the culprit is acquitted; and he that strikes out of the divine nature
the capacity for anger against sin, little as he thinks it, is
degrading the righteousness and diminishing the love of God.

Oh, dear brethren, I beseech you do not let any easygoing gospel that
has nothing to say to you about God's necessary aversion from, and
displeasure with, and chastisement of, your sins and mine, draw you
away from the solemn and wholesome belief that there is that in God
which must hate and war against and chastise our evil, and that if
there were not, He would be neither worth loving nor worth trusting.
And His Son, in His tears and in His tenderness, which were habitual,
and also in that lightning flash which once shot across the sky of His
nature, was revealing Him to us. The Gospel is not only the revelation
of God's righteousness for faith, but is also 'the revelation of His
wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.'

'It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.' The ox, with the
yoke on his neck, lashes out with his obstinate heels against the
driver's goad. He does not break the goad, but only embrues his own
limbs. Do not you do that!

II. And now, once more, let me ask you to look at the compassion which
goes with our Lord's anger here; 'being grieved at the hardness of
their hearts.'

The somewhat singular word rendered here 'grieved,' may either simply
imply that this sorrow co-existed with the anger, or it may describe
the sorrow as being sympathy or compassion. I am disposed to take it
in the latter application, and so the lesson we gather from these
words is the blessed thought that Christ's wrath was all blended with