Jesus Will Deliver Us from the Wrath of Jesus

He Will Deliver Us from the Wrath to Come

Against the backdrop of coming judgment, the second coming of Christ is pictured as a rescue of his people. He is coming to save us from God’s wrath. “[We] wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10). The predictions of the day of judgment foresee a peril looming. Paul says it is divine wrath and that Christ is coming to rescue us from that peril. Peter says that God’s people “are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:5). Hebrews 9:28 says, “Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” Romans 5:9–10 portrays the death of Christ not only as the accomplishment of our past justification, but also as the guarantee of this future rescue from the wrath of God:

Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

Paul makes plain in 1 Thessalonians 5 that this peril of God’s wrath comes at “the day of the Lord”—the appearing of Christ:

You yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light. . . . For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. (1 Thess. 5:2–5, 9–10)

Jesus Delivers from the Wrath of Jesus

But if we are not careful, we may conceive of our deliverance from wrath at the second coming in a way that badly distorts the reality. It would be a distortion if we thought of God pouring out wrath and his Son mercifully keeping us from the Father’s wrath. It would be a serious mistake to pit the mercy of the Son against the wrath of the Father in this way—as if God were the just punisher and Christ the merciful rescuer. It is quite otherwise.

It is not as though divine judgment gets underway and Jesus shows up to intervene. Jesus himself sets the judgment in motion and carries it out. Jesus is the judge. Jesus brings the judgment. The surprising implication is that when Paul says, “Jesus . . . delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10), he means, “Jesus delivers us from the wrath of Jesus.” This will become obvious as we look at several biblical passages.

Their Wrath

In the book of Revelation, John speaks not only of the wrath of God at the coming of Christ, but also the wrath of the Lamb:

The kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?” (Rev. 6:15–17)

There is no sense of God being wrathful and the Lamb being weak. To be sure, this Lamb had been slain. But now he has “seven horns” (Rev. 5:6). He is not to be trifled with. His coming will be terrifying to all who have not embraced his first lamb-like work of sacrificial suffering (Rev. 5:9–10). The wrath is “their wrath” (Rev. 6:17).

The Father Has Given Judgment to the Son

It is “their wrath” and their judgment because the incarnate Son—the Son of Man—is acting in the authority of the Father:

The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. . . . For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. (John 5:22–23, 26–27)

There is a special fitness in Jesus being the judge of the world. He is the one who came into the world, loved the world, and gave himself for the salvation of the world. There is a special fitness that the one who was judged by the world, and executed by the world, will judge the world.

The World Will Be Judged by a Man

Paul seems to have this same fitness in mind when he says that a man has been appointed as the judge of the world by being raised from the dead:

Now [God] commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17:30–31)

Peter, in preaching to the household of Cornelius, says the same: “[Christ] commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42). Paul echoes the same conviction in 2 Timothy 4:1–2: “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word.” James, too, saw the coming Christ as the coming judge: “Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. . . . Behold, the Judge is standing at the door” (James 5:8–9).

Jesus, the Master, Will Cut Him in Pieces

Perhaps most striking of all the pictures of Christ’s coming in wrath as judge are the pictures that Jesus painted in his parables. For example, he portrays himself as a “master” who puts his servant over his household. Then he pictures the master coming after being away for some time:

If that wicked servant says to himself, “My master is delayed,” and begins to beat his fellow servants and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matt. 24:48–51)

It is a parable. But a parabolic picture of Jesus cutting in pieces the unfaithful servant is a dreadful picture of judgment. And Jesus himself is the judge.

Jesus Orders the Slaughter

Similarly, in the parable of the ten minas, Jesus pictures himself as a nobleman returning from a far country after having received a kingdom (Luke 19:12–15). Before he left, a delegation of “his citizens” had said, “We do not want this man to reign over us” (Luke 19:14). When he returns and takes account from all his managers, he turns to this rebellious delegation and says, “But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me” (Luke 19:27). This is the wrath of the Lamb.

Jesus Dispatches the Angels of Destruction

Here is one more parable that shows Jesus as the judge and as the Lamb of wrath. The parable of the weeds pictures a man sowing good seed in his field but an enemy at night sowing bad seed. Wheat and weeds come up together. The master of the harvest says, “Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn’” (Matt. 13:30).

