When the goodness and loving kindness of God our savior appeared …

Titus 3:4

In 1741, Jonathan Edwards – one of my two or three favorite theologians – preached his famous sermon, “Sinners in the hands of an angry God.” His words remain one of the preeminent Protestant examples of what I call “Wrath Theology,” a set of doctrines that emphasize the justice of God, his hatred of sin, and the fearful and precarious state of human beings in the face of our rebellion.

Wrath theology is not the sole province of the Reformed among us. Catholics, Orthodox, and even those who are less formal in our belief systems generally hold to some version of wrathism.

What is wrath theology? What are the problems with its doctrines? And how do I know that I hold them? Before I answer the question, I should note that Scripture is clear in detailing the justified and righteous anger of God. We humans were – and, if I think of my daily failings, are – deserving of the full weight of divine retribution. Ephesians 2:3 puts it succinctly: We were, in our very nature, children of wrath. Furthermore, there is continued judgment on sin and a final reckoning to be made when God finally calls down the final curtain. But wrath theology often goes awry and presents a caricature of biblical teaching.

In its rawest form, wrath theology is modern pelagianism. Pelagius, the infamous nemesis of Augustine, is in the heresy HOF for his belief – long before Anne Franke’s day – that human’s are not tainted by original sin, and are capable of choosing between good and evil without God’s grace.

Modern pelagianism is more complex than that. It is rare for Christians to deny the need for grace (at least out loud). But we do often live in a grace deficit, believing a “Jesus helper” model of salvation. We just want a nudge here and there to add that necessary (but not sufficient) boost to our own efforts to be good girls and boys.

Jesus Helper faith leads to a couple special aspects of modern pelagianism. The first is the invisible high-jump bar. This is the doomed enterprise whereby Christians seek to perform or meet certain standards of discipleship life in order to please Taskmaster God or attain his favor. There are fatal conditions associated with this disease. First of all, it’s a tall order to surmount a barrier with an indeterminate height. We’re OK with having Jesus give us a hand up, but how big a lift do we need? Is it a groom scuttling over the threshold with his slender bride, or a five-year-old attempting to vault twenty feet without the pole? After years of hard falls back to earth, the answer isn’t hard to guess.

The second (and obvious) defect in the approach is that we are not Air Jordan. We’re more like the old Detroit Pistons center Bill Laimbeer, who appeared to be more or less stuck to the ground. Even if I knew exactly how high Taskmaster God wanted me to jump – and it must be very high indeed – I could barely make a start at reaching his goal.

When we’re not trying to leap tall moral prescriptions at a single bound, we can be lured into the “stay one step ahead of an unpredictable God” marathon. We make the Lord into an image of our experiences or circumstances, feeling like his attitude and actions toward us mirror the highs and lows of our daily existence. Good day, good God; bad day, where were you, God?

There are other expressions of wrath theology, such as the “too good to be true” mindset. Is God’s self-description as always good, always kind, always loving even believable? Our cynical natures are always expecting a catch, or the other shoe to drop, or inevitable disappointment.

Is there a way out of wrathism? A way to be a sinner in the hands of an intimate God? The answer lies in believing and holding together the very terms of the question. Sinners: We want to say that we have this one down, but perhaps we aren’t as clear as we should be. I have been told by those who love me that I am usually amenable to confessing that I am a sinner, but less forthcoming about revealing the sins that make me so. It’s really too easy to glibly display the ersatz humility that acknowledges my generic sinfulness. But true intimacy asks for full disclosure, which in turn depends on full self-awareness and acceptance of what I discover in myself.

In God’s hands, about which his word has much to say. That they have made and fashioned us. They are what hold us in security and safety. They are not the hands dangling us over the pit of hell, but those that lead us into the good pasture of his kingdom. So often we fear what he might “do to us.” We listen to the ancient lie that God withholds his best from us.

Which ignores the Father’s own claim that he desires everything good for us, especially that we come to experience and unconditionally accept his offer of intimacy. The Lord, being fully self-aware and completely self-revealing, is able to be supremely intimate. He is entirely unafraid of being “found out.” Instead, he is simply ready to be found and known.

Intimate God. As God, he sees and understands us through and through. As God, he is sovereign: He “does whatever he pleases” (Pss. 135:6). And yet with no coercion, no invasion. We’ve heard the saying, “God is a gentleman.” I find that unconvincing and rather humanistic. Instead, I would say that God is a lover. He draws us, he calls to us, he seeks to captivate us.

In the end, being in the hands of an intimate God means a two-way relationship of unconditional love. He already accepts us as who we are, and brings us by grace and mercy into who we are intended to be, leading us to repentance through his kindness. It is for us to accept him as he really is, not as we want him to be. It’s a rather uneven exchange, but that’s actually the beauty and the blessing of it.

So here are a couple of ideas for coming to rest in the hands of an intimate God. First step: Take 10-15 minutes each day – perhaps in the morning – for the next month to be still and to let the Holy Spirit silence – as best as we can stand – the anxious and self-oriented thoughts, the fears, whether large or small; the desires that consume our emotional, mental, and spiritual energy. Say nothing more than this: Father, I am listening and waiting for you to reveal yourself and for you to speak to me. I want nearness. Show me your heart.

Second, during that same month, take 10-15 minutes a day – perhaps during the day – to be still and ask one thing of the Lord: Show me my heart, not just what is awry, but also what is there of goodness from you.

In the meeting of his heart and ours is, in the words of David Crowder, a beautiful collision.