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

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

In his foundational self-description, the first thing God tells us about himself is that he’s compassionate. By nature, he feels deeply for the hurts and trials of his creatures—even the animals (Jon 4.11), but most especially those in his image.

He cares.

The second thing he tells us is that he’s “gracious” (Ex 34.6). We tell one another that he is, too; one of our most common names, John (and Jean or Joan or Johanna for women), comes from the Hebrew Johanan, short for Jehohanan, which means simply “Yahweh / Jehovah is gracious.” It’s same word used in all those OT refrains.

This isn’t the first time God has told us this about himself. The word occurs earlier in the Law, in Exodus 22.27, where God tells Moses that if a man’s clothing is illegitimately taken from him, and the man cries to God for help, “I will hear; for I am gracious.” The word occurs 12 more times in the Old Testament, and in every occurrence it’s describing the character of God. No other being is said to have this specific quality.

So what is it? What does the word mean?

In Exodus 22.27 it sounds a lot like compassion; a poor man is in desperate need, and God hears his cry. But I think it’s a step beyond compassion. Compassion is feeling strongly about a situation; it’s caring. Grace, on the other hand, is getting up and doing something about it. It’s intervening on behalf of those in need.

And since we’re all in need, being gracious is a commitment to actions of infinite scope and complexity. It’s a really big deal.

But there’s more. Since we’re all sinners, rebels against God, we really don’t deserve his intervention on our behalf. After all, we’ve declared ourselves to be his enemies.

And that means, in turn, that God gives us things, and does things for us, that we don’t deserve.

Now that’s grace.

I’ve posted before on the immensity and breadth and depth of God’s grace. These things ought to be at the forefront of our thinking; and I’ve noticed that people who reflexively think that way—gratefully—tend to approach the exigencies of life with considerably more confidence and even joy. The truth will do that for a person.

I suspect that some of you are thinking about my observation that in the Scripture only God is said to be gracious. Maybe that means we aren’t expected to be? Maybe we don’t have to give people things they don’t deserve?

Not so fast. For starters, we’re in the image of God (Gen 1.27), and we’re undergoing a process—sanctification—that’s designed to refine that image in us as we become more like Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit (2Co 3.18). So if God is fundamentally gracious, then we ought to seek to be as well.

Further, the Scripture gives us things to do that are gracious at the root. Jesus told us that the second great commandment is to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mt 22.39)—and Jesus surely knows that our neighbors aren’t deserving of that. And he told us to love our enemies, even those who abuse and mistreat us. Walking the second mile, giving our coat, and all that (Mt 5.38-48).

We’re supposed to give people around us—our neighbors—what they don’t deserve. That’s what grace is all about.

I’ve grown up in political conservatism—my parents were both employees, for a time, of the John Birch Society—and I’ve noticed that in conservatism there is a certain amount of social Darwinism. Individual responsibility. Your own bootstraps. Get a job, ya lazy bum.

And there’s a lot of truth to that. He who doesn’t work shouldn’t eat. The Bible says that (2Th 3.10). Personal responsibility is a thing.

But there’s also grace. We’re called to help people who don’t deserve or even want help. We’re called to lessen people’s pain, even when they brought it on themselves. We’re called to help the unloving, the hostile, the rebellious—the sponge, the lawbreaker, the entitled.

God has done that for us.

So what about those bums on the other side of the political divide?

Extend a hand. Recognize the image of God in them. Refuse to hate. Give them what they don’t have coming.

Grace.

Part 5: Patience | Part 6: Loyal Love | 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

In his primary description of himself, God includes a list of related attributes (Ex 34.6-7):

• Compassionate
• Gracious
• Slow to anger
• Abounding in lovingkindness
• Abounding in truth
• Keeping lovingkindness for thousands
• Forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin
• Not leaving the guilty unpunished
• Visiting the iniquity of fathers upon children

And in the parallel prophetic passages,

• Relenting of calamity

For easy comparison, I’ve posted a chart of the parallel passages here.

There’s a lot here that calls for investigation, rumination, and careful analysis. God describes himself in ways that emphasize tenderness without the weakness of permissiveness. We’ll take a few posts to cover this list, occasionally combining similar terms for efficiency and clarity.

We begin, as God does, with compassion.

The Hebrew word is closely related to the word for “womb”; it speaks of the intense feeling we get in our midsection when we’re deeply affected emotionally. We speak informally of being “punched in the gut” or “kicked in the stomach” when we received intensely emotional news.

Interestingly, the Gospels speak of Jesus as often feeling this way, of being “moved with compassion.”

• When he saw the people “as sheep having no shepherd” (Mt 9.36; Mk 6.34)
• When he saw a large crowd near the Sea of Galilee—whom he was about to feed miraculously (Mt 14.14; Mk 8.2)
• Similarly just before he later fed the 4000 (Mt 15.32)
• When he healed Bartimaeus and the other blind man just outside Jericho (Mt 20.34)
• When he saw the widow of Nain in her son’s funeral procession (Lk 7.13)

Paul, recognizing this characteristic of his Lord, speaks of longing for the Philippians “in the bowels of Jesus Christ” (Php 1.8 KJV).

God, knowing of people’s desperate needs, is moved with compassion for them. It’s part of his character; it simply can’t not happen. I’m tempted to say that he can’t help himself, but that language, taken literally, would imply some limitation on divine self-control—which of course is omnipotent and perfect. So let me say that just as the Bible says that God cannot lie (Ti 1.2)—because, as self-consistent, he cannot and will not violate his own nature—even so he cannot be uncompassionate.

