Part 1: Introduction |  Part 2: Description | Part 3: Compassion | Part 4: Grace | Part 5: Patience | Part 6: Loyal Love | Part 7: Faithfulness | Part 8: Forgiveness | Part 9: Justice & Mercy

As we’ve noted earlier, this list of God’s core attributes is repeated throughout the Old Testament, all the way through the age of the prophets and to the return from Babylon. Interestingly, the prophets add a line to the description: “relenting of evil” (Joel 2.13) or “one who relents concerning calamity” (Jonah 4.2).

As the NASB makes clear in the Jonah passage, the word translated “evil” refers here not to moral evil, but to calamity or disaster. God had warned Israel that if they departed from him, he would send calamity their way (Dt 30.15-20). He warned of specific calamities: drought, famine, war, disease (Dt 28.15ff). And Israel played that script out multiple times.

But when his people repent, God relents. He restores the relationship, despite the offense.

Now, when we talk about God relenting, or repenting, or changing his mind, that raises all kinds of logical and theological questions. I plan to deal with that issue in a future post. For now, let’s just grant that the Scripture uses that kind of language about God, as astonishing as it is.

I’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t forgive people until they repent, because God doesn’t. Fair enough. But there are some further considerations to the point.

Since God is omniscient, he knows whether our repentance is sincere. Can we know that for certain?

No, we can’t. And interestingly, Jesus tells us to forgive people whenever they ask, with no reference to “sincerity” (Mt 18.22)—and frankly, if my brother asked me to forgive him 490 times for the same thing, I’d start to wonder whether he meant it. But Jesus says to forgive him anyway.

And, come to think of it, when we repent, God know whether we’re going to fail again (and usually, the answer is yes). And he forgives us anyway.

If God, whose plans are perfect, who is never surprised, can forgive and relent of planned disaster, what about us? We’re not omniscient, and our plans aren’t perfect, and we are often surprised. If God can relent, shouldn’t we?

Why not go to your enemy, and offer him your hand, your arms, your friendship? Why not take back the things you said, the threats you made?

Why not make the first move?

__________

The premise of this series is that we ought to treat others—all others—as God has treated us. Mockery, disdain, sarcasm, dismissal, ranting, vilification—God has never done that to us, although we have repeatedly deserved it for the way we’ve treated him.

No, God’s character won’t allow that. Just as he can’t lie, so also he can’t treat us in the ways we so naturally treat people we disagree with, or people we dislike, or people who lie about us or trivialize our concerns.

We need to be like him.

Pick somebody you really dislike—maybe a public figure, maybe a personal acquaintance.

And then think about how God would treat—indeed, has treated—him:

• Compassion
• Grace
• Patience
• Loyal love
• Faithfulness
• Forgiveness
• Justice with mercy
• Relenting of calamity

And do those things.

And to get really serious, pray that God would do those things for him too.

Maybe, one relationship at a time, we can be agents of peace rather than strife—lights in the world, instead of darkness.

If your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (Mt 6.23).

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash

Part 1: Introduction |  Part 2: Description | Part 3: Compassion | Part 4: Grace | Part 5: Patience | Part 6: Loyal Love | Part 7: Faithfulness | Part 8: Forgiveness

We’re exploring God’s foundational description of himself, on the assumption—well founded in Scripture—that we ought to treat others the way he does. We’re getting to the end of the list, where there’s a cluster of attributes that we really need to discuss together.

Exodus 34.7 puts it this way:

yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.

We’re tempted to find this troubling. God’s a hard master, demanding perfection and beating us when we fall short, and even bringing our grandkids into it.

Oh, that’s not what this passage is saying at all. Like all of God’s other attributes, this is a good one, one to delight in.

To begin with, let’s observe that he brings justice to the guilty. There’s no reason we ought to look askance on that. In fact, if you’ll think about it, we all want justice, when people have wronged us. The only situation in which we don’t want justice is when we’re the guilty one—or when of one our friends is.

Test yourself. Suppose someone committed a heinous crime against your family, and at his trial the judge said, “Look, I know you’re basically a good person. If you’ll promise not to do anything like this again, we’ll just forget it ever happened.”

How happy would you be?

Not at all. We want justice.

The world’s an unjust place. There’s abuse, and fraud, and falsehood, and violence, and murder. We have justice systems, but we often don’t get it right. We ought to do better. And it’s good—a delight—to know that there’s someone keeping records, who has the power to right all these wrongs, and who will certainly do so.

