Opening
God cannot condone sin. In fact, sin makes Him angry. His wrath, though, is tempered by His mercy and love. This daily devotional explores why God is angry, the punishment determined to appease His wrath, and how His mercy and love can rectify that.
Nuggets
- Sin, which leads to wrath, is the polar opposite of the Spirit — with which we are supposed to be filled.
- Sovereign God gets to decide crimes and punishments.
- There is hope for us because God is rich in mercy.
- Mercy comes out of God’s love, which is His character (I Jn. 4: 8).
Devotions in the The Letter of Paul to the Ephesians series
My Ladies and I were talking about how rich each verse in Ephesians is. That being said, I am going to be daring and try to tackle three verses in this devotion. These three verses show the foundation on which the Plan of Salvation is built.
Let's Put It into Context #1
Here is a running list of nuggets for the series.
Let's Put It into Context #2
First, we need to see what wrath is. Wrath is extreme, fierce anger. It is also a vengeance or punishment that comes as a result of the anger.
We’ve talked before that the person who is performing the act of vengeance does not always feel like they are the one who “started it.” Their act is a response.
Deuteronomy 32: 35 says, “I [God] will take revenge; I will pay them back” (NLT). We aren’t supposed to let our anger row to the point where we retaliate. God calls dibs on the wrath and vengeance.
God’s Wrath
"We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also" (Eph. 2: 3 CSB)
Sin, which leads to wrath, is the polar opposite of the Spirit — with which we are supposed to be filled.
Next, we need to see what God’s wrath is. Romans 1: 18 says, “For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (ESV). Hmmm. Too many churchy words.
Godliness, equated with the Old Testament term fear of the Lord, is reverence in thought, feeling, and conduct that is promoted by walking in His Spirit and obeying God’s laws and commandments that produces a moral likeness of God.
The opposite is godlessness. That means we are full of sin.
Sin is not believing that Jesus is our Savior to save us from our actions by humans that disobey God and break one of His reasonable, holy, and righteous laws and commandments, goes against a purpose He has for us, or follows Satan’s promptings.
- Holy means to be set apart — because of our devotion to God — to become perfect, and morally pure while possessing all virtues.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
- Sanctified means to be set free from sin.
- Pure means not being sinful or having the stain of sin.
- Virtues are standards of moral excellence.
- Perfection means we reach a state of maturity because the combination of the spiritual graces form, when all are present, spiritual wholeness or completeness — holy, sanctified, and righteous.
- Righteous means we are free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws.
Glossary
Righteousness is the indwelling goodness that is the result of a solid relationship with God built by a sincere life of conscientious obedience to God’s laws and commandments and from which all virtues flow.
Unrighteousness is where we have no relationship with God or we are not living according to His laws and commandments.
God gets angry at all the sin and evil in people that stop His truth from being revealed.
Now, let’s see what we can see in Ephesians 2. Verse 3 says that “… we were by nature children under wrath …” (Eph. 2: 3 CSB). If we look at it from the lens of sin, it starts to make sense.
God had to have been angry when mankind decided we weren’t going to follow His laws and commandments. We know He was angry enough to kick Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden.
When sin entered mankind, we went from being children of God to children of wrath. We started being controlled by Satan and filled with the lusts of the flesh. Those included sexual immorality, impurity, homosexuality, idolatry/covetousness, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, greed, drunkenness, filthiness, and all impurity to name a few (Gal. 5: 19-21; Eph. 5: 3-6; and I Cor. 6: 9-10).
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Glossary
That is a pretty long list, and what is there are doozies. It doesn’t just stop there those. Think about the fallout because of the commission of those sins.
When you think about those being polar opposite of the Spirit — which we are supposed to be filled with — we can see where the wrath comes into play. The relationships that God wanted turned into alienation.
Isn’t that so like us? We get something good and end up mucking it up. We perverted His truth.
God’s Punishment
Sovereign God gets to decide crimes and punishments.
So, we messed up and deserve the wrath. That means we also deserve the punishment.
Romans 6: 23 says, “For the wages of sin is death …” (ESV). Ouch. Since there are many opponents to capital punishment, I am sure many of them see the Bible outdated because of this.
