Questions: The God in the Old Testament seems to be a God of wrath and destruction. In the New Testament, He is a God of forgiveness. I don't think God changed but that man evolved. Is there anything in the Bible on this? Could you comment on what seems to be the different nature of the God of the Old Testament (punishing, judgmental, encourager of war, etc.) as compared with the loving, forgiving nature of Jesus in the NT?
Discussion: In Malachi 3:6, God himself says, "Surely I, the LORD, do not change." In the New Testament, James 1:16-17 gives us more light on God's unchangeable nature by saying, "…all good giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no alteration or shadow caused by change" (New American Bible.) Since both testaments agree that God stays God, we can be sure that Jesus Christ revealed to us the same living God who is and was and always will be.
To worship and obey God, we need to know what kind of God we have. i.e., Do we follow a God of wrath and anger or a God of forgiveness and love? Moses needed to know this too. When that great leader asked the Lord to identify himself, "God replied, 'I am who am.' Then he added, 'This is what you shall tell the Israelites: I AM sent me to you' " (Exodus 3:14, NAB.) The book of Exodus goes on to describe how Moses believed then obeyed God in leading the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt.
Before revealing the Ten Commandments though, God revealed more of himself to Moses. According to Exodus 34:6-7, "…the Lord passed before him and cried out, 'The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity, continuing his kindness for a thousand generations, and forgiving wickedness and crime and sin; yet not declaring the guilty guiltless, but punishing children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation for their fathers' wickedness!' " (NAB.) That Bible passage assures us that God is merciful, gracious, kind, and slow to anger, but a quick reading can make God come across as cruel or mean. Indeed, the old adage about the sins of the fathers being revisited upon the children came from taking part of the above passage out of context. Read in full, the verses might be paraphrased to say: God's kindness goes on and on for countless generations beyond the life of one believer, while the effects of sin in an unrepentant family continue only for a few generations. Â
Although God remains slow to anger, the Bible does not say God never has any cause for wrath. In finding how many such occasions had been recorded in scripture, an Internet search produced almost as many New Testament references to God's anger as the Old Testament did, but it's important to note that those were often warnings, rather than actual incidents. All total, the Revised Standard Version had about 60 combinations of the words "God" and "wrath" with less than a dozen references to "God" and "smote." To put that smiting into perspective though, the word "love" appears over 800 times in the Bible, which gives us a tiny glimpse of how very much God is smitten with love for us.
Sometimes love must be "tough" to bring about godly discipline, but our own poor choices carry consequences too. For example, II Chronicles 36:14-16 reports the sad conditions under which God's wrath typically occurred: "All the princes of Judah, the priests, and the people added infidelity to infidelity, practicing all the abominations of the nations and polluting the LORD'S temple which he had consecrated in Jerusalem. Early and often did the LORD, the God of their fathers, send his messengers to them, for he had compassion on his people and his dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, despised his warnings, and scoffed at his prophets, until the anger of the LORD against his people was so inflamed that there was no remedy" (NAB.)
In time, the remedy for sin came through Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, John 3:35-36 warns, "The Father loves the Son and has given everything over to him. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him." In revealing more about that wrath, I Thessalonians 5:9 says, "For God did not destine us for wrath, but to gain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ."
As we recall the salvation that comes through Christ, Christians often quote John 3:16, but to get a balanced view of God's wrath and love, we need to read through verse 21: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God" (NAB.)
God is light. God is love. Numerous Bible verses (especially I John 4:8) attest to this. Yet our God can and will express displeasure, dissatisfaction, and grief over the disloyalty and disobedience persistently shown by his people. If we've ever used "tough love" for the good of our children, we can see God's predicament, but we might also notice how a chastised child sometimes gets annoyed. So maybe we could consider who's furious with whom. Is God mad at us, or are we mad at him? Do we hide darkly behind unforgiving anger? Or do we walk, with faith and obedience, into the light of God's unending love?