So the first clause is a good thing. God will right all the wrongs.

But what about the rest of it? What about visiting the sins of the fathers on the children? How is that just?

Well, God has designed the universe so that if you do right, things generally turn out better than if you don’t. (Yes, in a sin-broken universe it doesn’t always turn out that way, but that’s still very much the pattern.)

Now, suppose I kill somebody. I’m not the only one in my family who’s going to be affected by that. I’ll go to prison or even be executed, sure. But my wife will have to carry on without my help, and my children won’t have a Dad—and if they’re school age, they’ll face the reproach of classmates, and on it will go. Because of that trauma, there may well be ongoing effects in their children, and even in their grandchildren. Three or four generations.

God has designed the system that way, and the design encourages us to do the right thing. That’s a good thing.

But maybe there’s still a little itch inside you that wonders if he couldn’t have designed things better than this.

OK, it’s time to broaden the context.

The first time this principle is stated in the Bible is just a few chapters earlier, in the Ten Commandments. Here’s the specific wording:

I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, ⁶ but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments (Ex 20.5b-6).

“To thousands” of what? The context is clear: to thousands of generations.

How long is a thousand generations? 20,000 years? 25,000 years?

I’m a young-earth creationist. I don’t think the earth has even been here that long.

Yes, sin carries consequences that involve more than the sinner himself. But grace—that goes on forever. Where sin abounds, grace superabounds (Rom 5.20).

So here in Exodus 34, I think we can tie several clauses together—

• who keeps lovingkindness for thousands [of generations], …
• yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished,
• visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.

This is all one attribute: he maintains justice while extending mercy far beyond the reach of the most heinous sin. He does all things well.

And what of us, and the way we treat our enemies?

Justice. But superabounding mercy.

Part 10: Relenting

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash

Part 1: Introduction |  Part 2: Description | Part 3: Compassion | Part 4: Grace | Part 5: Patience | Part 6: Loyal Love | Part 7: Faithfulness

So far we’ve seen that God is compassionate, and gracious, and slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness, and abounding in truth. The next item in our list in Exodus 34.6-7 is “keeping lovingkindness for thousands,” but with your kind permission I’m going to skip that one and come back to it later, when we look into “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children.”

So we’ll move to the next clause, which states that God “forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin.” The statement seems clear enough, but there are things to note here that will enrich our understanding of its meaning.

I’d like to start with the end. Why doesn’t God just say that he “forgives sin”? Why does he pile on the synonyms? I think he does this for at least two reasons.

• First, repetition in most languages is a means
  of emphasis, and in Hebrew particularly. A common Hebraism is to repeat a word
  so as to say simply “very” or “surely.” There’s an example of this right at the
  beginning of Scripture, where God tells Adam that if he eats of the fruit from
  the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, ”dying you shall die” (Gen 2.17).
  Most English translations render that construction “You shall surely die” (KJV
  NKJV NASB ESV) or “You will certainly die” (NIV GW CSB). So perhaps here God is
  emphasizing the sinfulness of sin and the certainty of his willingness to
  forgive.
• But further, I think God is making the point
  that his forgiveness is as broad and deep and extensive as the very nature of
  sin itself. Cultures have lots of synonyms for words referring to concepts that
  they encounter a lot. There’s an old observation that
  Eskimos (Inuit) have lots of words for snow. As Nahum demonstrates, ancient
  Near Eastern languages had lots of words for locusts (Nah 3.15-17). And in both
  Hebrew and Greek, there are lots of words for
  sin. We humans have found that sin manifests itself in multiple forms and works
  with multiple methods and appeals to multiple human weaknesses. It’s a
  deep-seated, complex, exceedingly difficult problem.

The words God lists here are just 3 of many Hebrew words for sin. Each of these tells us a little more about the problem.

• “Iniquity” is ‘awon, used 232 times in
  the OT. It speaks specifically of being twisted, bent, or perverse, and it
  includes the guilt that comes from such perversity. Sin is brokenness, the kind
  that should be disgusting to us but sadly isn’t. It interferes with our
  designed function, much as a broken arm keeps the patient from writing or
  throwing or hugging in the way he was designed to.
• “Transgression” is pesha`. It speaks of
  crossing a line that shouldn’t be crossed, of transgressing a boundary, and
  thus of rebellion, acting willfully, brazenly, and obstinately against the
  rules (Is 57.4). This is the kind of behavior in children that makes the
  grownups really angry.
• “Sin” is chatta’, a word that emphasizes
  that the act is an offense, a violation, and deserves to be punished.

