What does God get mad at? We know we serve a God of grace, love, and forgiveness, but we also know that He gets angry. At what, or who, does God get mad?
Most of us are terrified that it is us that God is angry at. We know the depravity of our lives and minds and wills, and we know that He knows, too. We are usually angry at ourselves for those thoughts, so we are sure that He is, too.
In Romans 1, Paul gives us a clue about what God gets mad at. First, we see that God gets truly angry at “the suppression of the truth”. God is not only about truth, He IS Truth. To deny the truth is to deny God Himself. And our culture is all about the suppression of the truth. From our government leaders to our everyday workers, if it leads to our betterment, improvement, wealth or power, we will gladly “suppress the truth”, meaning lie, deceive, or obfuscate. And this makes God mad.
And when God gets mad, His common punishment is to allow us to follow the path we’ve chosen leading to our own death, physically and eternally. “God gives us over…” is Paul’s common phrase used here.
God gives us over to the sinful desires of our hearts (v.24), to our shameful lusts (v.26), and to our depraved mind (v.28). These things present themselves as idolatry (v. 25), homosexuality (v.26), and every kind of wickedness (v.29).
But the key to this part of Paul’s passage is that we are not acting out of ignorance, but are ignoring what they know, “suppressing the truth”, and actively turning away from it.
Our natural tendency is to figure out who “those people” are, but it is far more helpful for us to see ourselves in this description. How are you “suppressing the truth”, ignoring what you know to be true about God and living for yourself instead? How is your life displaying idolatry, improper sexuality, and other forms of wickedness? And most importantly, what are you going to do about it? God grants grace, even when He’s angry. “Repent and believe the Good News”.
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