“I believe in God, but I just don’t know if I can trust the God of the Bible. How can a good God have Israel wipe out the Canaanites? Or send people to hell?” I was speaking with an acquaintance at the gym when he asked me a question that many people quietly carry: how can a good God also be a God of wrath?

There are many thoughtful defenses to explain how a benevolent God rightly administers divine judgment. Writers like Paul Copan (Is God a Moral Monster: Making Sense of the Old Testament God) help us answer the Canaanite question reminding us that God gave the Canaanites (a people who practiced despicable practices such as child sacrifice) four hundred years to repent (see Gen. 15:16 and Lev. 18:24-28) before finally bringing judgment. Others like, Darryl Dash, (“How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?”) help us think through the reality of hell. And C.S. Lewis memorably wrote in The Great Divorce that hell is, in the end, God honoring a human being’s lifelong request: “Go away and leave me alone.” Hell is God’s answer: “You may have your wish.” Lewis wrote, “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it.”

The Canaanite and hell questions are important and deserve a fuller response than the paragraph above. Yet rather than attempting to answer every such question at once, I would rather focus on the deeper question: Is it right for a loving God to display wrath at all? I will answer that question by looking through the lens of Good Friday.

Before we go to the cross, let’s consider four foundational truths Scripture gives us:

• God is holy, so he must oppose sin.
• God is loving, so he must oppose evil.
• God is patient, delaying judgment to allow repentance.
• God is just, ensuring evil is ultimately dealt with.

1.God Is Holy, So He Must Oppose Sin

The Bible consistently presents God as perfectly holy. In Isaiah’s vision, the seraphim cry out in the threefold repetition that the presence of God’s holiness demands: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts” (Is. 6:3).

God’s holiness means he is morally pure and utterly set apart from evil. Because of this, sin cannot simply be ignored without compromising God’s character. If God overlooked injustice, cruelty, and rebellion, he would not be righteous. Scripture describes wrath not as uncontrolled anger, but as his settled just opposition to sin, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness” (Rms. 1:18). God’s divine wrath is unlike man’s rage. It is not impulsive or selfish. It is the measured, righteous response of a holy God to real evil.

2.God Is Loving, So He Must Oppose Evil

Imagine excitedly picking up your kindergartner as he climbs off the bus only to notice that he has a black eye. Tears roll down his cheeks. He falls into your arms and tells you the story. He’s been bullied into giving his lunch money to a third grader for weeks, but today he tried to stand up for himself and got punched.

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