The Jerry-Rigged Life: Why God's Wrath is Actually Good News
We've all done it. That makeshift repair job that wasn't quite right but got us by. The antenna positioned at just the right angle, held in place by sheer willpower and prayer. The password borrowed from a friend to avoid another subscription. The quick fix that becomes permanent because, well, it works well enough.
We call it jerry-rigging—that art of making something function in a way it was never intended to work.
But what if we've been doing the same thing with our lives?
When the Apostle Paul Drops a Bomb
In his letter to the church in Rome, the Apostle Paul doesn't ease into uncomfortable topics. After declaring his confidence in the gospel's power, he immediately pivots to one of scripture's most challenging passages: "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness."
Wrath. It's not a word we like. It doesn't fit on decorative home goods plaques. We prefer "God is love"—which appears only twice in scripture, both in the same letter. Meanwhile, the Bible has volumes to say about divine wrath.
But here's the paradigm shift we need: You cannot have love without wrath.
Think about it in human terms. If someone you love is betrayed or harmed, and you feel nothing—no protective anger, no jealous rage against the injustice—do you really love them? Love without boundaries isn't love at all. A parent who enables destructive behavior until their child is 45 isn't being loving; they're preventing growth.
God's wrath isn't about smiting humanity. It's His last word against evil. It's His relentless pursuit to eradicate the darkness that corrupts His creation. Paul writes that God's wrath is revealed against the godlessness and wickedness of people—not against people themselves. The distinction matters.
The Timeline of Misplaced Worship
To understand what Paul is really saying, we need to zoom out and see the entire story. Imagine trying to explain American history using only the last ten days of news. You'd get a distorted, incomplete picture that would confuse anyone trying to understand the culture.
The biblical narrative begins in Eden—that perfect space where God and humanity existed in shameless relationship. God wanted worship and relationship, and because He's not a tyrannical dictator, He gave humans free will. The only way to have genuine love is through choice.
Then came the tree. The choice. The fall.
Sin entered the picture, and everything changed. But here's what we often miss: this is where the redemption arc begins. From that moment forward, God has been working to bring humanity back to that original intent.
What followed was chaos. Cain murdered Abel. The world became so corrupt that God started over with Noah—only to have Noah stumble immediately after the flood. The Israelites were freed from Egypt, and within hours of Moses leaving them alone, they melted down their jewelry to worship a golden calf.
Israel demanded kings "like everyone else," rejecting God's unique leadership. They cycled through dozens of rulers, most of them disastrous. All through this timeline, one pattern emerges: misplaced worship.
The Holes in Our Souls
This is where it gets personal. Each of us carries a life that's been punctured by sin—sometimes our own choices, sometimes the terrible things others have done to us. Success becomes our god, and when it disappoints, we feel the life draining out. We make idols of education, family, relationships, substances—anything to fill the void.
We know the holes are there. We feel our souls leaking. So we become experts at patching them up. We use duct tape and wood planks and whatever else we can find to make our existence look presentable. We take a deep breath in the church parking lot and put on the smile. We hold hands during worship to prove everything's fine. Then we get home and finally exhale because maintaining the facade is exhausting.
God never intended for us to live this way. He didn't design us to jury-rig our existence, finding creative ways to make life make sense when it fundamentally doesn't.
The Only One Who Rose
Throughout human history, our instinct has been to cover shame. Adam and Eve grabbed fig leaves. Noah's sons covered their father's nakedness. We've been hiding ever since.
But Jesus is the only person in history who not only took on the sin and shame of the world—naked on a cross—but actually rose from the dead. He is the new Adam, the one who can restore what was broken from the beginning.
This is why Paul wrote Romans. He knew humans have a propensity to misplace their worship. He also knew that through Jesus, there's a better way.
The Invitation
Jesus offers something radical: "Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
He's not offering a problem-free life. Evil still exists. We'll still mess up. But He promises peace through the storms, hope in the chaos, and the complete eradication of shame. He offers a brand new identity—not one you have to maintain through endless self-justification, but one He maintains for you.
God is relentlessly pursuing your soul. He looks at our broken world and longs for people to capture the essence of how good, how kind, and how patient He is. He wants to heal open wounds and turn them into scars that tell the story of His goodness.
The wrath of God isn't bad news. It's the promise that God takes evil seriously enough to do something about it. And what He did was send Jesus.
Stop jerry-rigging your life. Stop duct-taping the holes. There's a God in heaven who can handle more than you think, who wants to give you life to the fullest, who promises that for those in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation.
That's not just good news. That's the best news possible.