AUGUST 23, 2022

Does God Actually Get Angry?

Why He Reveals Himself in Human Terms

Article by Mark Jones

Guest Contributor

God reveals himself to his people in the Bible. The opening chapters of Genesis show us that God is
relational. Indeed, all true theology is relational theology since God, in his triunity, is a relational God. God
relates to his creatures, especially those made in his image, in a manner suitable to their creatureliness.
Because God is wise and good, he does not relate to Adam in the garden in a manner that utterly confuses
him. Rather, there’s a beautiful simplicity concerning how Adam must live in relation to God, which was
friendship with God based upon his gracious condescension.

Now, that does not mean we are not frequently confronted in God’s word, as Job was, with the supreme,
infinite majesty of our God. God is infinite in his perfections; he possesses unchangeable omniscience; he
enjoys eternal omnipotence. To him alone, we can say with David, “Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the
power and the glory and the victory and the majesty. . . . You are exalted as head above all” (1 Chronicles
29:11). Our God “is clothed with awesome majesty” (Job 37:22).
However, we also find that much of what pertains to us as humans is also attributed to God. We read of
God’s “face” (Exodus 33:20), “eyes” (and “eyelids,” Psalm 11:4), “ear” (Isaiah 59:1), “nostrils” (Isaiah
65:5), “mouth” (Deuteronomy 8:3), “lips” (Isaiah 30:27), “tongue” (Isaiah 30:27), “finger” (Exodus 8:19),
and many other body parts. What’s more, sometimes we read of God possessing human emotions. He is
sometimes jealous or grieved (Deuteronomy 4:24; 32:21; Psalm 78:40; Isaiah 63:10). After Adam sins, God,
who has just made the world by acts of divine power, wisdom, and goodness, asks Adam, “Where are you?”
(Genesis 3:9).

God Without Passions

What are Christians to make of these declarations of God? Is God eternally unchangeable in his being, or
does he, like humans, have the capacity to change? Can God really experience distress or learn something
new? What does it mean for God, who is Spirit, to “get angry”? Does God really need to ask Adam where he
is, as if he can’t find him?

If we are committed to the biblical and theological view that God is unchangeable (see Psalm 102:26–28),
we are affirming that in God there is no change in time (he is eternal) or location (he is omnipresent) or
essence (he is pure being). God does not change, nor can he change (Malachi 3:6; Isaiah 14:27; 41:4). Thus,
there are no “passions” in God, as if in his essence he can be more or less happy or more or less angry. God
is what he always was and will be (James 1:17) in the infinite happiness and bliss we call divine
“blessedness.”

An immutable God does not have passions; or, as John Owen famously said, “a mutable god is of the
dunghill.” We do not deny that God has affections (for example, wrath or hatred), but affections like wrath
in God are either acts of his outward will or they are applied to God figuratively.

Passions refer to an internal emotional change, which are suitable to humans. Think of our blood pressure
rising with anger. God’s jealousy — a metaphorical way to speak of him — helps us to understand outward
acts of his will. When God wills for the wicked to be punished, sometimes in the most severe way (like the
flood in Noah’s time), we can speak of the “anger of the Lord.” Because God is holy and righteous, he must
punish sin. When he outwardly executes his punishment, the Scriptures often speak of his fury or wrath.
But to suggest that Achan, for example, could upset God so that God is less happy is to make Achan into
God and God into Achan (see Joshua 7).

God’s Amazing Stooping

God relates to his image-bearers in a way that does justice to the history of redemption. He condescends
and, for our sake, sometimes appropriates to himself “passions” that, while not properly true of his being,
are ways of speaking that help us to understand how he will relate to us in terms of his purposes and will.

Herman Bavinck (1854–1921) explains the importance of God’s dealings with us in this way: “If God were
to speak to us in a divine language, not a creature would understand him. But what spells out his grace is
the fact that from the moment of creation God stoops down to his creatures, speaking and appearing to
them in human fashion” (Reformed Dogmatics, 1:100). If he did not, we would be left in a cloud of
unsearchable darkness concerning who God is and what he is doing in the world.
Now God’s “stooping” and “appearing” are not mere anthropomorphisms in the sense that he is
accommodating to us in terms of the language he uses. Rather, the humanlike language used of God in the
Old Testament is fulfilled wondrously in the person of Christ in his incarnation.

Anthropomorphic Christ
The Son related to God’s people in the Old Testament by dwelling in their midst (1 Corinthians 10:4).
According to Owen, in dwelling with his people, the Son

constantly assumes unto himself human affections, to intimate that a season would come when
he would immediately act in that nature. And, indeed, after the fall there is nothing spoken of
God in the Old Testament, nothing of his institutions, nothing of the way and manner of dealing
with the church, but what has respect unto the future incarnation of Christ. (Works, 1:350)

This is a beautiful way to understand the Old Testament. These anthropomorphisms attributed to God are
not only a form of accommodation on his part in terms of his covenantal relationship with his people, but
they set the stage for the incarnation of the Son of God. Yet, since the Son is the reason for all things
(Colossians 1:16), it goes without saying that anthropomorphic language concerning God is not merely
prospective of Jesus but derives from him from the beginning.

Owen adds that it would have been absurd to speak of God continually by way of anthropomorphisms (such
as grief, anger, repentance, and so on) unless it was intended that the Son would take to himself “the
nature wherein such affections do dwell” (350).

Everything anthropomorphically yet not properly attributed to God is actually properly attributed to Christ
as God-man. Jesus, who has arms and eyes, a heart and soul, also grieves (Mark 3:5) and expresses
indignation (Mark 10:14). What is impossible for God, who cannot change, is possible in Christ because of
the glory of the incarnation. In him we can affirm both God’s unchangeability and his ability to express
human passions. The Son of God, as one person with two natures, is both unchangeable and changeable; he
experienced an infinite joy in the deity but also, while on earth, an inexpressible sorrow in his humanity.

Always Set to Be Man

Our Lord Jesus is not only the fulfillment of all promises, which are yes and amen in him (2 Corinthians
1:20), but the fulfillment of all truth concerning who God is toward his creatures. The Lord’s hand (arm) is
not too short to save because his “hand” is his Messiah who is able to save to the uttermost (Hebrews
7:25). Hands are what we use to work, and God works with his hand (Jesus) our salvation.

God often spoke of himself in human terms because the Son was always set to become the true human, the
one truly in the image of God (Colossians 1:15), who allows the faithful to see God by faith in this life and
by sight in the life to come. As important for us as his divinity is his humanity — a humanity that such
stooping language in the Old Testament always anticipated.