Though in this life it may appear that the Lord does not punish sin fittingly, the present chapter makes plain that he is truly just in all his ways (Revelation 15:3). At the time determined by him, the seven bowls of his wrath are distributed to his angels for action. When these angels pour out their bowls, every person for whose sins the Lamb of God was not the substitute will experience the ultimate wrath of God that will incinerate them eternally. In the face of injustice, the child of God may be patient.

What happened at the altar of sin offering remains a graphic picture of both the mercy of God and the justice of God. Mercy: the lamb is substituted in place of the sinner so that the animal receives the fires of God’s judgment the sinner deserves. Justice: the lamb is first killed and then consumed in the fires of God’s wrath. Whatever remains of the sin offering is not simply discarded (as if discarding would ever be a fitting response to sin) but incinerated. The latter is a picture of what Jesus experienced on Calvary and a picture of what the ungodly will experience in the eternal flames of hell.

The apostle reminds the Hebrews that the remains of sacrifices are burned outside the camp (Hebrews 13:11). He adds that Jesus too suffered outside the gate (Hebrews 13:12). The soldiers scourged and whipped Jesus while he was still in the city so that (as we know from accounts of what happened to those who were to be crucified) his flesh was torn to the bone and he lost so much blood that he was, in a manner of speaking, more dead than alive. Then this broken wreck of a man—what remained of him—was carried outside the gate/camp to be crucified. On the cross Jesus experienced the infinitely hot burning of God’s anger against sin, ie, the fires of hellish agony. Yet he survived this divine incineration because he was true God himself. What he endured is what sinners deserve, and so sinners united by faith to Christ need never suffer the burning wrath of God’s hatred of sin. Instead, sinners may freely stand in the presence of God himself, even if they think or say or do sinful things in the face of martyrdom.