Working backwards through the phrase, we come to the verb. God “forgives” all these things. The root means to lift (2K 4.36) or to carry (Josh 3.6), and thus to carry away (Gen 27.3), to dispose of (Ex 28.38)—of sin, to forgive (Gen 50.17; 1S 25.28). This is a burden the forgiver bears; he is the one who takes action to remove the offense.

God forgives—carries away—our sins, in all their complexity and multiplicity and pervasive rottenness. He throws them behind his back (Is 38.17), to the bottom of the sea (Mic 7.19), as far as the east is from the west (Ps 103.12). He knows all about them, and he can remember them, but he will not (Jer 31.34). “Omniscient, all-knowing, he counts not their sum.”

We should do that too. We should move toward those who disgust us, who revulse us, inexorably drawn to the image of God in them—as God himself is—and act for their benefit in seeking to liberate them from the overwhelming burden of the complex sinful condition they bear.

Doing that is an act of worship.

Hating them isn’t.

Part 9: Justice & Mercy | Part 10: Relenting

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash

Part 1: Introduction |  Part 2: Description | Part 3: Compassion | Part 4: Grace | Part 5: Patience | Part 6: Loyal Love

So far we’ve seen that God is compassionate, and gracious, and slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness. Now we find that God is “abounding in truth” (KJV NASB) or “abounding in faithfulness” (ESV NIV).

Let me insert a little sidebar observation on what we’ve stumbled into.

The English versions differ substantively in what they say here. Truth and faithfulness are related in meaning, but they can be distinguished: truth is a state, and faithfulness is a character quality. Usually when translations have differences like this, there is one of two things going on—

• The Hebrew or Greek word, like pretty much all words, has multiple meanings, or nuances, or dictionary definitions, and in this context more than one of them would make sense—so the translators chose the one they thought was more likely. In other words, the meaning is ambiguous in the original language. This is a translation issue.
• There are two or more different Hebrew or Greek words in the manuscript copies we have, and the textual critics whom the translators are consulting disagree on which reading is more likely. This is a technical matter of textual criticism.

Now, most people don’t know the original languages and don’t have the expertise to make a judgment about translating a given word or choosing a given textual reading. But you’ve just seen that by comparing several English translations, we did notice that something was up—that there’s a question about the meaning of the phrase. (In this case it’s the former option—a translation issue—which we’ll get to in a minute.) And we didn’t need to know any Hebrew or Greek to recognize that there’s a question. Now we know to consult a commentary to find more information.

Do you see the value of using multiple translations? You get access to training and technical expertise that you yourself don’t have. So don’t ask which is the “best” translation. Use them all. (Yeah, except the heretical ones like that Jehovah’s Witness monstrosity.) Compare them. Think.

End of sidebar.

As I’ve implied already, the word truth here has a broad range of meaning. At its most literal, it speaks of firmness and consequently permanence, what we might call “long-lastingness” (e.g. Jer 14.13). More abstractly, it speaks of faithfulness—of sticking to a task or a promise or a commitment (Gen 47.29; Neh 7.2; Is 16.5), or of being genuine (Is 10.20; Jer 2.21; 28.9). And since a person’s promises are true if he keeps them, it means “correctness” (Gen 24.48; Pr 22.21) or more commonly “truth” (Gen 42.16; Dt 13.14; Pr 29.14; Is 43.9).

God abounds in this. Most simply, he speaks the truth; he cannot lie (Ti 1.2), and so his Word—the incarnate Christ (Jn 1.1) and the resulting inerrant record about him (Jn 16.13)—cannot be broken (Jn 10.35). Any statement you find in the Word—assuming you’re reading it as the Spirit intended*—you can take to the bank.

But God’s character, and the words describing it, are deeper and richer than that. He speaks the truth, yes, but more to the point here, he keeps his promises. He persists in the loyalties that he has established. We’ve developed that concept already in the previous phrase.

God has a relationship with you. And he will persist in that relationship to the end of time and eternally beyond, because that’s the kind of person he is.

