Wrath of God Abides on Him

He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. (John 3:36)

I have been learning a great deal about the wrath of God over the past few years and this verse I find quite interesting. The impression that comes to my mind about this has to do with the basic nature of the difference between counterfeit religion and true spirituality. Sin originated in heaven when Lucifer externalized religion, moving it away from a heart-based response of love to our heavenly Father to a focus on external appearances and power. When his mind made the shift from inward beauty rooted in the condition of the heart to a belief in value based on outward beauty, the track was laid down for all the rest of the deceptions of sin to be formulated in his brilliant mind.

Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. (Ezekiel 28:17 NRSV)

The thought came to me this morning that when I resist allowing God full access to every part of my heart, not just my mind; when I continue to fail to surrender some part of my desires or plans or will to His plans and His ways, then I will inevitably find myself in resistance to the passion that comes from the heart of God which is His love for me. In the Bible the same word is often used for wrath as for passion. God's passion is always completely pure whereas man's passion is corrupted with selfishness and sin. So when I refuse to allow God's pure and holy passion to take over every part of the inside of my heart and completely rule my life, then I am keeping it on the outside in the external arena. When God's passion is kept out of the heart where it really belongs, then it takes on the appearance of wrath because it is not resting where it was designed to live and thrive, in a heart. It is sort of like removing the skin from an apple and then seeing it oxidize in the air. It quickly takes on a different appearance because it is not supposed to be in that kind of environment.

When passion is out of place it always takes on incorrect attributes and causes problems. That is part of the problem with sin. Sin is getting things, even good things, all turned around and placed in wrong relationship with each other. So when I fail to obey/believe the real truth about the Son of God who is the truest revelation of the heart of God, then the passion of God that He came to place in my heart to bring me life and joy and peace remains on the outside and takes on the color of wrath instead of love.

It is then that I find that the wrath of God abides on me, not because God Himself has changed His love into anger but because my perception of His passion is transformed into believing that what I am experiencing is anger no matter what His real feelings about me are. If I don't have the passion of love in my heart then I am going to have the wrath of God on my life. It is not because God has changed His feelings toward me but that my perception of His feelings is changed in my own beliefs.

It is very clear here that the core issue is belief verses non-belief. But this issue of belief is also one of the most hijacked words in Christianity. We have externalized this word just like nearly everything else in the Bible and have come to think that it is some sort of intellectual belief that we must have in order to get saved. Some people insist that we must say certain words like a mantra in order to invoke some supernatural change that suddenly ensures us of permanent salvation. Others insist that we must add good works, penance or any number of other additional external requirements in order to convince God that we should be saved. But all of this misses the core issues involved in sin and salvation. If we don't have a proper understanding of what is really going on in the big picture we are sure to be confused about the details.

The belief that is talked about here in the books of John is a belief that is deeply rooted in the heart much more than in the head, a belief firmly experienced by the right brain and not just professed by the left. The right brain is the base of our experiential beliefs which is what really counts in life. Our professed beliefs may be ever so provable and we can spend years filling our minds with factual truths, but when a crisis comes and the pressure is on it is the deep, sub-conscious beliefs that fill our right brain, our heart, that will suddenly be exposed in the way we respond under extreme situations. And that exposure very often is a shock and surprise to most of us when it happens.

This kind of belief is also much broader than the use our western culture generally has for this word. In the Hebrew usage this word was considered to include much more than simply a belief as we think of the word. In Hebrew thought it fully embraced the idea of acting on a belief, a belief that is so real that you will always rely on it whenever making decisions or acting out externally. It is a settled belief that becomes an fundamental assumption of reality. This is the kind of belief that God is leading us back to, a life rooted in a genuine heart connection with the Source of all love and passion and truth, the kind of existence that Lucifer turned his back on in heaven and that the whole plan of salvation is designed to restore in our lives.

The exciting news here in this verse is that we do not need to wait until the Second Coming of Jesus to enter into eternal life. We can live in eternal life and assurance of faith right now when we allow God's passionate love full access to our hearts and become filled at the heart level with the kind of belief and submission to His desires that can transform us into looking and acting like Jesus. If we try any other option the results can only be the absence of eternal life which is a destiny of pain, fear, torment and death.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (John 10:10)