Dr Paul Allen

A close encounter with Christianity is an encounter with a God who is capable of anger. Whether we are reading about Moses pleading with a furious Yahweh who wants to wipe out the complaining Israelites and start all over in the book of Exodus (Exodus 32:10-11) or God’s general wrath towards stubborn and unrepentant people (Romans 2:5). The anger of God is not an uncommon theme in Christian theology, either, from Fire and Brimstone Baptist preachers to the famous sermon from the Great Awakening, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards. But it’s also not a distant theme in most of our lives as we continue to sin despite being made new in Christ. When we sin it can be difficult to see the infinite grace of Jesus’s death on the cross being offered to us. Instead, the angry face of God can loom menacingly over us even as we turn to His Word for comfort and the promise of forgiveness. Over time, we stop seeing anger as something God experiences in response to sin an

“Love…is not easily provoked” (1 Cor. 13:4,5). Often we think of love in terms of a feeling or emotion. But here, God describes it as a demeanor in which we are not easily provoked towards potentially irritating people and circumstances. This is tough. Life is never lived in the sterile confines of a sinless, utopian laboratory well-removed from the Curse’s numerous provocations. This side of heaven, we are either about to be provoked, being provoked, just having been provoked, or some combination of the three. Everything inside and outside of us has the potential to provoke in one way or another. The inspired word, translated “provoked,” means “to stir to anger ,” “to be irritated,” or “incensed” (TDNT, 5:857). It carries the idea of a tendency towards irritability, petulance, or annoyance . This is the individual whose external, or internal, demeanor tends towards exasperation, irritation , impatience, or resentment in response to people and circumstances. This could include some