Is God loving or wrathful?

from the old testament

• God told Moses who He was, saying, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” (Exodus 34:6–7). In this we learn two things about God: He lovingly forgives sin and yet justly punishes sin. This seeming contradiction underlies the question as to whether God is loving or wrathful.
• God’s wrath is His expression of His holiness (Isaiah 6:3) and justice (Deuteronomy 32:4). Being holy means that he doesn’t sin nor tolerate sin. Being just means He righteously punishes all sin (cf. Romans 6:23). That punishment is otherwise known as God’s wrath.
• Because His wrath is grounded in His justice and holiness, it is not an expression of irrational or evil anger. Rather, it’s the necessary expression of His perfect moral character (Habakkuk 1:13).
• Because God’s holiness means He hates sin, He burns with anger toward it. However, in contrast to some views of God, He also hates those who commit the sin. For example, Psalm 5:4–6 reads, “For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies; the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man” (cf. Nahum 1:2). God’s wrath, then, is how He expresses Himself toward evil.
• Conversely, God has a steadfast love toward the righteous. In Psalm 146:8, we read, “The LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous.”
• So, the question of whether God is loving or wrathful is that He is both. The difference is not found in His nature but in how He relates to others. Moses reminded the Israelites, “Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face” (Deuteronomy 7:9–10). God loves those who are righteous (who love Him by keeping His commandments) and destroys those who hate Him.

from the new testament

• As seen in the Old Testament section, God loves the righteous yet hates what is unrighteous. However, we also learn that everyone is unrighteous (Romans 3:23) and thus, from birth, everyone is under His wrath (e.g., John 3:36). So, while God is love by nature (1 John 4:8–10), because He is also holy and just by nature, His expression of His love or wrath is an expression of His relationship to specific individuals.
• Left to our own, we would all only face God’s wrath. However, God desired to make His love known, so “while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly … God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6, 8). By sending Jesus, God was not negating His hatred of sin but providing a sacrifice onto which to redirect His wrath. Thus, God’s love is revealed to us by counting His Son as sinful (2 Corinthians 5:21) and then relating to Him in wrath so that He can relate to us in love!
• Because of this, for all who repent and believe in Jesus, God counts them as righteous (Romans 4:5) by crediting Jesus’ righteousness to their account. Because they are then legally treated as righteous (what Scripture means when it calls believers “justified”), God loves them, calling them His children (Romans 8:15–16), keeping them as His forever (Romans 8:38–39). Paul said, “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God” (Romans 5:9). Being saved means having God place His love on us and remove His wrath. But for those who continue to reject Him, His wrath remains (e.g., Romans 1:18).

implications for today

Love and wrath are not mutually exclusive concepts. We can see that with human examples. A parent, for example, can both deeply love her son while simultaneously being angered when he lies to her. While we must not map human emotion onto God, nor think of God as changing from loving to wrathful, such human illustrations help us understand how two emotions can co-exist, with the difference being one of relationship.

God indeed loves the world (John 3:16), but being loving doesn’t negate God’s wrath against sin. God would not be loving to allow sin to continue unchecked, ignore evil, or leave injustice unpunished. His wrath is not the opposite of His love but the expression of His holy and just opposition to everything that destroys His creation and dishonors His glory.

Also, even though God is love, it does not mean He had to save us. Still, He chose to save us. Salvation was His means of displaying His love, despite His relating to us in wrath. He sent Jesus to come live the perfect life we never did and then to die to feel the wrath sinners were supposed to feel.

Everyone who repents of his or her sin and trusts in Jesus as God’s substitute will be saved. That means He will count Jesus’ righteousness as the believer’s righteousness and then relates to them as if they were perfectly righteous. While God loves humanity, God has a personal, relational love for believers. They are no longer under His wrath (John 3:36) but are called His children (John 1:12) and loved as such (Hebrews 12:5–8).