A few words from J.I. Packer’s Knowing God related to God’s wrath.

“To an age which has unashamedly sold itself to the gods of greed, pride, sex and self-will, the church mumbles on about God’s kindness but says virtually nothing about his judgment. . . . What is it that makes us awkward and embarrassed when the subject comes up, that prompts us to soft-pedal it and hedge when we are asked about it?

The root cause of our unhappiness seems to be a disquieting suspicion that ideas of wrath are in one way or another unworthy of God. . . .  [But] God’s wrath is the Bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is. It is, instead, a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil. God is only angry where anger is called for. . . . It is precisely this adverse reaction to evil, which is a necessary part of moral perfection, that the Bible has in view when it speaks of God’s wrath.”

J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 149-151

The contemporary view of God seems to be that wrath is beneath him and that as God he should be ‘better than’ reacting in anger to human sin.

But as Packer points out, it is precisely his God-ness that requires him to react to sin with wrath. When the moral perfection of his God-ness is offended, anger is the only ‘right’ response.

So God’s wrath is not his ‘dark side’ that should shame us as His children. Rather his wrath is wonderful confirmation of his absolute moral purity.