Did God 'Get Saved'?

     "So what happened to God? Did he get saved somewhere between Malachi and Matthew? Had he reinvented himself into a nicer, gentler God? Of course not! He is unchanging, the same throughout all eternity." (He Loves Me, p. 30, by Wayne Jacobsen).

     I have been re-reading He Loves Me of late, and I laughed out loud at Wayne's question about God "getting saved" between Malachi and Matthew. But our laugh at such a thought is a "nervous laugh" if we are honest, isn't it? How do we explain the various pictures of God we find in the Bible, some of which seem contradictory? Is He a God of wrath and judgment or a God of love or both? Clearly, I can't begin to answer this question with much depth in a blog. Instead I recommend that you read Wayne's book if you haven't already done so--it answers this question far better than I ever could! And of course we always need to remember that Jesus is the last Word in terms of what God is like. God is like Jesus, period. So if you want to know what God is like, ask Holy Spirit to guide you into Truth as you read the Gospels and follow Jesus (I have written about this before).

     But coming back to our question, I would like to suggest a few things here that may help you understand why there seems to be different pictures of God in the Bible (especially in the Old Testament). See what you think of my ramblings.

     First, throughout the Bible the true God, the God of love, is clearly revealed in little glimpses, starting with the creation story which tells us we were created to be in loving relationship with Him and that when He finished creating all things He declared it to be "Very good." And many more sightings of this God who is love are sprinkled throughout the Old Testament. We see Him in the frequently repeated phrase first given in Moses' encounter with His glory (goodness) in Exodus 34:6-7 "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin." We also meet this loving and patient God again and again in the prophets, as we see God's anguished heart of love for His people (perhaps nowhere more clearly than in Hosea, but elsewhere too). We also see it in His appeal to His people to love Him ("You shall love--not serve or fear--the LORD your God..."). So even in the rather "mixed" picture of God in the OT we find a consistent picture of who He really is peeking out at us time and again.

     Second, and this is a real key, I think, God has always chosen to communicate to human beings at the level of understanding and in the language of the culture and era in which they live. Although He Himself is not limited, the humans He is communicating with are limited in their ability to understand things based upon the context of what the people can understand at the time. The people who lived in the time of the Patriarchs, the time of the Exodus, even up to post-exilic times, lived in an incredibly vicious and barbaric world. It was a world so twisted by evil that children were routinely abused and sacrificed to "gods," where pregnant women were ripped open during war, and where the concept of "loving your enemies" was inconceivable. Even if God had said this, or described Himself as Jesus revealed Him to be, those who heard it would have had no "vocabulary" to understand it. You can't teach quantum physics to a two year old, you cannot discuss ethics with a toddler, can you? They simply don't have the ability or language to "hear" what you are saying. Indeed, love expressed to young children is often misunderstood by them. A deeply loved three year old child may still say at times, "Daddy hates me" because Daddy has set loving boundaries in place by saying no to something that will harm him/her. Perhaps this is what sometimes happens in the OT. For example, I don't think Joshua and the Israelites could have heard or lived out God's real heart for the people of Jericho. Picture Joshua scratching his head as God tells him, "What I really want you to do is love these people into a relationship with me."!! Nope...there simply wasn't the capacity to understand this or put it into practice in that season of human history. Neither was there vocabulary or understanding for God's people under the Old Covenant to grasp God's love with consistency, but rather as with a toddler, even God's loving acts were misunderstood and misinterpreted.

      So it was that "in the fullness of time" (Galatians 4:4) God sent His Son, the Word, as the revelation of Who He really is. Only in Jesus' day was it finally possible for at least a few people to hear and understand, "Love your enemies... because that is what your Father does." Only in Jesus' day was the "toddling" human race (a few of them, at least) ready to understand a God who loved them unconditionally and invited them back into relationship with Him. There is more here, of course, but I must keep this short.

     But, you may say, even Jesus says some pretty hard things and expresses anger towards those who are hard-hearted. Yes, that is true. But if you look carefully, you will see that Jesus reveals to us that God's anger is the anger of love, not of selfishness or rejection. It is the anger of a parent who sees His children doing things that harm themselves and others, not the anger of a grouchy deity that can't wait to punish his subjects. Any healthy parent knows what it is to get angry because of love for a child! Think about it. (One great illustration of this type of loving anger is found in the Visual Bible version of Matthew, with Bruce Marchiano, where Jesus is filled with grief, not wrath, as He declares the "woes" to the Pharisees and where Jesus weeps as he tells Judas, "Yes, it is you!" If you can watch these scenes and "get it," you are on your way to knowing what God is really like, I think! )

     So why is all of this important? Two reasons come to mind: first, it affects our relationship with God, second, it affects our relationships with others. As Wayne so masterfully points out in his book, it's not possible to have a tender, loving relationship with a God of wrath. It is love alone that can invite us into relationship and into intimacy. Relationships cannot be coerced or manipulated, especially not by fear! Second, it's important because we become like the God we worship. Our relationships with others hinge upon our knowing God as perfect love. The world has already experienced more than enough angry "Christians" (who are indeed like the "god" they know, sadly enough). God longs for us to know Him in His love so that we reflect accurately the One who is "compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love."

     So for me, at least, when I see something in Scripture that doesn't fit with who Jesus revealed Father to be, I simply think "toddler" :-) and return to Jesus' words, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father." That might not work for everyone, but for someone like me, it'll have to do.

Tom, one of Abba's children