5 And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?
“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.”Hebrews 12:5-6
Some preachers avoid talking and preaching about God’s anger.
They’re afraid that it will offend seekers and newbies in the faith. They think that by emphasizing sin and God’s anger towards the sinner, they will be presenting Jesus as this dictator-tyrant headmaster who looks only at our sin with a stinking eye. They feel that it will discourage the congregation sitting in the pew to come to Jesus. So, instead of emphasizing the fire and brimstone nature of sin in preaching, some preachers highlight the grace and love of God for the broken.
Yet, because of that, congregants in the pew also don’t like to hear that God is angry with them.
They feel the same way with preachers – God being angry with them means that He does not love them. They think that for God to truly love them, He has to have this radical-like love of waiting patiently for the sinner to come to his senses and return willingly to His open arms. They imagine Jesus as the boyfriend who waits longingly and patiently for his girlfriend to come to her senses while looking at her cheating with another man.
When we avoid talking about God’s anger though, we are robbing His people of life-changing knowledge about God – knowledge that will drive them not away from Him, but closer to Him. Why?
Because God’s anger actually draws His people towards Him, not away from Him.
A word of clarification here.
First, I believe God’s anger manifests differently based on your relationship with Him. If you are His child in Christ, His anger manifests itself as discipline. If you are an unbeliever (even a church-going, communion-tasting professing but not possessing Christian), His anger manifests itself as punishment. What’s the difference though? Douglas Wilson gives a helpful clarification:
Discipline is corrective. It is what a father does to a son. When the son is disciplined, he is disciplined without losing his surname. Junior remains a Laxa even when Senior Laxa sends Junior away from the family table into his room and grounds him for one week. The purpose? So that Junior realizes the error of his ways, repents, and is restored in fellowship with the family eating Nasi Lemak for dinner.
Punishment however, is just judgment. A judge that sends the criminal to prison isn’t doing so that he may reform his ways. No, he is there because he has commited a crime and is experiencing his sentence as payment for the crime he committed. Now he may reform his way while in prison. That’s good. But that is not the intent of the punishment. Justice is the intent, justice of an angry righteous Judge.
Secondly, I’m not arguing it’s ok to make God angry. Thus:
It’s not OK to do things that makes God angry. This means, it’s not OK to sin. It’s not alright for you to violate the 10 commandments (or even a single command as James said). It’s not OK to ignore the Great Commission even if you are being reminded year after year during the church’s Mission’s Conference. It is wrong to commit both (or either) sins of commission and omission.
It’s not also OK to keep God angry. It’s not OK to be unrepentant of your sin that He constantly rebukes you on Sunday after Sunday through the preaching. It’s not OK to be proud and haughty.
What I am saying though, is that when you DO sin, it is good that God gets angry with you. Here’s three reasons why:
It means you did something wrong.
When the Lord disciplines, He does so because we have done something wrong. Discipline is corrective by nature. That means when discipline happens, this is because something wrong happened. From the Garden of Eden until the Lake of Fire, God makes it clear that discipline is a necessary consequence of wrongdoing.
That’s why our passage emphasizes these words, “Do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord.” We often regard it lightly because we don’t like to think we have done anything wrong. We quickly regard any form of discipline with quizzed looks like a deer on a highway looking at the headlights of a speeding 10-wheeler truck speeding towards him, wondering what a truck is doing on the highway? You lost your ministry because of a sinful relationship, yet you wonder why would the pastor remove you after you have given your all for the ministry. You bring your unbelieving boyfriend to church and yet you wonder why almost all are giving you stary-steeled, judgmental looks. You get a baby because of fornication, yet you wonder why your family is not helping you get funds in buying your baby’s milk.
Yet, if you did nothing wrong, why all the consequences? Would God discipline you if you obeyed your parents in the Lord. Would He correct you if you controlled your lustful urges and guarded your eyes. Will He rebuke you for being so obedient because you shared the Gospel to your friend after hearing a preaching about sharing the Gospel? Why would He discipline someone doing the right thing?
“I understand I am being disciplined,” you might say. “But do I have to think He is angry with me for what I did?” Well, does discipline come without anger? Have you seen a sergeant disciplining a recruit for his failure to run laps within the time limit by writing to him a positive-tone letter on a pink-lavender scented paper? Have you seen a manager disciplining an employee who lost the company 2 million pesos due to negligence by saying he made a mistake in a jolly and friendly manner? No, when one does something wrong and is disciplined – anger is natural and expected.
But how does God display His anger when I do something wrong? First, He removes your joy. As a preacher said, sin and joy cannot reign together in a saint’s heart. When sin reigns, joy is lost. That’s why one of David’s petitions when He sinned against God is that God would restore “the joy of my salvation.” Have you lost your joy in the Lord? It’s because God is angry with you.
Second, He lets you feel the guilt and weight of your sin. That’s why when you have an unbelieving boyfriend that your parents and pastor do not know, you feel like arrows come flying from the pulpit towards you every Sunday sermon talking about sin. The guilt is just there even if you try to hide it with milk teas and sang-yup-sal meals with your former church friends who have backslidden with you.
