1 John 4:10, “In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
What is LOVE according to 1 John 4:10? It is that in God which moves Him to send His Son—and moves the Son to harmoniously respond to the Father’s sending—as the propitiation or ‘wrath absorbing sacrifice’ for the sins of any and all who will trust in Him. Love is displayed, then, in the act by which God, in love, bears tho totality of the wrath of God in the place of the enemies of God so that they might become the friends of God, indeed, His Beloved Bride.
Notice one implication: Within the creaturely experience, Love is definitively and essentially manifest precisely when—and precisely in the act by which—it swallows up the wrath that is justly turned against us in our sin….In other words, *within our creaturely experience,* the reality and damning severity of divine WRATH is the necessary context of divine LOVE. When I look into the radiant heart of divine LOVE, what do I see? I see myself, justly damned for my sins under divine WRATH **in the flesh of Jesus Christ.** Yes, love is manifest as I see myself condemned in the willing and vicarious condemnation of my Lord.
Since the definitive act of the Love of God is to bear the Wrath of God in the flesh of God, If we explain away the reality of God’s wrath, we eviscerate the power, potency, and beauty of His love…if we would have a wrath-less God, we will ultimately have a loveless God as well.
But we need to go one step further…because it is not simply that God reveals one aspect of His character in the wrath-absorbing death of the resurrection-illumined Christ…No, God IS the Love revealed at the Cross, such that, in revealing this Love, He reveals HIMSELF (1 Jn 4:8)…The supreme act of redemption is the supreme act of revelation, and the beauty of the cross is the beauty of GOD manifest in the full panoply of His splendor to the Spirit-opened eye of resurrection-illumined faith. Thus, if we deny the wrath of God, we dull our ears to the particular articulation of His Name as it is definitively vocalized by the breath of the Spirit in the Word made Flesh on Calvary.