And that means that to be like him, we’re going to have to tell the truth too. We’re going to have to regard our word as our bond, to keep our promises. When we sing of the grace “that saved a wretch like me,” we’re going to have to mean it, and we’re going to have to be gracious to other wretches, even when they’re still deep in their wretchedness, as we were when God found us.

I haven’t said yet what the actual Hebrew word is. It’s ‘emeth, which is related to the word ‘emunah, “faithfulness,” which is where we get our word “Amen”—“May it be so.”

Amen.

* I suppose that calls for a series here on hermeneutics, doesn’t it?

Part 8: Forgiveness | Part 9: Justice & Mercy | Part 10: Relenting

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash

Part 1: Introduction |  Part 2: Description | Part 3: Compassion | Part 4: Grace | Part 5: Patience

The fourth characteristic that God emphasizes about himself is that he is “abounding in lovingkindness.”

If you’ll compare the different ways that last word is translated, you find that it has a broad range of meaning and significant theological depth—

• KJV “goodness”
• NASB “lovingkindness”
• ESV “steadfast love”
• NIV “love”
• GW “always faithful”

In other passages it’s rendered widely: kindness, mercy, devotion, favor, loyalty.

Abraham’s servant says that God has “not forsaken his lovingkindness” to Abraham by revealing a wife for Isaac (Gen 24.27). What does that mean? God had promised Abraham an abundant offspring and had miraculously provided a son, Isaac. For the offspring to multiply, Isaac’s going to need a wife, which God has provided. This is more than simple kindness; it’s keeping a promise. It’s being faithful to the relationship that God himself has instituted with Abraham.

A generation later, Jacob says that his prosperity, after his having left home hurriedly and penniless, is evidence of God’s lovingkindness (Gen 32.10). Again, God is honoring his relational commitment to Abraham’s line.

On the far shore of the Red Sea, Moses sings that God has “led the people whom you have redeemed” through the sea “in your lovingkindness” (Ex 15.13).

So what does this word mean?

It speaks of being faithful to an existing relationship, of being loyal to a covenant.

It’s the couple who have loved and cared for one another without pause and without question through 63 years of marriage. It’s the soldier who steps forward to volunteer for a critical mission that will almost certainly result in both a strategic advance for his nation’s cause and his own death. It’s the pastor who serves the same little flock with little pay for his entire working life, arriving at the emergency room at 3 am in his pajamas to minister with his presence to suddenly childless parents.

It’s loyal, covenant-based love. No matter what.

We all want that, don’t we?

We want long-lasting and joyous marriages. We want elected officials to act for our benefit with no thought of their own. We want neighbors who will call the cops if something doesn’t look quite right. We want passing drivers to stop and ask if we need some help with the steaming engine, just because we’re all in this together.

But our experience poisons our hopes, because we’ve seen too many apparently happy marriages turn out to be secretly horrific, and politicians fit all too easily into the stereotype, and friends abandon us when we could no longer benefit them, and helpful strangers turn out to be predators.

We’re not loyal to our relationships. We’re not.

But God is.

Always.

He has made promises to you and me.

• He will be with us (Mt 28.20).
• He will hear our cries—and answer them (Jer 33.3).
• He will direct our steps (Pr 16.9).
• He will provide our needs (Mt 6.30).
• He will complete his work in us (Php 1.6).
• He will receive us unto himself (Jn 14.3).
• … and many, many more.

He has bound himself to us in a loving, covenant relationship—a marriage—and he will be faithfully committed to that relationship, come what may.

This is infinitely serious business. He’s all in.

He can’t act in any other way.

And what of us?

We, too, are in relationships.

• Those of us who are married have lifelong commitments to our spouses.
• Those of us who are parents have lifelong commitments to our children, and their children, and theirs.
• Those of us who are believers are in covenant relationship with the other members of our local churches—even the members we don’t like.
• For that matter, we’re bound in one body with all believers, of all theological stripes and all cultures and all generations.
• We’re bound in constitutional covenant with all the citizens of our own nation, regardless of party or accent or region.
• We’re bound in natural covenant relationship with all creatures in the image of God—humans—regardless of ethnicity or sinfulness.

God takes his relationships seriously, and he’s loyal to those in relationship with him. He acts in their best interest, even when he acts in wrath.

We should too.

