How Can God be Angry with Sinners and Yet Love Them?

The Cross explains it all.Only by the Cross do we understand how God’s wrath and love are harmonized.Whoa there! How can God be angry and loving at the same time? How could God be angry with the same people He loves? Wasn’t God’s wrath propitiated on the cross, and He is no longer angry with sinners?Then read this: He that believes on the Son has everlasting life: and he that believes not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abides on him. John 3:36

So the Cross actually magnifies the wrath of God on the Christ rejecter. Consider the truth of Scripture: The wrath of God remains on the unbeliever, butGod still loves these people whom His wrath (severe anger) abides on. So there we have it, He both loves them and is angry with them. Knowing that (while they remain unrepentant) the wrath of God remains on them; surely the fear of God alone should cause them to run to Him for mercy?

If a person trusts, loves and obeys Jesus then the Cross has absorbed all the wrath of God against them, removing the enmity against God and making peace with God. But if a person does not believe, then the Cross actually makes it worse for them: the wrath of God is magnified infinitely against them. And this terrible wrath which remains on the head of the unbeliever is called The wrath of the Lamb (Rev 6:16), …For the Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment unto the Son... (John 5:22).

The Savior of the World is also the Judge of the World because only the Man who gave Himself for the world is qualified to judge the world. The Cross was the judgment of the world (John 12:31) and the basis by which we are all judged as to whether we trusted in His sacrifice or counted His sacrifice as something common.

So God is angry with the wicked while at the same time loving them and desiring they come to repentance. A wicked man can know that God is angry with him while he is unrepentant and yet also know that it is the love and goodness of God which calls him to repent and come to Christ (Rom. 2:3-6). 

by Ian Vincent