However, this is what Scriptures say. “Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preached to you, which you received, on which you have taken your stand” (I Cor. 15: 1 CSB). It hasn’t changed.
It also says, “You must not add anything to what I command you or take anything away from it, so that you may keep the commands of the LORD your God I am giving you” (Deut. 4: 2 CSB).
Let me reiterate, God is Sovereign God. He gets to decide crimes and punishments. We don’t get to rewrite the Bible to make it more politically correct. God’s ways are not the ways of this world.
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In His infinite wisdom, God decided that the punishment for alienation from Him was death. Plain and simple.
God’s Mercy
“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace!” (Eph. 2: 4-5 ESV).
There is hope for us because God is rich in mercy.
Slow down on the punishment kick. God is rich in mercy (Eph. 2: 4).
Remember what mercy is. God’s mercy is an act of sovereign will that produces an unexpected and undeserved response from God as He responds in love to our needs.
Mercy is where God doesn’t judge us to the extent He could have. Even though we deserve bad things as punishment, God doesn’t give them to us.
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God doesn’t have just a little bit of mercy. He doesn’t dole it out just on the fourth Thursday of the month (ooops, missed that!). It is not contingent on Tom, Sally, and Elaine being perfect children.
Nope. The only contingency on God’s mercy is that we have to be His children.
It doesn’t say it works for one sin but not another (except for the one unpardonable sin). We don’t max out the number. There is no expiration date.
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God’s mercy is infinite. It is immeasurable.
My Ladies and I talked about the term immeasurable when we discussed this. My materials said it could mean to kick it up to the next level.
Just think about that a second. We make a goal and attain it, so we have to make a new, higher goal. That is usually how we think of getting to the next level.
Now think about God’s mercy. There is always a next level. We think we used up His mercy the other times we’ve confessed this sin. We haven’t.
We think that, once we sin “bad” enough, God will withdraw His mercy. Or that the shoe is going drop when Jesus returns.
Nope. Nope. Nope.
God’s Love
Mercy comes out of God’s love, which is His character (I Jn. 4: 8).
God can’t be what He isn’t.
That means God loves the obedience but hates the sin. That has the mercy kicking in full throttle.
But remember what we said. God only shows mercy to the repentant and obedient. He is only merciful to the faithful.
Repentance is acknowledging our separation from God and expressing sorrow for breaking God’s laws and commandments by making the commitment to change our sinful ways to ways of righteousness through obedience.
- Obedience means submitting ourselves to the will of God as it is presented to us and living our lives accordingly.
Glossary
Making the Connections
Did you notice that it mentioned mercy first and love second? Remember we said the mercy comes out of the love.
I am not sure I am going to say this right, but mercy has a closer connection to us in our sinful state than love does. The love accepts us as we are, but the mercy connects with why we need the forgiveness.
Forgiveness is, when we ask, the act of God pardoning us because we have shown repentance for breaking His laws and commandments, which allows us to become holy as He is.
Remember, Paul said earlier that we were alive but dead? It says it again here. Without God as our Sovereign God, without Jesus as our Lord and Savior, and without the Holy Spirit guiding our footsteps, we are dead in our sins.
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Love and mercy set up the Plan of Salvation. God knew that “… all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3: 23 ESV). He set up a way that we could “… repent of [our] sins and turn to God, so that [our] sins may be wiped away” (Ac. 3: 19 NLT).
But part of the problem is that “because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil” (Ecc. 8: 11 ESV). We don’t see punishment meted out, so we convince ourselves there is none.
We have to watch that we don’t start using mercy as a license to sin. We have to repent and turn from our sinful ways.
How Do We Apply This?
There will be punishment. “And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20: 15 ESV).
God provided the only way to rectify that. “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Rom. 5: 8 NLT). All we have to do is believe and repent.
We need to make sure that we have given our lives to God before Jesus returns to call God’s children home. Then we need to live according to His laws and commandments.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
Father God. Your love is immeasurable. Your mercy is immeasurable. Because of that, You have devised a plan so that Your wrath can be appeased. You sent You Son to pay the price for our sins. We commit our lives to You. Help us to live according to Your laws and commandments. Amen.
What do you think?
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