Part 7: Faithfulness | Part 8: Forgiveness | Part 9: Justice & Mercy | Part 10: Relenting

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash

Part 1: Introduction |  Part 2: Description | Part 3: Compassion | Part 4: Grace

God’s primary description of himself begins with his compassion, and then his grace. Next is the phrase “slow to anger” (Ex 34.6). The KJV renders that as “longsuffering”; the God’s Word translation says “patient.”

The Hebrew phrase is picturesque; the two words literally mean “long of nostrils.” That is to say, it takes a long time for God’s nose to turn red with anger.

The phrase occurs 13 times in the Hebrew Bible. Moses uses it twice (Ex 34.6; Num 14.18) to describe God’s character. Four prophets—Jeremiah (Jer 15.15), Joel (Joel 2.13), Jonah (Jon 4.2), and Nahum (Na 1.3)—use it similarly. David makes the same statement 3 times (Ps 86.15; 103.8; 145.8), and Nehemiah closes out the Hebrew Scripture’s emphasis on the concept (Neh 9.17).

That’s 10 statements about God’s slowness to anger. (I’ll say more about the other 3 occurrences of the phrase in a bit.) If the Bible says something just once, we ought to take notice. But 10 times? That’s emphasis. God really wants us to see him as slow to anger.

That’s not the picture many of us have of God, especially of “the God of the Old Testament.” Oh, he’s a mean one, he is. He gets angry and strikes people dead. Korah, the rebel against Moses (Num 16.32)—but then, I suppose he deserved it. But what about Uzzah, the poor fellow just following David’s orders to take the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem for installation at the worship center there? The ox stumbled, and the wagon tilted, and Uzzah, just trying to protect the precious ark, reached out to steady it, and ZAP!—he’s dead (2Sa 6.7).

Looks a lot like God lost his temper and lashed out at somebody who was just trying to do what he was supposed to, right?

No.

Never.

We tend to get our ideas of God from our fathers. We remember when we were little, and we did something that made Dad mad, maybe without intending to, and he descended on us like Nebuchadnezzar on Jerusalem, and in a burst of anger he put us into a world of hurt for a few minutes. He just lost it, and it took him a while to cool down.

And then we overlay that personal experience on the Uzzah event, and we figure that God just lost it and lashed out, because that’s the way things go.

No.

God is our Father, but he is not our father. Your father, and mine, were fallen human beings, just like us—in fact we’re fallen because they were fallen. For most of us, our fathers did the best they could, but sometimes they failed.

God our Father is not like that, and it’s deeply unfair to impose our fathers’ failures on him.

He’s long of nostrils. He never “loses” his temper or “falls” into a rage. When he’s angry—and he often is, since he is “angry with the wicked every day” (Ps 7.11)—that anger has been building for a long time, and it is absolutely and perfectly justified. In the case of Uzzah, God was not surprised when he reached out to steady the ark. He had seen it coming literally forever. Uzzah, an Israelite man, knew better; he knew the Law, as all Israelite men did. He was not innocent. It’s surprising, frankly, that he was so far down the road to Jerusalem, in direct disobedience to God’s clear instructions about how the ark should be handled, before God struck him.

So no, God doesn’t lose his temper. He doesn’t fly into rage over the kinds of things that we do. He controls his anger perfectly and long, exercising it only purposefully and rightly and justly. He tolerated the vile sins of the Canaanites for 4 centuries (Gen 15.16)—during which time, apparently, they had warnings from priests of the Most High God (Gen 14.18)—before moving against them. He withheld judgment on millennia of human rebellion and violence and hate (Ac 17.30) before pouring out his wrath—and when he released that wrath, he did so with a precise surgical strike, focused perfectly on his willing Son, with absolutely no collateral damage (Rom 3.21-26).

You’ve made God angry, consistently and repeatedly. And yet you continue to enjoy his abundant grace with every breath. That’s the kind of person he is.

Now for those other 3 uses of the phrase. They’re about us. David’s son Solomon applies the “long nostrils” principle to people, noting that those who imitate God in this way are wise (Prov 14.29), peaceable (Prov 15.18), and powerful (Prov 16.32).

Reflexive anger is godless. Lashing out is hellish.

So don’t react to an infuriating meme with a “like and share if you want to make Nancy Pelosi lose her mind.”

Part 6: Loyal Love | Part 7: Faithfulness | Part 8: Forgiveness | Part 9: Justice & Mercy | Part 10: Relenting

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash