Is God Loving – or is God Angry?

Is God loving? Or is God angry? Or, does the question have more to do with our view of God?

Jn 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Ro 1:18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, Ro 1:19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 

So - which one is it?

To borrow a question from an old game show - 'Will the "real" God please stand up?'

I'm re-writing this now for one person in particular - and for anyone who needs it in general.

Since I had a allotted amount of time in the original, it was pretty short.  The parts that I added for the online version are in rust colored italics. 

I wrote this back in February, 2011 for a talk I was giving.  The topic was "Who gets the credit".  Maybe that seems like an odd combination - asking "who gets the credit" and "is God living or angry" at the same time.  Hopefully, by the end, it won't seem so odd.  And even if you can't answer both questions - hopefully this will cause you to think about them - and will lead you to wanting to answer both of them.

Since it was a live talk - and I used some of the things in the room as "props" - aids for making a couple of the points - I need to set up those things for you before getting into it.

First - there was a piano in the room. I don't know if it was a grand - baby grand - but it was at least that style. And it was very well kept up.

Second - there were several doors in the room. I was planning on using two of them - and pointing to them to illustrate something. As it turns out, the Pastor's wife made two really nice cardboard doors - drew in the panels and everything. One said "Angry God" - the other said "Loving God".

With that information - here it is.

 Is God loving – or is God angry?

That’s a question that lots of people would like to know the answer to.

Many people have heard of the famous verse from John 3:16. It says

Jn 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

God loves us so much - if we believe in His Son Jesus, who died on the cross to save us - then we will live with Him forever in Heaven.

That certainly sounds extremely loving.
But then we do often hear about God being angry. Where does that come from?

One example would be from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans, in chapter 1, starting at verse 18:

Ro 1:18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
Ro 1:19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
Ro 1:20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
Ro 1:21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

So God is angry because He should be obvious to us but many of us don’t see Him or give thanks to Him.
That doesn't sound so loving.

Maybe we are too busy - maybe we are too interested in ourselves - maybe we just don’t care. There are many reasons why people don’t see God around them, but the result is the same - if we don’t See God – we can’t give Him thanks.