The Infernalists are stuck on this perverted "Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth" idea of justice. (revenge) But what does Jesus teach us about godly behavior? What then should we expect from God toward evil persons? Less than he expects from us, or more?
I think Jesus taught us that God's mercy and love is not separate from his wrath and justice but the trouble is that's probably not what our human teachers have taught us. So we're left wondering how God can be merciful and loving if He is also wrathful and just. It doesn't seem possible.
I only understood it when I realised that God has one mind and one will, and doesn't change his mind like we do. If God is both just and merciful then, then these cannot be opposing traits. They are part of His unchanging nature and so they must be the same thing. God's justice
is merciful, and His mercy
is just. They aren't opposite to each other.
I've looked into the meaning of the word "wrath"and the word in Greek is orgé. This sometimes means an outburst of violent passion but more usually a fixed opposition, a determined disposition of the will against a thing, that inner temperament that gives rise to feelings of anger. It's natural to think it means fury or rage but when it comes to God, we should be clear in our minds that God does not lose his temper like we do. So we should God’s orgé as his fixed antipathy towards sin, not a passionate rage.
So, and sorry if this is beginning to sound lecturish, if that's a word, I'm just trying to sum up what I've learn about orgé, God’s wrath should be understood as His implacable opposition to what is wrong. He can't accept imperfection and will eternally stand against it. He will never tolerate or permit sin to remain unopposed. But He does not do this out of uncontrolled outbursts of anger but rather as intentional outpouring of His being, acting always out of a mercy and love for His children.
An analogy I read was that if someone is injured or diseased and hurting, then it's merciful to heal them. If a doctor permits infection to remain, this is not merciful or kind for the patient. The doctor must stand implacably opposed to the disease in their patient, not passively tolerating it, or half-heartedly permitting any of it to remain. This opposition to disease may require an operation or injecting powerful drugs with very unpleasant side-effects. There may well be wailing and gnashing of teeth involved. But it's all for the ultimate purpose of mercy and a deep and abiding concern for the patient's wellbeing.
If the doctor’s antipathy towards the disease is not kind and merciful towards the patient then they will be purposefully making their patient worse. But if the doctor’s mercy towards the patient is not implacable against the disease, it would never fully heal the patient.
And so it is with God. If His justice and wrath towards sin is not merciful towards us then it is merely harming us and making us worse, which would be unjust. And If His mercy towards us ignores what is just and is not implacably opposed against our sin then it is ineffective and wouldn't be salvific and redemptive.
Therefore, all of God's attributes must be understood as descriptions of His unitary nature, not as multiple traits within a changing mind, each one rising or falling to affect God’s will depending on mood or circumstance. So any doctrine such as ECT that tries to split God up into opposing wills, or competing attributes is failing to understand God in the fulness of His nature. God will never ignore His sense of what is merciful in favour of His justice. But nor will He ever ignore His sense of justice in favour of a sentimental kind of mercy, something that Christian universalists have been frequently accused of believing in in this thread. God is neither a cold-blooded torturer/tormenter nor a cuddly granddad who smiles benignly at us while we misbehave at his feet.
To quote verbatim from something I've just read "Therefore we need to recognise that God will carefully but unceasingly root out our sin and destroy it in the fires of His implacable opposition, while
at the same time, patiently withholding His final judgement until we are fully sanctified and able to stand before Him in robes as white as snow. Only this demonstrates
both His Loving Mercy and His Just Wrath equally and unopposed to each other."