"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is a sermon in which Edwards instills fear into his congregation to persuade them to experience a conversion of faith. The premise of his sermon lies in one of his many metaphors to show that the only reason they have not died and gone to Hell is because of God’s “power and pleasure” to keep them alive. In one section, he says:
The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.
In other words, God is ready at any moment, without warning, to strike a person down to Hell. There is nothing that a person who has not been “born again” can say or do to keep this from happening; God is completely in control. Therefore, people mistakenly believe that a person can keep himself from falling by his own actions, rather than God’s pleasure. Even if a person has “reformed (his) life in many things” and goes about the motion of being a Christian, they cannot truly be safe from Hell unless they experience a change of heart and convert. According to Edwards, a person cannot merely act like a Christian; they have to truly experience a conversion of faith.
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