Abandonment

In the Bible the concept of the wrath of God is not rare or hard to find. It is clear from the beginning to the end. It is mindless to deny. Even the tired old "I like the God of the New Testament, but I don't like the God of the Old Testament" is foolish given that Jesus spoke more about Hell than Heaven and Revelation is the culmination of God's wrath. God has many attributes and characteristics, and one, to our dismay, is wrath. But what is God's wrath? In God's case, wrath is His righteous response to sin. Man's wrath doesn't achieve God's righteousness (James 1:20), but God's wrath does every time. And God's wrath takes several different forms. There is the eternal wrath of God that is displayed in the final judgment. Before that there is what they term His eschatological wrath which refers to the wrath poured out in the end times in Revelation. There is His consequential wrath where we experience temporal wrath for real-time events; we reap what we sow. There are more, but one that doesn't get mentioned much in Christian circles is His abandonment wrath. This wrath is displayed by God not doing something, but by His withdrawing. We see it in the Aaronic blessing, where we are blessed and kept by His face shining on us (Num 6:23-27), and, thus, it is a curse if God turns away. But the best place to see it is in Romans 1.

Paul introduces the gospel as "the power of God for salvation" because "in it the righteousness of God is revealed" (Rom 1:16-17) and immediately launches not into how the righteousness of God is revealed, but into how righteousness is a problem ... because of our sin problem (Rom 1:18-3:20). Paul lays the basic problem of sin at the foot of man's suppression of the truth about God (Rom 1:18-19). And in the rest of the chapter he explains the sequence of events. Humans know about God because God has made it evident, but they suppress that and become futile in their thinking. They (we) exchange God's glory for worshiping God's creation. And then Paul says,

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. (Rom 1:24-25)

And there it is. God's wrath towards Man's suppression of the truth of who He is isn't displayed here in action, but by inaction. He "gave them over." Why? Because they bought the lie. That leads to all sorts of further sin (Rom 1:26-27) which leads to a second abandonment (Rom 1:28) which leads to all manner of sin. In God's wrath He ... let them go. Abandonment as punishment. We can see this in Hebrews 12. The author there talks about God's discipline. It can be painful, but it is out of love (Heb 12:5-6). He says there, "Whom the Lord loves, He disciplines" (Heb 12:6) and goes on to say, "But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons" (Heb 12:8). This is another example of God's abandonment wrath. He simply withdraws.

According to our culture, it's not loving to interfere. Don't be judgmental. Don't point out sin. Love encourages people to "be yourself" even if "yourself" is sinful. According to Scripture, our sin begins with suppressing the truth about God and without changing courses God abandons us to all manner of sin as a consequence. God says, in essence, "You want to go this way? I won't stop you ... but you won't like the outcome. It will not be pleasant." God abanoning people to sin is an expression of wrath. When the Christians in Corinth exercised that kind of "tolerance," Paul reprimanded them for it (1 Cor 5:1-2). Because love dictates that we bear one anothers burdens (Gal 6:2), even if that requires that we make efforts to turn them from sin (Gal 6:1). God's wrath is real and it has a range of applications. His abandonment is not relief; it is judgment. That's why we pray for His real presence in our lives. Our world considers it freedom, but it is a terrifying thing to be abandoned by God.