The love of God as revealed in his wrath

God is love. The wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness. Both of those statements are in the Bible (1 John 4:8 and Romans 1:18 respectively). Don't they somehow conflict? Parents can love their children and get mad at them sometimes, but too many hurting people live in fear that God is somehow out to get them for the analogy with human parents to be a satisfactory answer.

We can have basically two different kinds of anger—the impulsive kind that comes and goes quickly, and the long-lasting, habitual kind. The word translated wrath in the verse from Romans 1 in the last paragraph means the habitual kind, not the impulse. 

People get angry when they don't get their own way, or when their feelings are hurt, or as a way to cover up insecurity. Human anger often leads to regrettable outbursts that destroy relationships. People who hold grudges refuse to let bygones be bygones and remain angry over something in their past for a long, long time. It doesn't hurt whomever they're angry with, but it certainly hurts them. For one thing, who wants to hang around with a sour puss? Nursing and rehearsing grudges can alienate other people and damage other relationships.

If we compare God to habitually angry, grudge-bearing people, that habit of anger doesn't make him look very good, does it? God is not people, though. He is all-powerful. Nothing can frustrate or thwart his will. Many people have found much to criticize God for in the pages of the Bible, but never, as far as I know, has anyone accused him of insecurity or pouting through hurt feelings.

Notice, also, that the Bible says the wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness, not against unrighteous people. Now, it also says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Sin basically another word for unrighteousness. It means at least two things: falling short of perfection and living in rebellion against God. Both of those meanings describe everyone who has ever taken a single breath—except for Jesus, who is God the Son.

Rebellion began in the Garden of Eden. The fall did not take place because Eve decided to eat a piece of fruit. The man and the woman had been placed in the garden and given the right of rulership over the entire earth. God placed only one prohibition on them. The devil told them to disobey that one thing and promised if they did, they would be like God. They obeyed Satan instead of God, an act of rebellion. 

As it turned out, Satan had lied to them. Instead of exercising dominion over the earth as God's stewards, they exercised it as Satan's slaves, and all he cared about was theft, death and destruction. God could have walked away and left humanity in that predicament. Instead, his love compelled him to redeem us at the cost of becoming human himself, standing up to Satan's temptations, and dying the death we deserved. Unrighteousness makes people unwilling to trust God for redemption. It gets in the way of their turning to God for the only way out of utter frustration. In wrath God is destroying the unrighteousness that is destroying the people he loves and wants to rescue. God's wrath, therefore, does not negate his love. It demonstrates it.