The Angry Old Testament God

This post is by my wife, Hannah.

In today’s society, our aversion to any kind of judgment tends to affect our view of God. Many people prefer to view God as a benevolent Santa Claus who smiles down on us. That view clashes heavily with the God we encounter in the Bible. When these people read the Bible, especially the Old Testament, they seem to find an angry, capriciously-judgmental God they want nothing to do with. Richard Dawkins, a famous atheist and critic of religion, said, 

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; … capriciously malevolent bully.[1]

Even those who claim to be religious have similar concerns. One Roman Catholic recently wrote on a forum;

How does one reconcile the seemingly violent and angry God of the Old Testament with the merciful and loving God of the New Testament?[2]

My goal is not to reconcile God’s works in the Old Testament with the New. I want to address one question: Is the God of the Old Testament unjust and unloving?

Since January I’ve been reading through the Bible and recently I finished Isaiah. Like many Old Testament prophetic books, God pronounces judgment throughout. Most of the punishment falls on Israel, but he also talks about coming doom for Egypt, Cush (Ethiopia), Babylon, other nations—even the whole earth. But why?

The purpose of judgment

(1) God’s holiness. We know that God is holy, that He cannot leave sin unpunished. Yet so often we fail to see the magnitude of our sin. Isaiah points out that our righteous deeds are “filthy rags”. Although we can excuse our sin, God would be neither just nor truly loving to do so. Sin creates a separation between us and God that cannot be overlooked. Isaiah affirms that God’s judgment against Israel is righteous;

Though your people be like the sand by the sea, Israel, only a remnant will return. Destruction has been decreed, overwhelming and righteous. (Is. 10:22, emphasis mine)

(2) God’s glory. God’s overwhelming passion is for His own glory. At its basic root, sin is an affront to God’s glory, a rebellion as we try to take the glory for ourselves. As God declares judgment on Tyre, He offers an explanation;

The Lord of hosts has purposed it, to defile the pompous pride of all glory, to dishonor all the honored of the earth. (Is. 23:9)

In another passage, God explains His intolerance towards idolatry;

I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols. (Is. 42:8)

The promise in the midst of judgment

God is just in His judgment, but what struck me most after reading Isaiah was the inconceivable depth of God’s mercy;

I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly; your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. (Is. 1:13-14)

God elaborates on their wickedness even more, but then He pleads with them to return to Him;

Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean. … Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. (Is. 1:16,18)

He offers hope in the midst of judgment, salvation in the face of sin. This hope is not only for Israel. Even in this Old Testament book we see God’s desire and purpose to draw all nations to Himself. It’s true that God pronounces punishment on Egypt, but He also promises to make himself known;

So the LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the LORD. They will worship with sacrifices and grain offerings; they will make vows to the LORD and keep them. (Is. 19:21)

One of the judgments against Israel was that foreigners would inhabit their land. In turn, God would judge the foreigners for taking His chosen people’s land. But He offers a promise even to those outside of Israel;

Let no foreigner who is bound to the LORD say, “The LORD will surely exclude me from his people. …[T]hese I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer … for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. (Is. 56:6-7)

In the last days the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. (Is. 2:2, emphasis mine)

And I, because of what they have planned and done, am about to come and gather the people of all nations and languages, and they will come and see my glory. (Is. 66:18, emphasis mine)

The promise of JesusIsaiah contains prophecies about the end of time, and many of them have a vision for the nations. In fact, the book of Isaiah starts and ends with such a promise;

Of course the biggest hope God extends is the promise of His Son coming centuries after Isaiah was written. Besides the famous Isaiah 53 chapter, there are more references to Jesus, in total over 100;

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Is. 7:14)

What more could we ask for? God promised His greatest gift while proclaiming some of His greatest judgments. If that message is not the same proclamation of hope and forgiveness for all mankind found in the New Testament, I don’t know what is.

Conclusion

If we think God is mean or unfair in the Old Testament, we have not realized the gravity of our sins or we have completely missed God’s mercy. From one book alone, we can see evidence of God’s incredible love. Although I only examined Isaiah, I know the rest of the Old Testament contains similar themes of redemption.

I can read the Old Testament knowing without a doubt that the same God who judges the nations for their sins loves me immensely. He is rightly jealous for his glory, but inexplicably loving towards his people. He is justly angry at sin and idolatry, but mysteriously forgiving towards those who ask forgiveness. Instead of accusing God of unpredictable anger, we can thank Him for His righteous judgments and undeserved mercy.

