Wrath is not often a characteristic we attribute to God. In the New Testament we are painted a picture of an all-loving, all-forgiving God. This is not the wrong perception of God because he does have a never-ending love for us and a never-ending desire for us to be in right standing with him. However we conveniently choose to forget and are often confused with the God of the Old Testament. The same God who sacrificed his son for us on the cross couldn’t possibly be the same God that ordered the systematic destruction of the enemies of Israel. Well if that were true then we wouldn’t have a very good reason for believing in him anymore. God is never-changing. So by that logic it is the same God in the Old Testament as the New Testament.
One of the main confusions comes from the fact that God orders the complete and utter annihilation of multiple people groups in the Old Testament. In 1 Samuel 2 it says, “I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” Now this seems a bit extreme killing women, children, and infants. However we can see that the Amalekites had committed an act against God and his chosen people. God had revealed himself to the Amalekites when he travelled with the Israelites but still they chose not only to not worship him but to attack and hurt his people. We often forget in American culture the fact that God actually does punish those who don’t come to him. His cup of wrath is poured out on those who reject him and choose the ways of the world and wickedness.
One of the main reasons that God in the Old Testament seems different from God in the New Testament is the fact that there were two very different laws and rules given to live by in both those periods. On one hand you have a law that demands you make a sacrifice every single time you “MIGHT” have sinned if we wanted to have a chance to be on right standing with God. On the other you have Jesus telling us that to accept his love and forgiveness we just have to own the fact that we have sinned and that Jesus actually substitutes himself for us as the sacrificial lamb. There is literally an entire book of the bible dedicated to the laws and statutes that ancient jews had to follow if they wanted to draw close to God. Jesus gave us the sermon on the mount and from Matthew 5:1 to Matthew 7:29 he teaches with the authority and power given to him by God on how we should live our lives according to the kingdom and having the Spirit of the Lord within us.
However, in the Old Testament God didn’t make it impossible for people who weren’t Israelites to come to him. He often and repeatedly sent prophets and messages to different people groups trying to get them to come to him. In Proverbs 19: 16 one of the warnings is, “Whoever keeps the commandments keeps their life, but whoever shows contempt for their ways will die.” Here God is warning people to come to him and follow the commandments he has set out or he will follow through with the consequences of disobeying them. James M. Arlandson in “The Wrath of God in the New Testament: Never against His New Covenant People.” Bible.org. 2014 says, “Paul had an interesting, and I say profound, insight that is hidden away in his epistle to the Romans; it hardly gets noticed. Rom. 4:15 says, “The law brings wrath”; the law here is the Law of Moses or the Torah. So I set out on a study of how that’s true. I concluded that of the 499 that God showed wrath in the OT, he shows it against his people 448 times after the Law of Moses was thundered down on Mt. Sinai, beginning in Exod. 19. On his chosen people before the law and covenant in Exod. 19, he showed it 3 times. Abraham potentially could have experienced it twice, but did not because God through his angels showed him mercy (Gen. 18:30-32). So actually it was used only once against Moses, the lawgiver, in Exod. 4:14.
Here we see finally that God doesn’t want to have to pour out his wrath and anger on us. He wants to draw all of humanity close but we have to choose to follow him. But since he is a just God and since his character is perfect he cannot go back on what he says. In Nahum 1:3 it says, “The Lord is slow to anger and great in power; the Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished.” So while God is slow to anger and forgiving if people intentionally reject him and choose the opposite of the commands and things to follow him that he has given us he promises to give them punishment according to their crimes. The wrath of God in the Old Testament highlights his desires and plan for redemption in the New Testament rather than being contradicting to his character.