Then Jesus gives the interpretation (Matt. 13:36–43). The good seed was sown by the Son of Man. The bad seed by the devil. Jesus describes the harvest like this:

The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear. (Matt. 13:41–43)

The Son of Man dispatches the angels in judgment and wrath. But he brings forth the righteous to shine like the sun.

We delight that this is not a universe where evil triumphs but where every wrong will be set right . . .

Perplexity of a Coming in Mercy and a Coming in Wrath

None of these parable-pictures surprised the disciples. This is what the Messiah was expected to do to the enemies of Israel. John the Baptist expresses the common Jewish expectation that all the disciples shared at first:

John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” (Luke 3:16–17)

This picture of Messiah’s salvation (into his barn) and judgment (into fire) was not different from what Jesus described. But what was surprising, and at first unintelligible for John and the disciples, was that this wrath and judgment by the Messiah would not happen here and now. That there would be a significant time gap between the first and second comings was not what they were expecting and was virtually unintelligible until it began to sink in that Jesus had given them significant pointers.

What pointers? Jesus pictures the wicked servant justifying his mistreatment of his fellow servants by saying, “My master is delayed” (Matt. 24:48). In the parable of the ten virgins, Jesus says, “The bridegroom was delayed” (Matt. 25:5). In the parable of the talents, Jesus says, “Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them” (Matt. 25:19). In the parable of the ten minas, Jesus says that the nobleman “went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom” (Luke 19:12). He says this “because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately” (Luke 19:11). And when he describes some events before his second coming, he says, “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet” (Matt. 24:6).

Sorting Out the Prophetic Perspective of Jesus’s Coming

Jesus had given significant pointers that what John the Baptist and the disciples expected to happen in one single coming of the Messiah would in fact happen in two. And the second coming would be indefinitely “delayed” so that no one would know the day or hour except God the Father (Matt. 24:36). Jesus was sorting out for them, to some degree, the “prophetic perspective” I referred to earlier, which speaks of several separate future events as one cluster, with no time specified between the events— as if we saw several mountain ranges indistinctly as one mountain range.¹

Jesus, the Judge and Deliverer from Judgment

What we have seen is that the “day of judgment,” or “day of wrath,” will be the day of Jesus’s judgment and Jesus’s wrath, acting by the appointment of God the Father. Therefore, when Paul says that Jesus “delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10), we are not to think of the Son rescuing us from the wrath of the Father, but of Jesus rescuing us from his own wrath, which is also the Father’s. He and the Father are one (John 10:30). The coming wrath is “their wrath” (Rev. 6:17). And Jesus, acting on behalf of the Father, is the deliverer at his second coming.

Loving the Lord’s Appearing—as Judge

One may ask, “Are we to love the appearing of the Lord Jesus as deliverer and as judge?” It is a precious thought that we will be delivered from wrath. We know we deserve wrath. We were “children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:3). It is amazing grace that when the wrath of God comes, we will not be consumed. But when we think about God judging “those who do not know God and . . . those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2 Thess. 1:8), what should we feel?

We should hear the summons of David in Psalm 31 and let our hearts be guided by his words:

Love the Lord, all you his saints!
     The Lord preserves the faithful
     but abundantly repays the one who acts in pride. (Ps. 31:23)

We do not delight in the pain of the punished for itself. We delight in the justice of God and the righteousness of Christ. We delight that this is not a universe where evil triumphs but where every wrong will be set right, either by condemnation on the cross of Christ or by just recompense in hell.

We take heart even now and rejoice that we do not bear the final burden of needing to avenge ourselves. We are glad that we may defer the impossible weight of settling all accounts. The coming just judgment of God brings to the soul even now a liberation from grudge-holding and from the poisonous burden of revenge. Here is the way Paul describes the joyful effect of God’s future judgment:

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Rom. 12:19–21)

So, yes, we should love the Lord’s appearing, even when we think of him as a coming judge. The absolute certainty that he knows everything that needs to be known and that he will show no partiality on behalf of the wicked sets us free to love our enemies and leave all retribution to the Lord.

This article is adapted from Come, Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Second Coming of Christ by John Piper.

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