Wrath's Baby

"among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of our body and mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind." Ephesians 2:3

Whenever I hear the word wrath, I think of that old sermon by Jonathan Edwards: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. I think of red-faced preachers bellowing judgment from an elevated pulpit. I think of how my friends who do not espouse to be Christian would hear phrases like "the wrath of God" which, I found out, appears in the Bible 11 times (6 of them in Revelation). Most of the verses in the Bible that talk about wrath are more like the one above though. They are not necessarily talking about some future event or destination, but rather a state of being. This passage seems to say that when we choose to live in the passions of our flesh, God is no longer our father, but wrath is. And this was the state we were formerly in. This is probably why Paul says that we have been adopted as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will (Ephesians 1:5).

I definitely experience this wrath. I read in a study bible of some sort and it said that this "children of wrath" was a idiom from that time. I wonder what the translation would be today. If the symptom is following the desires of body and mind, I would guess the result would be anxiety and loneliness. That combination of feelings that seems to lead to a desperate hollowness which is a feedback loop to following the desires our body and mind. Maybe a more current term would be to call us children of despair.

But I know there's another way to live because I have lived it at times. I have lived in the freedom and purposefulness of God--living in my adopted identity. But I cannot gain this identity on my own. I must throw myself at the mercy of God and trust in his grace, which is where this passage is headed.

by the will of God,
Jonathan