Wrath = your right to be wrong.

For the Lord will not cast off for ever:  

But though he cause grief,

yet will he have compassion

according to the multitude of his mercies.

For he doth not afflict willingly

nor grieve the children of men. 

To crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth, 

To turn aside the right of a man before the face of the most High, 

To subvert a man in his cause, the Lord approveth not.      Lamentations 3:31-36

The sport of calvinist/augustinian proponents is reprobate hunting.  They love to point out that their supposedly logical system demands that God pre-select certain people to go to hell in an unmitigated evil condition.  Notice it is that their logic demands it…not that God has stated that He will so behave in view of man and his problem of sin.  Ironically, these same calvinist imaginators (they have no right to be called “thinkers” since they dream in the realm of lies) will argue indefinitely that God can do whatever He wishes.  Except, of course, that He cannot do anything that is contrary to their imaginative system.  Instead of glorifying God in their expression of how He acts, they make Him their puppet.  Even in the foolishness of the calvinist theory of reprobation, they betray themselves as not knowing the heart of God: if the reprobate are condemned as a class, why has He made them each unique – like the supposedly pre-selected saved?

Verse 33 points out that God does not willingly cause affliction for humans.  The best translation for this verse is that He does not have the heart for it.  It is not a part of who He is to cause harm to His own creation.  It does not mean that He cannot bring discipline.  It means that He will not bring it without feeling it.  When the calvinist characterizes God as acting from a position of coldness and random inertia, he has ignored the truth of Scriptures that teaches that God keeps records and takes the time to visit with each person in judgment (Revelation 20:11-13).  The reason for this activity is obvious, each person is unique and God must explore what has happened in the life of each individual.  He does not condemn an entire class of peoples (what the calvinists call “reprobates”) by fiat but allows condemnation to work if humans choose darkness instead of light (John 3:19).

The wrath of God is often pictured as some relentless beating that God wishes to unleash upon all sinners.  Instead of whipping the sinners that deserve it (the reprobates don’t seem to count in this equation…), God whips His son Jesus instead.  The difficulty in this picture is that Jesus IS the wrath of God.  God’s wrath is best pictured as establishing the absolute standard for what is right and expecting all of creation to adhere to it.  To solidify His cause, He integrates Himself into creation and fixes that standard indelibly; signs it in His own blood, you might say.  God rejects any other attempts (pagan, legalism, etc.) to deal with Him apart from a Jesus deal.  This rejection is wrath.  The more deceptive and comprehensive the alternative dealers (satan and his minions) are, the more they are subject to the severity of eternal consequences.  Minions are not all angelic or demonic…some are human.  Even so, on the last day, God will pay them the compliment of their position in the created order by judging each according to the books.

The good news that the apostles began to preach by the power of the Holy Spirit was that the shed blood of Jesus on the cross was able to cleanse us of sins.  Because we are human, we have the right to stand before God and have the books opened as we are examined.  We have no hope that we will survive that examination unless the blood of Jesus has done its cleansing work in our lives.  We cannot invent systems of thought or imaginary scenarios that would, by the remotest possibility, lead people astray from the clear call of the Cross of Jesus Christ to come there for salvation.

Come to the cross.