Does God’s wrath fall on believers? Most Christians think the answer is obvious. The problem is, there are at least two common “obvious” answers:
- Of course it does! God’s wrath is against all sin; if you commit sin, you face God’s wrath in this life, even if you eventually escape it in heaven.
- Of course not! God’s wrath against sin was poured out on Christ at the cross. While discipline for our correction and sanctification continues to happen for our good, not believer will ever face God’s wrath.
So which is it? Or are both answers missing something?
Faced with a question like this, I turn to Scripture. It’s usually the case that there’s no single passage that decisively vindicates one side or the other. A surprising amount of some folks’ doctrine is supported by little more than innuendo and a conspiracy-theory-esque stitching together of passages that don’t quite say what they’re claimed to say. What passages actually, pointedly speak to the matter? What, exactly, do those passages say? Equally important, what don’t they say?
- Ephesians 5:6-7//Col.3:5-7 comes to mind, but what it actually says is that believers should not do these things because God’s wrath falls on unbelievers for them. It doesn’t quite clearly say that believers also experience God’s wrath for them. You could read verse 7 that way: “Therefore do not be partakers (of wrath) with them.” But “Do not be partakers (of these sins) with them” is also a live option. It’s clear on what we’re supposed to do, but tantalizingly ambiguous on the question of wrath.
- Romans 12:19, 13:4 also come to mind as places that might allow for a believer to experience wrath. 1:18 has already clearly said that God’s wrath stands against all ungodliness and unrighteousness, and “saved from wrath” is much more than justification (5:9) and appears to be conditional (10:9-10)
- Psalm 95//Heb. 3:11, 4:3 point to exclusion from rest as an expression of wrath, and 4:11 calls for believers to be diligent to enter and holds out failure as a real possibility.
But I gotta say, it’s curiously difficult to find a direct statement that God’s wrath falls on believers, while at the same time multiple passages are suggestive in that direction. What’s interesting about that is that it doesn’t really fit with either of the “obvious” takes that we started this post with. If #1 is true, you’d expect there to be some pretty direct threats. If #2 is true, then you would think the biblical authors would be at pains not to say things that sound like believers might experience wrath after all. The fact that the Bible doesn’t speak the way that we would means that we’re missing something.
Wonder what it is?
Full Contact Christianity 
An important issue that bedevils not a few believers in the Free Grace of God. My take on it revisits the thrust of Rom 1:18ff vis-a-vis believers in light of the Gospel (1:16-17) as well as your point from Rom 5:8 about being saved from wrath as a prospective but contingent hope for those who have already been justified by faith.
Romans 1:18ff does not appear to “take any hostages” when it proclaims the fate of ALL ungodliness and unrighteousness of men—it appears to include believers with “men.” By the same token, the wrath is levied primarily against the behavior, so that its effect on “men” appears to be collateral. God is not willing than any should perish, BUT for believers in particular, God’s very reputation is at stake, for His righteousness was meant to be revealed in us as a result of the gospel (1:16-17; 8:4)—transparently to make God look good as those who bear His righteous image (Genesis 1).
Later in Genesis, Abraham intercedes on behalf of the “righteous” in Sodom, which includes Lot and his immediate family—ostensibly members of Abraham’s extended “household after him,” commissioned to do righteousness (Gen 18:19). The angels are commissioned in turn to usher Lot and his family out of Sodom precisely because they are in imminent danger of becoming collateral damage as God’s wrath is revealed against ALL ungodliness and unrighteousness, and Lot’s wife proves that very collateral damage to be real when “the righteous” fail to distance themselves from ungodly/unrighteous behavior.
Sorry, Rom 5:9 above, not 5:8