Although God is rightly jealous of false gods, he is also merciful
We have seen in previous posts in this series that God is rightly jealous when people worship idols and make created things their ultimate priority, rather than making God their chief concern in life. Nevertheless, we see in the life of Abraham that God will forgive those who have lived in such idolatry.
Abraham grew up in idolatry
Scripture says that before God intervened in Abraham’s life, he, his father Terah, and his brother Nahor served other gods (see Joshua 24:2).
Fathers teach their children to worship their idols. Scripture says Terah raised his family in Ur, a large, prosperous city on the banks of the Euphrates that archeologists have found had a temple to the moon god. So Abraham grew up in an idolatrous environment, with statues of idols enshrined in his home, with regular visits with his father to the temples of false gods, eating meals and performing sacrifices in home and temple dedicated to these gods. This was his life from the cradle and through his formative years as a toddler, boy, and teen. Abraham grew up worshiping idols.
But God had designs on him. Sometime after Abraham reached manhood, God first revealed himself to him when he lived in Ur, before he and his family moved to Haran and Abraham later moved to Canaan. In Acts 7:2–4 the martyr Stephen says of this event:
“The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran. ‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’ So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran.”
This meeting in Ur must have turned Abraham from idols to the one true God.
Repentance is not automatic
But as Israel showed above, even after extraordinary encounters with God, turning from idols to God is not automatic, as we might suppose. Millions of Israelites saw how God judged the Egyptians and their idols with ten plagues, saw the Red Sea part and walked through it on dry ground, saw the pillar of cloud and fire leading in their journey, saw how God provided water and manna in the wilderness, saw God’s stormy glory on Mount Sinai, and heard God’s voice announcing the Ten Commandments. Yet after a lull in the action they quickly made a golden calf and held an idolatrous party.
Just because people receive objective evidence of the one true God does not mean they follow him.
But Abraham did. He repented of idolatry, and God forgave him.
If we repent of loving anything more than God, he will also forgive us.
Does your view of God’s love agree with the Christian gospel? If not, do you still think you’re right? How can you be so sure? Have you ever been wrong about anything? What happens if you’re wrong about God?
If you are not a
Christian, the good news of the Christian gospel is that God loves you. Scripture
says, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes
in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 ESV).
But there may be a
problem. He loves you in a way that is probably different than you think.
In this article I contrast four common assumptions about God’s love with what the gospel teaches.
1. The common view of God’s love
is that it is unconditional. In fact, God’s love is both unconditional
and conditional.
If God’s love is unconditional, that means no matter what
you do he feels good about you, puts no conditions on you, and requires nothing
from you. He loves like the stereotypical mother who loves her son even if he
has done horrible things and is sitting in prison.
The truth is God both loves us no matter what and requires a
response from us if we are to know him.
Scripture teaches this fact in the most famous verse in the
Bible about God’s love: John 3:16–18:
“16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his
only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever
believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned
already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
Here we see the unconditional side of God’s love: he
gave his only Son to save the people of the world from perishing.
Still, the conditional side of God’s love is, he
requires that people believe in Jesus. Whoever refuses to believe in Jesus is “condemned”
(verse 18 above).
2. The common view of God’s love
is that it is not judgmental. In fact, God’s love is both non-judgmental
and judgmental.
No one enjoys feeling guilty. No wrongdoer wants to be held
accountable. No one wants to be judged by others. In particular, no one wants
to be judged by an all-knowing, perfectly righteous God.
Consequently it has become popular in our time to think of
God as someone who loves us so much that he does not judge us. He doesn’t tell
us we’re doing wrong, doesn’t make any rules, doesn’t punish anyone, especially
in the areas of sexual practices, marriage and family choices, and pleasure-seeking.
There is truth to the idea that God has a non-judgmental
side. Jesus said, “I did not come to judge the world but to save the world”
(John 12:47). John 3:17, quoted above, says, “God did not send his Son into the
world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through
him.” Jesus was “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11:19). Jesus
said he came “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).
And since the time of Jesus, those Christians who have
properly understood the Lord’s teaching have related to non-Christians in the
same way.
However, we take this truth completely out of context if we
assume it is the whole truth on the subject. John 3:16–18, quoted above, says
that those who persist in unbelief will be “condemned.”
Jesus continually warned people about God’s coming judgment.
