If we try to rescue the love of God by diminishing the wrath of God we will end up diminishing the very love we were trying to rescue. The cross demonstrates the love of God not because it speaks to our great worth, but because, in electing grace, it turns away God’s just wrath.
If God simply kept us from being estranged and delivered us from possible peril, then we would surely feel something of God’s mercy. But the Bible demands that we imagine a different scenario, leading a richer experience of God’s love Calvin explains:
Suppose [a man] learns, as Scripture teaches, that he was estranged from God through sin, is an heir of wrath, subject to the curse of eternal death, excluded from all hope of salvation, beyond every blessing of God, the slave of Satan, captive under the yoke of sin, destined finally for a dreadful destruction and already involved in it; and that at this point Christ interceded as his advocate, took upon himself and suffered the punishment that, from God’s righteous judgment, threatened all sinners; that he purged with his blood those evils which had rendered sinners hateful to God; that by this expiation he made satisfaction and sacrifice duly to God the Father; that as intercessor he has appeased God’s wrath; that on this foundation rests the peace of God with men; that by this bond his benevolence is maintained toward them. Will the man not then be even more moved by all these things which so vividly portray the greatness of the calamity from which he has been rescued? (Inst. II.xvi.2)
Divine mercy without divine wrath is meaningless. We have been rescued from much, forgiven for everything, and saved unto infinitely more than we deserve. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