And this characteristic of his takes us to unexpected places. The examples of Jesus’ compassion that I’ve listed above all involve people in great sorrow and need, and we can easily understand that. We like to think that in similar circumstances we too would do what we could to help. I write this post just after buying a tank of gas for a stranger with a sad story so he could get home.

[Sidebar: Sure, maybe he was lying. In these situations I don’t give cash; I offer to go with them to the gas station, or the restaurant, or the grocery store, or whatever, and buy them what they say they need. The shysters typically refuse and say they need the cash (for drugs, usually). This guy went with me and let me gas up his truck. So it looked legit to me.]

But keep in mind that Jesus knew what was in people’s hearts (Jn 2.25). He knew that the widow of Nain was a sinner. He knew that a lot of those 5000 and 4000 people were just following him to see him do tricks—and after he fed them, for the food (Jn 6.26). As he wept over Jerusalem, he knew that its inhabitants “killed the prophets, and stoned them who are sent to you!” (Mt 23.37; Lk 13.34).

And so it shouldn’t be surprising to us when we find God going to considerable trouble to compel a recalcitrant prophet to go on a journey of 500 miles to tell people he hated that God was going to judge them—not because he was going to judge them (though he eventually would, as Nahum records)—but because he knew that the prophet’s angry message would scare the dickens out of them and would result in their genuine repentance.

This compassionate God comes to Jonah, sulking on the hillside after the Ninevites’ repentance and consequent deliverance, and rebukes him from his own heart: “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand [i.e. babies], as well as many animals?” (Jon 4.11).

This is how you treat people you hate.

Indeed, this is how you feel about them.

Part 4: Grace | Part 5: Patience | Part 6: Loyal Love | Part 7: Faithfulness | Part 8: Forgiveness | Part 9: Justice & Mercy | Part 10: Relenting

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash

We’re polarized.

Yep.

And each side sees the other as the Ultimate Personification of Evil.

They’re bad people, you see. They want to destroy us and all that we hold dear.

No tactic is out of bounds in our desire to destroy them.

It’s war.

Bring it.

There were situations like this in biblical times: existential crises, where God’s people, and all they held dear—or should have held dear—was under assault by those who hated what they stood for, because they hated the God who had chosen them for himself.

The prophets called down God’s judgment on the nation’s enemies, and they didn’t mince words. The list of targets is long. It begins with Israel’s neighbors: Moab (Is 15-16; Jer 48); Edom (Jer 49.7ff; Ezk 25.12-14); Ammon (Jer 49.1-6; Ezk 25); Damascus / Syria (Is 17.1-3; Jer 49.23-27; Amos 1.3-5); Tyre (Is 23). And then it extends to more distant kingdoms that are even more of a threat because of their hegemonous power and reach: Egypt (Is 19; Ezk 29-30); Babylon (Is 13-14, 46; Jer 50-51); and Nineveh / Assyria (Nahum).

Especially Assyria. They’re the worst.

No one in the ancient world, or perhaps since, has exceeded the Assyrians in their gleeful cruelty to their defeated enemies. In Iraq today is the site
of Calah, the capital city chosen by the Assyrian ruler Ashernasirpal II, who reigned in the early 9^th century BC. There in the Temple of Ninurta is inscribed Ashernasirpal’s own official account of his victories:

I stormed the mountain peaks and took them. In the midst of the mighty mountain I slaughtered them; with their blood I dyed the mountain red like wool. … The heads of their warriors I cut off, and I formed them into a pillar over against their city; their young men and their maidens I burned in the fire.

I built a pillar over against the city gate and I flayed all the chiefs who had revolted and I covered the pillar with their skins. Some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes and others I bound to stakes round the pillar. I cut the limbs off the officers who had rebelled. Many captives I burned with fire and many I took as living captives. From some I cut off their noses, their ears, and their fingers, of many I put out their eyes. I made one pillar of the living and another of heads and I bound their heads to tree trunks round about the city. Their young men and maidens I consumed with fire. The rest of their warriors I consumed with thirst in the desert of the Euphrates.

Hulai, their governor, I flayed, and his skin I spread upon the wall of the city.

Scholar Jack Finegan observes that “the quotations just given are typical of many more which can be read in the annals of this king.”

Now those are some seriously evil people. Existentially so.

Why am I telling you all this? What’s the point?

It’s this. It was to this people, this nation, that God sent a prophet to declare judgment.

Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it?

You know the story well. The prophet’s name is Jonah, and after considerable initial reluctance, Jonah finally arrives at Nineveh, the current capital city, and gleefully preaches the announcement of oncoming doom.

And then, in his view, everything goes seriously awry.

Nineveh repents (Jon 3.5). From the king on down (Jon 3.6-8).

Well, this wasn’t the plan. Not in Jonah’s mind, anyway. There’s nothing in Jonah’s message (Jon 3.4), or in God’s instructions to him (Jon 1.1-2; 3.1-2), that offered any hope of repentance. Jonah could easily have argued that repentance was impossible and in any event would not have been accepted.

But the Assyrian king hoped for better things. “Perhaps,” he said, “God may turn and relent and withdraw His burning anger so that we will not perish” (Jon 3.9).

And you know what?

Jonah knew that too. “I knew,” he said to God, in frustration and anger, “that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity” (Jon 4.2).

And Jonah was not one bit happy. He hated these people. And he had perfectly good reasons to.

Where did Jonah get the idea that God was gracious and compassionate, even to hated people?

God had told his people that. Repeatedly.

Next time we’ll look at what he had told them, and under what circumstances. And then we’ll spend a few posts learning what it all means, for us, and for all those people we hate.

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 | Part 10: Relenting

Photo by Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash