“For they themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry we had to you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, 10 and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.”

1 Thess. 1:9, 10

To turn to God and obey the gospel of His Son is to be “Saved.” But the word “saved” may have become so familiar to us that we miss the dramatic picture the word portrays. In the text, above, Paul said that the Thessaloni-ans, like all other Christians, were waiting for Christ to return from heaven, and that when He returned, they would be delivered from “The wrath to come.” The world stands under the righteous judgment of God for its rebel-lion against Him. Unremorseful and unrepentant, the world is doomed to destruction. When Christ returns, that doom will fall. The only ones who will not be touched by the universal devastation will be those who are deliv-ered…spared…. saved.

The words “salvation” and salvage” are almost twins. If a thing is “salvaged” that means it’s something “saved.” Similarly, the Day of the Lord is going to be, for the most part, a day of the punishment of evil. The saved will be the exceptions, those who, in Christ, will be “saved from wrath through Him” (Romans 5:9). To understand this concept, consider the “sal-vaging” of Noah’s family from the flood, Lot’s family from Sodom and Go-morrah, the Israelites from the death of Egypt’s firstborn, Rahab’s family from the devastation of Jericho, and on and on. The Bible often tells of a remnant being “spared.”

But can a God of love be a God of wrath? Certainly. Indeed, to have no wrath, God would have to be neutral toward right and wrong, neutral in the conflict of the world. And as Stephen Neill put it, “To live in such a world would be a nightmare. It is only the doctrine of the wrath of God, of his irreconcilable hostility to all evil, which makes human life tolerable in such a world as ours.” Mark it well: the day of God’s wrath will come. And the gospel of Christ says, “Be saved from this perverse generation” (Acts 2:40).