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[1] Richard Dawkins (2006). The God Delusion. London: Bantam. (31).

[2] http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=239792

Revealed in Romans

Look at the beginning of Romans 1:17 and 1:18:

For the	righteousness	of God is revealed	in the gospel…
For the	wrath	of God is revealed	from heaven…

Two different things are revealed from two different sources.

In verse seventeen the righteousness of God, that is, the justification that God provides for sinners, is revealed in the gospel. The way of salvation is made known to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is specifically the death of Christ in our place that paid our sin debt and gives us a right standing before God.

In verse eighteen the wrath of God, that is the just condemnation that God pronounces over sinners, is revealed from heaven, that is, at God’s divine appointment. This would most certainly include destructive natural events such as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis, but also includes the law that is written on our hearts which testifies against us (Romans 2:15).

The wrath of God is already made known to us. Our only hope is in the righteousness provided through the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ. It is to the gospel, not the world around us, that we must turn for salvation and peace.

Myths I Learned in Church

I downloaded the Mark Driscoll audiobook, Religion Saves and Nine other Misconceptions some time ago, and despite the poor narration (he does much better preaching), I enjoyed the book.

On Saturday our Hispanic pastor talked a little bit about his testimony, and it got me thinking of Driscoll's book and some of the things I was taught in church either explicitly or implicitly that didn't square with what is written in the Bible. I'd like to turn this into a series, but for now let's begin with Myth #1.

Myth #1: God Doesn't Hate Sinners


I'll start off by conceding that there is an equal and opposite myth here, so don't assume I'm suggesting we carry signs that say "God hates America." I'm willing to go out on a limb here and say that most churches, at least most churches my average reader would attend, don't organize pickets at military funerals.

That myth is destructive, and this one is just as much, if not more, due to its prevalence. Pick up a tract, listen to a pastor, or attend your child's Sunday School class and you may end up hearing a gospel presentation like this:

God loves you and has a plan for your life. He wants you to trust Him and to be His friend. If you give your life to Him by praying this prayer, you can be with Him in heaven someday.

or this, which is a little better, but not much:

God loves everyone, but we've all sinned by doing bad things. He sent His Son Jesus to die on a cross for our sins, and if we trust in Him He will save us and make us His children.

We like to quote John 3:16 and focus on just how much God loves us. We say things like "God hates the sin, but loves the sinner." While we should affirm God's love for us, we should not deny the enmity that exists between God and the sinner because it is an integral part of the gospel.

A Verse in Romans
In Romans we read, "For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life" (Rom 5:10).


while we were enemies... This means there was enmity between us and God. This is not merely a separation, as in "God can't stand to be in the presence of sin," thereby turning hell into some kind of hazardous material storage bin. Sin is rebellion, and rebellion makes God our enemy and us His.

 we were reconciled to God... Reconciliation is a very important term regarding our salvation. In 2 Corinthians Paul says that we have "the ministry of reconciliation" (5:18). The word carries the idea of bringing together two parties that are at odds.

by the death of his Son... Christ's death was not only a payment or a covering of sin. It was a satisfaction of the wrath of God. What we deserved, He endured. The wrath of God was poured out on Him. When Christ prays for "this cup to be removed," before His crucifixion, it is the cup of God's wrath. The imagery in the Old and New Testaments makes this clear.

Consider a Few Other Verses

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, (Col 1:21-22).

We do not want to see our sin as hostility to God. As a matter of fact, we like to believe that we a "basically good" people and that we are honestly pursuing God. Yet before we are reconciled to God, we are hostile to Him and in need of reconciliation.

...[W]e all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (Eph 2:3).

This may be the clearest verse on the topic at hand. At one point in time, we were given to our sinfulness. We sought to please ourselves with worldly things, and as such we were children of wrath, like the rests of mankind. The expectation of humanity without God is wrath and judgment.

A Final Look at John 3
Just a little further down from John 3:16 we find verse 36: "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him." Those who are not Christians are under the wrath of God. This information is necessary to understand what is so good about the good news. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. The wrath of God is not longer upon him and he has been reconciled to God.

Yet how does this reconcile with John 3:16? We must remember that these two verses are not at odds with each other. We can conceive in our minds that a parent loves his child when he disciplines her. Can we conceive of a God who hates the sinner and loves him as well? We must because that is the essence of the gospel. When we realize how much God hates the sinner, His love for the sinner is even more amazing in our eyes.