Why God’s Judgment Is Good News

Everyone loves a God who loves them. Even the most committed skeptic would struggle to argue with the idea that God is love and God loves everyone.

We tend to like our God the same way I take my coffee: with a little sugar in it. Talk about God’s mercy and compassion, His forgiveness and grace, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find much resistance, even among unbelievers.

But if you ever want to clear a room, try suggesting that God is also wrathful and judgmental. Even though these divine qualities are every bit as biblical as God’s love and compassion, very few people – very few Christians, even – are willing to wrestle with the idea that God judges sinners.

Just like people love a God who loves them, many are prone to judge a God who judges them. 

And yet, I’ve noticed something interesting about people: our objections to divine judgment evaporate the moment something truly awful happens.

When a woman is abused, and the abuser goes free…
When a human trafficking ring destroys hundreds of lives, and no one faces justice…
When a drunk driver kills a family and walks away…
When a priest takes liberties with children, only to be shuffled to another parish… 

In cases like these, no sane person responds by saying, “I just wish everyone would stop being so judgmental.” Instead, something deep inside of us cries out, This is just wrong. Something must be done. Evildoers must pay! 

Even though we say we don’t like judgment, our souls cry out for justice. 

Recognizing this cognitive dissonance will be especially important over the next couple of months at The Story, as our journey through Revelation is about to take us through one of the most disturbing sections in all the Bible. Beginning in Revelation 6, John describes three waves of divine judgment that will be unleashed at some point in the future: the seven seals (Rev. 6:1-8:5), the seven trumpets (8:6-9:21 and 11:15-19), and eventually, the seven bowls of God’s wrath (16:1-21).

I won’t sugarcoat it: things are about to get intense.

There will be war, famine, earthquakes, lots of blood, fire, darkness, plagues, demonic creatures, death, and destruction – not exactly the verses people cross-stitch onto throw pillows.

But before we get there, there’s one question we need to ask: Why, exactly, is God so angry? 

After the fifth seal was opened, John saw the souls of people who had been murdered because of their faith in God. Their martyred souls cry out to God, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” (Revelation 6:10).

How long, Lord? That’s one of the most relatable prayers in the whole Bible.

How long will innocent people suffer while evil people prosper? How long will children be victimized? How long will people get away with doing terrible things to other people?

Have you ever witnessed something truly evil and wondered, “God, where are you? Why don’t you do something?” If so, you’ve prayed the martyrs’ prayer from Revelation 6.

And if you keep reading Revelation, God’s answer is clear: “I am about to do something.”

The seven seals, trumpets, and bowls are not the temper tantrums of a delicate deity with a bruised ego, but the righteous judgments of a holy God against every evil thing that corrupts, wounds, and destroys the world He loves.

Dr. Maen Abdelrahim is the brilliant gastrointestinal oncologist whose skillful removal of my mother’s pancreatic tumor in 2018 extended her life by more than five years. But imagine if, after discovering mom’s malignancy, he’d said, “I think the most loving thing I can do is leave it alone and send positive thoughts to the tumor in Kathy’s pancreas.”

Dr. A’s willingness to cut into his patient was not a contradiction of his care, but the expression of it.

When he said, “The best thing we can do is cut your mother open and remove the cancer,” do you think any of us accused him of being too quick to judge? Absolutely not.

Whenever something goes horribly wrong, and someone we love is suffering, we demand that those who have the power to do something about it, do something about it! 

Just as Dr. Abdelrahim’s willingness to take his scalpel to my mother’s cancer, even though it was painful, was the only way to make things right, God’s judgment against evil is not a contradiction of His love, but the expression of it. He loves the world too much to let evil destroy it forever.

Judgment is serious because sin is serious. But one fascinating feature of Revelation is how often God’s judgments are actually restrained. When the trumpets begin to sound, for example, much of the destruction is limited in scope. God could bring everything to an end immediately, but instead, He often warns and waits, giving more people more time to repent and come home.

Tragically, Revelation tells us that many will still refuse. Even after the terrible judgments in Revelation 9, for instance, the survivors “still did not repent” (Rev. 9:20). Despite seeing the results of their rebellion, some people will still stubbornly insist that they are right and God is wrong.

That detail tells us something important about the heart of God. Even in judgment, there is mercy. His warnings are invitations. His patience is an opportunity. Again and again, God leaves the door open for people to turn around and come home.

That should get our attention, because the hard truth is that, if God gave every one of us exactly what we deserved, none of us would be standing.

The scandal of the Gospel is that the same God who will one day judge the world once chose to enter the world in Jesus Christ. Before meting out His righteous judgments against evil, He willingly took our death sentence upon Himself.

That’s the power of the cross.

Jesus didn’t come because our sin was trivial; He came because it was deadly. And He didn’t save us by pretending justice didn’t matter. He satisfied justice by offering Himself so that sinners like us might receive mercy.

So if you’ve ever wondered whether God cares about the evil happening in this world, He does.
If you’ve ever wondered whether injustice will always win, it won’t.
If you’ve ever wondered whether the cruelty of this world will ever meet its match, keep reading.

As we move into some of the darkest chapters of Revelation, we’re going to see that a day is coming when God will finally and fully confront everything that has poisoned His good creation. Evil will be exposed. Justice will be done. And every travesty that has caused God’s people to cry, “How long?” will finally have its answer.

That day will be terrifying for evil and those who side with it. But for anyone who has ever suffered because of evil’s influence, it will also be very good news.

So as we read about seals breaking, trumpets sounding, and bowls of wrath being poured out in the weeks ahead, remember what’s really happening. God isn’t destroying the world He loves. Like a great physician, He is removing the malignancy that is destroying it.

Not despite His love, but because of it.