Third, he lets you experience the judgment of your sin. By judgment I mean both natural and spiritual consequences of your sin. If you watch porn over a significant period of time, don’t be shocked to find out you will have problems on the bed with your wife when you get married. If you harbor unforgiveness in your heart, don’t start wondering why you can’t overcome your trust issues. When you are unrepentant of your same-sex relationship, don’t be shocked to find out that no grandchildren is taking care of you by the time you are 71 years old.
Are you experiencing God’s anger due to your unrepentant sin? He wants you to know the wrong that you did, is really wrong.
How then is it good that God highlights to me the wrong that I did?
It means He wants your wrong to be made right.
Why does God keep His anger over the unrepentant? He wants us to change.
Our passage exhorts us not to “be weary when reproved by him.” Why? Correction can be tiring. After all, no one wants to be reminded ad nauseum of how negligent he is in visiting his members as their pastor. No husband wants to be told over and over again how his marriage problems is caused by his bitterness towards his spouse (hearing that his spouse is the problem though, may sound like Handel’s Messiah to his ears). No young adult wants to be told that her idolatry-like busyness in her career is going to derail her opportunity to settle down.
However, the reason why God gets angry and spanks His children when they sin, and does so repeatedly, is so that they be reproved. Reproved means to be corrected, for the wrong to be made right. Again if what you are doing is not wrong, there is no reason for God to get angry with you. Yet that lack of peace, that lack of joy, that guilt that has been eating at your heart, is God showing you that something is wrong with your decisions and habit. Like your toothache signaling to your brain that there is damage, God’s displeasure and the weight you feel is God signaling to your heart – what is wrong with you needs to be made right.
It means He loves you.
Ultimately, God gets angry with us when we sin, because He loves us. “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” God’s discipline towards us, is likened to a loving parent’s discipline when the child does wrong. A father who loves his daughter who breaks the curfew will scold and reprimand her because he cares for her safety. A mother who cares for her son whose grades are slipping due to social media addiction will remove the smartphone from her son until he gets his grades right.
If He didn’t care for you, then you can’t disappoint Him. Here’s a thought experiment to illustrate what I mean:
When the sweet senior lady in your church failed to greet you for your 100th monthsary with your boyfriend, are you disappointed? Of course not. She is sweet, yes, but the deepest talk you had with her is when she told you how her cat stares at her all day long! Yet, when your boyfriend does not surprise you, nor even greet you via DM on that special milestone of a monthsary, are you disappointed? Most likely. Why? Because you love him and have a special relationship with him – and as he failed to do something that makes you feel that he loves you – you end up getting sorely disappointed, right?
So yes, when you stopped doing your daily devotion – God is surely disappointed. How can He not be? He loves you. A wife who loves her husband will be disappointed if her husband has no time for her. Yet in His disappointment, His affection for you remains as strong as the time you were doing daily devotion regularly.
When you said “no” to His command that you do not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever in your relationship, yes God became angry with you. Yet the reason He was angry, was because He loves you. If He didn’t love you, He would have said “fine, go and be with the son of Belial who will lead you and your future children astray from me and my blessings.”
When you are preaching and teaching with the fullness of your spiritual gifts, but secretly watching late night movies with sensual scenes, God is angry and disappointed with you. And yes, He will let you feel every guilt and shame every time His Word is preached, not to send you away, but to correct you before you sin away your ministry and destroy those around you.
Oh sinner, what now?
The question is, what do I do with my sin? Will God’s anger remain with me? No, His anger is there because of our unrighteousness and unrepentant heart. Yet how do we become righteous? By not sinning? Hopefully, but you and I know we always sin, everyday, without fail. So what do we do when we sin?
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
1 John 1:9 ESV
Yes, our response to our sin is not to hide it or minimize it, but to confess it. What does it mean to confess? Again Doug Wilson is helpful here. Confession of sin is calling out our sin by name, with the same name God uses to describe it in Scripture. It means being honest with our sin.
So if you commit adultery, you call it adultery, not “falling in love.” If you become unequally yoked with an unbeliever, call it such, not “he is a good person.” If you are not forgiving those who sin against you, you call it a disobedient, unforgiving heart, not “time will heal all wounds heart.” If you lie, call it a lie, don’t call it “diskarte.”
Call your sin for what it is. Confess it to God. And He promises to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Don’t think it’s too small of a sin. If your unforgiveness is enough to keep you and your brother apart, confess it. If your lustful secret is enough to make you a hypocrite week after week at church, confess it. Don’t also think your sin as too big. Your same-sex relationship that you’ve hidden for three years – He can forgive and cleanse. Your cheating of your spouse – He can forgive and cleanse (though you might need to do restitution to the one you sinned against.
Is there a sin you need to confess? Do so. Until then His anger is upon you. It’s there so that you will not be complacent with your poisonous, unrepentant sin that’s destroying you. It is there because He loves you and cares enough for you to stop remaining in that sin.