(For example, see Matthew 7:21–23; Matthew 12:37; Matthew 25:31–46; Mark 9:43)
What we find when we read the whole New Testament is that
humanity is living in a window of opportunity when God is offering grace and
mercy to sinners through faith in Jesus, but this season will someday end. The Scripture
says, “‘In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have
helped you.’ Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of
salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). God is the righteous and just judge of his
creation, and he has not done away with calling all people to account for
evildoing. Rather, he is largely delaying judgment to the day called the Final
Judgment (see Revelation 20:11–15; Romans 14:10–12; 2 Corinthians 5:10).
3. The common view of God’s love
is that he is not angry. In fact, God is both patiently gracious and rightfully
angry with non-Christians.
No one wants to be around an angry person, especially if he
is angry at you. Therefore it is not pleasant to think that the almighty ruler
of everything is angry. When we think of the God who describes himself as love
(1 John 4:8), we might assume that he is continually quiet, peaceful, benign,
gentle, humble, comfortable to be around no matter what you think, say, or do.
And God is in fact the “God of peace” (Romans 15:33). He
hates violence (Genesis 6:11–13). Jesus said, “I am gentle and lowly in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29). In one of the most
important revelations in the Bible, God described himself to Moses as “merciful
and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and
sin” (Exodus 34:6–7). He is rich in “kindness and forbearance and patience”
(Romans 2:4).
But the fact that God is “slow to anger” (see above) does
not mean he never gets angry. There would be something wrong with a God who did
not feel anger at the sort of evil people do to each other in this troubled
world. (Do you ever get angry at evildoers, especially those who wrong you?)
The Bible says, “Whoever believes in the Son [that is, Jesus]
has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath
of God remains on him” (John 3:36).
There we see the phrase “wrath of God.” The wrath of God is
real. The Bible speaks of it repeatedly in both the Old and New Testaments (for
example, Nahum 1:2; Ephesians 5:6; Romans 1:18; Revelation 6:15–17; 19:15).
Jesus can remove God’s wrath from us, but if we refuse to submit to Jesus, God’s
wrath “remains on” us (John 3:36), and someday we will experience it in full,
unending measure.
4. The common view of God’s love is that he accepts everyone. In fact, he accepts everyone who accepts Jesus, but he rejects those who persist in rejecting Jesus.
We all want
acceptance. Rejection is extremely painful. And so, in our culture we value
inclusion and bristle at exclusion. We pass laws to ensure equal opportunity
for all.
One of the most attractive truths about God is how accepting he is of those commonly rejected. He turns the world upside down, gladly receiving the poor, the weak, the failures, the sick, the old, the young, the people of any color or religious or family or sexual background, the ignorant, the uneducated, the marginalized, the helpless, the powerless, the needy, the meek, the unattractive, the awkward, the undeserving, the people with a criminal record. These are God’s kind of people because they are often humble and grateful for the Lord’s gifts.
Scripture says, “God
chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in
the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world,
even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human
being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:27–29).
And one of the
astounding truths of the Christian gospel is that the holy God who judges all
people will gladly accept anyone who will turn to him in repentance and through
faith in Jesus Christ, no matter what wrongs they have committed or how they
have broken bad. Scripture says of Jesus, “He came to his own, and his own
people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed
in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:11–12).
God will accept all who
receive—accept—Jesus as their Lord and Savior, turning from their evil ways and
believing what he says.
However, God also
rejects people. He rejects those who reject the gracious gift of his beloved
Son, whom the God the Father lovingly gave to an evil world, whom he mercifully
gave to suffer and die for our evil thinking, evil speaking, and evil doing. We
deserved only condemnation; he gave a way to have forgiveness.
But he limits this
gift to those who will turn to him in repentance and believe in his Son.
Those who reject
God’s gift have chosen the alternative, which is to get what they deserve,
which is holy justice. So, every person has the choice to receive mercy or
justice.
Scripture says, “Whoever
believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not
believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony
that God has borne concerning his Son. And this is the testimony, that God gave
us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life;
whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:10–12).
Jesus said, “I am
the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through
me” (John 14:6).
Our way and God’s way
Our way: We want God to love people in a sentimental way.
God’s way: He is love, and he is God. He has revealed in the gospel how his perfect love works. God’s love is not sentimental, but holy and righteous and entirely good.
Life principle: Those who are not God, those who are imperfect themselves in love, those who are morally and spiritually broken, those who often fail to love the people around them, should not presume to tell God how to love. We need to humble ourselves and acknowledge that God is infinitely greater in every way than we are, and be grateful for his sacrificial, merciful love. We don’t deserve it, but God has graciously offered salvation, at the cost of great suffering to himself (his torture and death on the cross). If we want his mercy instead of his justice, then we need to accept his love on his terms. You can’t come to your Creator, Sustainer, and Lord on your terms.
Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)
