For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. – Romans 1:21
In his commentary on Romans chapter 1, R. C. Sproul observes, “The most fundamental sin in our fallen, corrupt nature is the sin of idolatry, the sin of refusing to honor God as He is.”
As I read that last evening, I had to stop and ask myself:
“Do I truly honor God as He is? Or do I honor God as I wish Him to be?”
It’s a sobering question, because the central problem of the human heart is this: we do not want God as He is. We want Him edited. We want Him kind and safe. We’re fine with a God of love, as long as that love never presses on our sin or demands the sacrifice of our comfort. We are open to mercy, as long as we never have to think about judgment. We talk about grace, but we grow quiet when holiness comes up.
But God is not made of parts. He is not mostly love with a small streak of justice running through Him. He is holy. He is righteous. He is just. And yes, He is loving. His wrath is not Him losing His temper. It is His settled opposition to everything that destroys what He created. If He did not hate sin, He would not be good. If He did not judge evil, He would not be righteous.
The world does not want to hear that. Wrath feels offensive. Judgment feels unkind. So God gets reshaped into someone more agreeable. A God who never confronts. A God who never says no. A God who exists to make people feel good about themselves, their choices, their lifestyles.
But here’s the thing. If we only think about the God of grace and never think about the God of wrath, we’re never reminded of what we have been saved from. The gospel is good because our situation is really bad. The cross is glorious because sin is deadly. Grace is amazing because God’s wrath and judgment is real.
All that God is proceeds from His own perfect being. His mercy, His love, His justice, His righteousness, His holiness, His wrath, and His grace do not exist in isolation or tension with one another. Rather, they flow together from the fullness of His character, each attribute harmonizing with the others, perfectly united and inseparably intertwined.
This is God as He is.
Former Blackout Artist 