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The Good News Of God (Part 1): Is God's wrath His gospel?

God’s wrath against all sin is the reason there is a Gospel. For some time, a wind has been blowing through evangelicalism, emphasizing God’s wrath. This wind is a reaction to the partial gospel that emphasizes only God's kindness without preaching His wrath.

If you’ve never heard about your sin, God’s wrath upon you, and the certainty of spending eternity in hell, you’ve only heard a partial gospel. You’ve also only heard a distorted Gospel if the wrath of God has been preached as the primary motivation for your repentance.
Escaping God's wrath through repentance and confession is not the Gospel. God’s wrath leads us to fear Him, but it can also lead us to fail Him. Repenting and confessing our sins is not enough. If that’s all we ever do, we’ll spend a lifetime sinning and repenting, failing, and trying to be good. We may even deceive ourselves into thinking we’ve done that successfully, looking at others who are not as “righteous” as ourselves in judgment.
That’s why Paul wrote the next verse. He contradicted the false gospel of salvation through repentance, confession, and law-keeping, which resulted in pride being expressed in judgmentalism. Read what he wrote.
“Or do you despise the riches of his kindness, restraint, and patience, not recognizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? Because of your hardened and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment is revealed.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭2‬:‭4‬-‭5‬ ‭CSB‬‬
We must know we’re sinners bound by God’s law to death. We must also understand the voluntary and God-intended death of His Son on the cross, his judgment upon our sin was not only an act of wrath but was also the ultimate expression of “His kindness, restraint, and patience,” intended to lead us to believe in Jesus.
Jesus said, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” John‬ ‭3‬:‭17‬ ‭
Jesus bore God’s wrath in our place,
but His cross was not the cross of a sinner. The cross of the criminals beside him was their crosses, justified by their sins. His cross was our cross, bearing our sins and the ultimate expression of His love, kindness, restraint, and patience.
God’s wrath, demonstrated in Christ’s death, leads us to recognize the reality of our condition, but it doesn’t lead us to true salvation. Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, but faith in Christ because of the goodness of God is the beginning of salvation.
If you find yourself spending time deciding who is and is not saved, which Gospel have you believed? If you find yourself confessing and then repeating your sin over and over, living ineffectively between altar calls, I ask you in which Jesus have you believed?
Is the wrath of God the gospel? It is the goodness of God that leads us to repentance.
(Part 2 tomorrow)

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