The Bible says God is love (1 John 4:16). It also says that the wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness (Romans 1:18). Wrath is not an impulse, but a settled habit of indignation. Can love and wrath possibly exist in the same person? How can even God himself have both love and wrath?

In Romans, it further says that beginning with the creation of the world, everyone has been able to see God’s character in what he made. Ungodly people suppress that truth in their wickedness. They try to hide from others what they refuse to acknowledge themselves.

The first act of wickedness occurred in the Garden of Eden. Adam is not just the name of the first man, but the generic Hebrew word for human. And Adam decided to disobey God–reject the love of God–and obey Satan instead. He thought he’d get a better deal that way. Satan lied, and Adam became his slave.

What could God do about that? He could have just zapped him right away. No more humans at all. That would have been a failure of love for sure. After all, he had promised the man and the woman that the human race would fill the earth and exercise dominion over it. An impulsive execution would have meant that God was the sort of being who doesn’t keep promises.

God could have left them alone and just walked away. Would that have been any way to show the love of God? Hardly. He knew Satan was a liar. He knew Satan had no other interest than slowly, painfully destroying what God had made. After what the man and woman did to God, it would have served them right. But it wouldn’t have been loving.

There is only way God could demonstrate love: rescue the very beings who had just committed treason against him. Only they had demonstrated ungodliness. From the start, most of Adam’s race demonstrated they preferred being ungodly to returning to God.

Who, then, are the ungodly? All of us. And ungodliness is the means by which Satan keeps us enslaved to selfishness and the penalties we bear in our bodies as a result of foolishness. Slowly and painfully, we all die. How can a loving God have wrath? Wrath against ungodliness is an unavoidable action of the unconditional love of God.