THE WRATH OF THE LAMB
‘The wrath of the Lamb.’
We should not allow the sympathy, the gentleness, the compassion, the loving humanity of Jesus, as we find Him portrayed in the Gospels, to blind us to the fact that there is such a thing, after all, as the ‘wrath of the Lamb.’ ‘The wrath of the Lamb’! The words suggest a somewhat painful line of thought.
God is incapable of change. And such as God was in the times of the older dispensation, such is He now to us who live in the clearer light and fuller privileges of the dispensation of the Spirit.
I. It was unavoidable that the sterner side of the Divine character should be first turned to the human race. Men had to be educated in the knowledge of sin before they could come to understand their true position; before they could appreciate their need of God’s help, as well as the necessity of an entire and perfect submission to God’s will.
II. With regard to the present dispensation—that of Christianity—the process may be said to be reversed. We have the love first and the severity afterwards; or, as perhaps I ought to put it, we have the evidence that the Divine nature—which is full of compassion and tender mercy, which continually invites, persuades, even beseeches, the sinner to approach it in confidence and trust—has yet in it a capability of righteous indignation, in fact of wrath, most formidable to those who persist in refusing compliance with its claims and acceptance of its invitations.
III. There is something in the nature of man himself which corresponds with this twofold aspect of the character of God, and enables us to understand it. I will suppose you to have heard of some frightful crime. Now what is your feeling? It is one of fierce, fiery indignation, which demands the immediate and condign punishment of the offender. There is that in you which will not be quieted—which will not be satisfied—until the criminal has met with his deserts.
—Rev. Prebendary Gordon Calthrop.