Priscilla Shirer explained the crucial difference between God’s active and passive wrath.
“The dynamic that is lost in a lot of us is an authentic, genuine, healthy fear of God, and fear meaning, not trembling — reverence,” she said in a recent episode of her podcast. “That you realize He is not to be messed with.”
Shirer explained that “the main difference” between God’s wrath in the Old and New Testament is, respectively, active and passive.
“[The Old Testament] was more an active wrath. The flood, smiting people [and] groups, like, Sodom and Gomorrah, wiping them out,” she said. “It’s an active wrath where you see God raining down judgment because people are refusing to surrender.”
THE FORGE actress continued, “And then in the New Testament, Romans Chapter 1, it’s the passive wrath of God. It’s not something He’s doing. It’s something He’s not doing. That He is leaving you to the consequences of your own choices. So it’s like, you wanna be God, go ahead.”
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She urged listeners to “read Romans Chapter 1,” saying, “It will make you think very carefully about how people around you and the culture around us, communities, churches, families, individuals — how, a lot of times, what we are suffering from is not something God did. It’s the consequence He allowed and stepped back from so that we have to deal with the consequences of the choices that we made. It’s the passive wrath of God.”
Shirer tackles topics like this on her podcast, “Full Fledge,” which she hosts alongside her son JC. In another recent episode, she talked about how God might not always answer our prayers — and that’s a good thing.
“One of the gifts age gives you — and I mean that at your stage, like you can look back at something at 10, you can look back at something at 20 — and age, what it gives you is the gift of hindsight,” Shirer explained. “Where you can look back and finally get a little taste for, not everything, but some things, [like] why the no was the best gift He could’ve given you.”
In a personal essay for Relevant Magazine, Shirer spoke further on this point, writing, “The things we don’t know how to pray, as well as the things we don’t even know to be praying for at all, are still under His control.”
“Beyond what we could think to ask are things that only God knows. And out there, in here, wherever our words come up short, His Spirit fills in the blanks, not allowing anything to touch our lives that cannot be co-opted to conform to His will,” she continued. “You and I are completely covered. Totally. Because God is able.”
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