completely different moral views can be equally right at the same time?

Bowing Humbly Before Our God Most High

 The Doctrine of God the Father 

The opportunity to gaze into Isaiah’s encounter with the living God offers us a profound privilege. We love thinking about God’s nearness and the intimate relationship we enjoy with Him. He is Immanuel – the God who came near to us. He remains actively present in our everyday lives. When we pray in Jesus’ name, God listens and acts on our behalf. As God’s beloved children, He inclines His heart and ear to us with lavish compassion and grace. 

Inadequate Substitutes for the One True God

The Doctrine of Idolatry

Christianity hinges on the exclusive worship of the one true God. Worship of anything else, whether nature, ideology, wealth, power, pleasure, or work, is called idolatry – a sin in God’s eyes. Is God selfish to demand undivided worship? God’s jealousy for our devotion rests on the fact that He alone is God and Creator. Worshipping anyone or anything other than God is a sin because only God deserves our worship. The prophet Isaiah confronted the foolishness of worshiping idols as he described a man who cuts down a tree and uses some of the wood to make a fire to warm himself and bake bread. With other pieces of the same wood, he carves an idol and prays to it. Powerless gods of our own making cannot save us or do us any good. 

The Mind at War With the Body

Bioethicists acknowledge that life begins at conception. The evidence from DNA and genetics is too strong to deny it. So how do secularists argue their way around it? Well they divide the human being into two separate parts; the spirit and the body.

The Fact-Value Split

We know that physical matter has meaning. We know that God having created our body means that our bodies have meaning. Scripture shows us that our biological sex is meaningful. Our gender is not something we intuit by psychologically, it is something we derive from our biology. God made them male and female, and that is a biological distinction, not a psychological one. If your worldview is that matter is all that there is and that we only exist by chance and randomness it's very hard to come up with a coherent reason why it matters or has meaning.

Cultures throughout history have known that there is a natural order and there is a spiritual/moral order. And they always thought the two were connected. So when you made a moral statement it was the same as making a scientific statement. But then what happened was, in the modern age, in the rise of modern science people in the West began to say that the only reliable truth we have is what we know by science; empirically testable facts. So what happened to moral and spiritual truths? The two were split. Science was the only objective truth and morals and spiritual truths were considered subjective, private, personal opinions. This is the mainline underlying worldview driving abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality and transgenderism. So the main obstacle for Christians is that the concept of truth has shifted.

The split for human beings is between facts and values; biology and personhood. Downplaying the body and overplaying the mind and soul. Demonizing the body and overspiritualizing the soul. If abortion advocates say the fetus is human but not a person until it acquires certain mental capacities such as having cognitive functioning, self-awareness, etc then it is not a person. And with euthanasia the opposite is applied, if you lose a sense of cognitive functioning then you are not a person.

High View of the Body, Low View of the Soul
Low View of the Body, High View of the Soul

There's more to us than merely our biology but we know there is more to us than only our external physicality. Our bodies tell us the truth about ourselves but also recognizing there is more to us than our biology. We find our value and identity through God because He created us. Man looks at outward appearance but the Lord looks on the heart (Ecc. 3:11). The unique thing about sexual sin is that it harms the body. In 1 Cor. 6:18 Paul says, "No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body." Sex is meant to engage the whole of your personality. In God's design it is not meant to be just a physical act, it is meant to unite the whole of who you are with someone else. It is designed to be permanent, irreversible and exclusive; making two one flesh. It is meant to be an act of the totality of who we are. We are in a sense embodied souls. It has a far more deeper impact that any other sin. Not as much as idolatry, but idolatry has some involvement in it that we worship ourselves other than God.

Emotional Distress

At the heart of the debate is the idea that your mind is at war with your body. In the end your mind wins over your body. The body loses. The body is against your authentic self. Transgenderism teaches body hatred. There is consolation in knowing that God made you and has a purpose. He meant for you to be here, He had you in mind; He thought you up. That takes the pressure off us in trying to find our purpose and identity.

Creation, Fall, Redemption

From the very beginning of Genesis we see that God’s creation is real and good. Seven times God calls that which he made “good.” When he made mankind—male and female— he describes them as “very good.” “God made them in His image and likeness.” Knowing that you were created by a God who knows you and loves you and has a purpose for you is the answer. 

For those who are not happy with your bodies: You have been fearfully and wonderfully made. We must have a balanced view of appreciation for our bodies. We ought to praise God for our embodied life. My body is a gift even if that is a painful gift.  That doesn't mean we have to like what we see in the mirror. I am not a mistake. We should not despise what God Himself cares for and loves. The hope we find in our bodies is not found in what we can do with our bodies. It is found with what Jesus bought with His body for us. We now belong to Christ and honour Him with it on how we deal with it. If our bodies are ones with what God wants to dwell within with His Spirit then we ought not to despise it. We not ought to idolize it because it is not ultimate itself but a created thing.

The redemption of our bodies is mentioned in Romans 8:18-21. The body and mind and spirit come together. We do not need to fear our bodies will breakdown and decline. Our best physical existence lies upon the future bodily resurrection with Jesus.