Hello! I just said a prayer for my bloggers and readers that God helps you with your problems and encourages you today. I want you to have joy and be encouraged in your walk with God.
Sometimes we skip over phrases that we don’t understand in the Bible. I always try to ask God for help understanding these phrases. In today’s Bible reading, I am speaking of the phrase, “Since we have been justified by His (Jesus’) blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!” Some Christians think this phrase means that Christians won’t go to hell because we were justified by Jesus’ blood. Then, God’s wrath (at least in this case) is sending non-believers to hell. Christians are free from God’s wrath, so we are going to heaven. That is a reasonable explanation. The Bible tells us certainly that if we believe that Jesus is our Savior that we will go to heaven. The question is, is God’s wrath sending non-believers to hell? I don’t believe that God is quick to send non-believers to hell as you would not be quick to send your children to hell. And God’s love is greater than any mother’s love.
Some Christians believe that Christians, having been justified by Jesus’ blood, are free from God’s wrath altogether. That is possible, and I thought that way, too, until recently. Job (in the Old Testament Book of Job) was a good Christian man, resembling Christ way more than I think I could. It seems to me that Job was subjected to the wrath of God, not being sent to hell, but having everything that mattered to him taken away, including comfort. (Satan caused Job to have boils and rashes and God let him do it. In the end Job ended up having twice the wealth that he started out with.)
That we are saved from God’s wrath through Jesus I think lies somewhere in between. I believe that Jesus intervenes for us in all areas of life especially when we pray for that to happen. I don’t believe that God intentionally throws bad things upon us. I believe that God let’s the natural consequences, along with the added interference and temptation of evil, of our bad decisions happen to let us grow character. God obviously can stop things from happening but often does not, and when He does not, that is God’s wrath. I believe that Jesus steps in to stop or lessen the consequences for us, and at a minimum, carries us through the circumstances.
I also believe that as God shapes us to become more like Christ, (developing the fruits of the Spirit which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control) the less we will have to worry about the wrath of God. What is God’s wrath and how much more will we be saved from it through Jesus because we have been justified by His blood?