There’s a suspicion buried in the human heart: if you push God far enough, He will finally snap. Like a judge who’s been restraining himself, waiting for the moment he can lawfully crush you.
That fear makes sense if God runs reality like a courtroom.
Life doesn’t work that way.
God is the Sustainer. He is not an external enforcer hovering over reality, waiting for permission to strike. He is the Source life is flowing from. He is the breath in your lungs and the strength in your cells. Everything that lives is living because life is still being given.
Sin isn’t mainly “breaking a rule.” It’s cutting yourself off. It’s the created thing insisting it can exist without the One who sustains existence.
A lamp can rage at the outlet. It can call the cord “control.” It can demand independence. The moment it unplugs, it doesn’t get punished. It goes dark because it severed itself from power.
Here’s the part we rarely credit God for: in mercy, He holds you up far longer than separation should allow. He restrains what sin naturally does. He absorbs the cost of sustaining life in a world that keeps pulling away from Him. He keeps reaching, keeps warning, keeps shielding, keeps inviting all while respecting your freedom.
That’s what Scripture calls patience.
It’s also why “wrath” is not God losing His temper.
Wrath is love honoring your freedom—God stops overriding the separation you insist on.
When a person persistently insists on life apart from God, there comes a point where God honors the choice. He releases what He has been holding back. He lets the chosen separation be what it is.
That’s why Romans describes it with the language of release: “So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired.” (Romans 1:24 NLT)
This is also why Jesus wept over Jerusalem. Not because He wanted to destroy it, but because they would not let Him gather and protect them: “How often I have wanted to gather your children together… but you wouldn’t let me.” (Matthew 23:37 NLT) The tragedy wasn’t an execution. The tragedy was refusal of shelter—until shelter could no longer be given without violating freedom.
Look at the Cross through that lens.
Jesus steps into what sin truly produces: the horror of separation, the felt experience of abandonment, the darkness that comes when a created mind loses sight of the Father’s face. He enters that place without becoming the Father’s enemy—so you can see, forever, that the Father is not the One hunting you.
Even in death, the Gospels don’t present God taking life from the Son. They present the Son giving His life: “Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” (John 19:30 NLT)
And Jesus is the clearest revelation of the Father you will ever get: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father!” (John 14:9 NLT)
So the most terrifying thing God can do is not to strike you.
It’s to let you go.
Not because He stopped loving you. Because love doesn’t imprison. Love refuses to become coercion. Love honors what you ultimately choose—even when the choice breaks His heart.
Next step
When fear tells you God is “out to get you,” name the real dynamic in plain words: God is sustaining me right now. God is the One keeping life open. Then make one small, honest turn: Father, I stop fighting You as if You’re my enemy. I accept Your nearness as safety
