Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: Part 2. Application Summary & Analysis

For every person in the congregation that is “unconverted” (not with Christ), “there is nothing between you and Hell” except the hand of God. Wickedness makes these people “heavy as lead,” and no amount of health, practicality, or righteousness can save them from hell.

Edwards tells the congregation that if they are sinners then they are a burden to the earth. God’s creatures are meant to serve God, and the sun doesn’t shine willingly on sinners, nor does the earth “willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts,” nor does the air willingly give breath to sinners. Thus, the earth “would spew you out” if not for the hand of God.

The wrath of God is like dammed water: the longer it is pent up, the greater its force once it is released. Thus sinners, whose guilt is “constantly increasing,” are “every day treasuring up more wrath.” Were God to release the floodgates, sinners could do nothing to withstand or endure it.

This is the state of everyone who has not “passed under a great change of heart” and been “born again.” This rebirth is a strict requirement: despite reforms in other aspects of life or earnest (but improper) religious conviction, a person is “in the hands of an angry God” until they are awakened to Christ. Whether or not the audience is convinced of this, Edwards tells them that they will know the truth someday, just as those who are in hell now understand their errors on earth.

God holds sinners over the pit of hell just as one would hold a spider over a fire, and God hates sinners just as much as one might loathe an insect. “You are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.” The congregation has offended God unimaginably, and yet it is only God’s will that keeps them from hell. Edwards reminds the congregation that God is the reason they woke up on earth instead of in hell this morning, and God is the only reason that they haven’t been sent to hell while hypocritically worshiping in church today.

Edwards urges the congregation to consider what danger they are in: they “hang by a slender thread” over flames ready to singe and break that thread, and they have no recourse since they have not given themselves to Christ. He asks the congregation to consider the following things concerning the danger of God’s wrath.

1. The wrath that threatens them is not the wrath of man, but the wrath of the “infinite God.” This wrath is immeasurably greater than the wrath of kings, whom people tend to deeply fear. While a king can inflict horrible torture on a subject who has angered him, all of the most powerful men on earth are “but feeble despicable worms in the dust” in comparison with God. God’s wrath is thus tremendously more terrible than the wrath of even the most powerful men.

2. The wrath of God is itself frightening, but it is the fierceness and fury of that wrath that must be noted. Edwards quotes several Biblical passages that describe this fury, and then remarks, “Who can utter or conceive what such expressions carry in them!” But God’s wrath, Edwards notes, isn’t just an expression—it is real, and whomever is subject to it will be sunk into an “inexpressible, inconceivable depth of misery.”

The fierceness of God’s wrath implies that it will be inflicted without pity: God will not have compassion for suffering, nor will he show mercy or restraint, except that nobody shall suffer “beyond what strict justice requires.” However, even punishment within these limits is unbearable, and suffering will not be withheld simply because the punishment is so terrible.

Edwards notes that God is ready to pity the congregation, as today “is a day of mercy.” Once this day of mercy is past, though, no amount of crying can change their fate. If sinners let this opportunity pass, then God will consider them to be vessels with no use but “to be filled full of wrath.” If the sinners cry, God will not pity them, but will “laugh and mock.”

“How awful are these words,” Edwards says of “the words of the Great God,” quoting a passage from the Book of Isaiah in which God promises to tread on sinners in anger until their blood stains his clothes. Edwards says that it’s impossible to think of a statement with more “contempt, hatred, and fierceness of indignation.” This shows that God won’t pity sinners, even if they cry: instead, he will express his hatred through violence, and their rightful place will be under his foot.

3. Sometimes, just like kings desire to demonstrate the force of their wrath, God wants to show people how good his love is and how terrible is his wrath. Thus, the sinners in the congregation might expect to be made an example of: in a state of “suffering the infinite weight and power of his indignation,” the sinner could be observed by “the whole universe,” including the angels and the inhabitants of heaven, who will see this spectacle as even more reason to worship the “power and majesty” of God.

4. This wrath is everlasting. Though experiencing even one moment of it would be horrible, the wrath endures for all eternity. A sinner in hell looks to their future of “merciless vengeance” in despair, as, no matter how long they spend being tortured, they have no respite to look forward to. The “state of a soul in such circumstances” is “inexpressible and inconceivable”—everything said about it on earth is only a “faint representation” of the power of God’s anger.

It’s a terrible state to be in danger of experiencing such wrath, and every person in the congregation who has not been born again is in exactly this danger, regardless of how moral and religious they think they are. In fact, Edwards claims, there is “reason to think” that many in the congregation will, indeed, go to hell, and those people may well have listened to this sermon without any disturbance, thinking that they were not implicated. Further, it’s likely that some people in the congregation might be in hell before this year is over—someone could even go before tomorrow morning. Those who won’t go to hell for a long time shouldn’t be comforted either, since, in the scope of eternity, they will still be in hell shortly.

While those already in hell cannot change their circumstances, the congregation has been given a remarkable opportunity to be saved, one that those in hell would envy. By coming to Christ for mercy, the congregation can join the saved in a “happy state, with their hearts filled” and their sins washed in the blood of Christ. How awful it would be to be left behind while others are rejoicing, or to be tortured while others sing, Edwards reminds the congregation.

Edwards begs those who are not yet born again to consider how much of God’s wrath they have accumulated and how horrible it would be to be passed over for salvation. He urges them to “wake thoroughly out of sleep,” for they cannot bear the full extent of God’s wrath. Edwards addresses young people, in particular, urging them to renounce “youthful vanities” lest they become children of the Devil while so many other good children are happy children of God.

Emphasizing the importance of this opportunity to come to Christ, Edwards suggests that denying Christ today will result in a hardening of the heart that will make finding Christ more difficult later on. Thus, this day is one of both great promise and great danger. Edwards notes that God seems to be “hastily gathering” his people on earth, and that, as such, it’s likely that most people who will be saved will be saved within a short span of time. Sinners who fail to heed this warning will curse this day and curse the day they were born once they arrive in hell having witnessed and ignored this “season of the pouring out of God’s spirit.” One last time, Edwards implores the congregation to “now awake and fly from the wrath of God…lest you be consumed.”