The gospel reveals the glory of God. According to God’s Word, he is the sovereign Creator of all things. He knows all things, sustains all things, and owns all things. He is holy above all. He is righteous in all his ways, just in all his wrath, and loving toward all he has made.1
I wonder sometimes, though, if we intentionally or just unknowingly mask the beauty of God in the gospel by minimizing his various attributes. Peruse the Christian marketplace, and you will find a plethora of books, songs, and paintings that depict God as a loving Father. And he is that. But he is not just a loving Father, and limiting our understanding of God to this picture ultimately distorts the image of God we have in our culture.
Yes, God is a loving Father, but he is also a wrathful Judge. In his wrath he hates sin. Habakkuk prayed to God, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong.”2 And in some sense, God also hates sinners. You might ask, “What happened to ‘God hates the sin and loves the sinner’?” Well, the Bible happened to it. One psalmist said to God, “The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; you hate all who do wrong.”3 Fourteen times in the first fifty psalms we see similar descriptions of God’s hatred toward sinners, his wrath toward liars, and so on. In the chapter in the gospel of John where we find one of the most famous verses concerning God’s love, we also find one of the most neglected verses concerning God’s wrath.4
The gospel reveals eternal realities about God that we would sometimes rather not face. We prefer to sit back, enjoy our clichés, and picture God as a Father who might help us, all the while ignoring God as a Judge who might damn us. Maybe this is why we fill our lives with the constant drivel of entertainment in our culture—and in the church. We are afraid that if we stop and really look at God in his Word, we might discover that he evokes greater awe and demands deeper worship than we are ready to give him.
But this is just the point. We are not ready to give him what he asks for because our hearts are set against him. God’s revelation in the gospel not only reveals who he is, but it also reveals who we are.