One God – Vengeful in the Old Testament, Loving and Forgiving in the New? – Greg Albrecht

Please follow and like us:
fb-share-icon
Tweet

Question:

How does a person reconcile the God of love and grace with the one described in the Old Testament as filled with rage, violence and wrath?  I must admit that this is why I do not like to read the OT as I can’t picture such an angry God.   It is just confusing to me is all. I am trying to read the Bible but the Old Testament just doesn’t make sense to me.

I don’t know if I have made any sense here, but after years of feeling that God was disappointed and angry with me for what I had done and that I was condemned to hell because of it, I sometimes wonder if the OT writers are writing the truth about how God really is. How can He be vengeful in the Old and a loving and forgiving God in the New?

Response:

You raise several excellent questions here, excellent in the sense that they are dilemmas that challenge, perhaps even confound so many people as they struggle with wrong-headed notions about God.  These are critically important questions.  

Any idea, image or perception of God that is not absolutely grounded in the New Testament revelation that God is love is off kilter at best, at worst completely erroneous and flawed.  The revelation that God is love was given to humanity in the person of Jesus, God in the flesh, who came in his incarnation as one of us, and revealed the primary truth and reality of God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) – God is love.  Thus, anything that God is said to do, or seen or understood to endorse or require, that is not true to this central and core revelation is suspect. 

Why was this not known or understood in the Old Testament (old covenant)?  Put another way, was God being less in the old covenant than honest by not revealing the totality of who he was and is?  That of course is a presumptuous charge toward God coming from a created human, who can only perceive eternity from the limitations of time and space, from the limitations of mortality – but it is still a question audaciously asked by humans.   And given what humans have been taught by some religious professionals, it is a perfectly understandable question.  

First – when we read the Bible there are several assumptions that lead us astray, so let us address them briefly:

  • 1. Since the God spoken of in the pages of the Bible, the God in the Old Testament and the God in the New Testament, differ from each other and seem to contradict one another a great deal, then for some reason there must be two Gods. 

Wrong.  God is one – a fundamental assertion made in both old and new covenants. 

  • 2. If God is one, yet three (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) as revealed in the New Testament, then the Father and Son must be different.  Wrong.  Father, Son and Holy  Spirit are one, harmoniously so in a way that no human harmony or unity can mirror, define or be experienced.
  • 3. Then why is God in the Old Testament violent and filled with wrath while God in the New Testament is love?  This is the central tenet of your query.  In the old covenant it seems God required that his people wipe out entire people groups, even the animals, while in the new covenant God kills no one, but rather dies for all.  In the new covenant he says turn the other cheek, do not respond to violence with violence and pray for your enemies – love your neighbor (which is anyone and everyone, not just people one likes to spend time with) as yourself.  Why?

Second – now we must briefly, for it is a huge topic, address the nature of the Bible.  Here is where many people err, including many religious professionals and leadership of denominations, etc.  Many believe the Word of God is a book, and that the book called the Bible is without error, it is perfect and never contradicts itself.  Wrong.  The Word of God, says the first chapter of John, is God himself, in the incarnation of Jesus, who is eternal, perfect, without flaw.  The Bible is a book – it is a book of words, some more central to the gospel than others.  It is a book written in a wide variety of literary genres – styles of writing.  Much of it is poetry, which of course features symbol and metaphor incapable of being “boiled down” to literal facts – just as God himself is transcendentally superior, immeasurably beautiful and “beyond” any way we humans have of measuring, absolutely defining, capturing or putting him in a box.  He is bigger than all that we can comprehend… including the pages of the Bible.

Third – the Bible is not inerrant and infallible – the Word of God alone, Jesus, is inerrant and infallible.   God never intended for the Bible to be holy, without human errors and flaws.  Had he intended the Bible to be perfect in every way then he would have written the Bible “in heaven” – that is, somewhere where perfection exists, as opposed to earth, where imperfection reigns supreme.  Further, after writing a perfect book (not involving any humans for as soon as God involves humans in anything then the product will not be absolutely perfect, holy, inerrant or infallible) then God would have translated it himself (again, not involving imperfect human translators) into every human language, then he would have printed it in heaven, and then mailed it via angelic messengers/postmen and postwomen if you like, so that every human on earth would receive a perfect, infallible, inerrant book.  But that is not the nature of the book we call the Bible.

Four – God used humans as authors and editors and translators.  These humans did their work within their culture and historical era, understanding as much as they could within that culture and historical era, but of course there ideas and perceptions, including those of God, were limited by their culture and historical era.  In the old covenant  God initially worked with only one people group in the writing, editing, translating and preserving of the Bible  Anytime one people group is involved in anything, they will be captives of their racial and nationalistic and religious assumptions, and some of those biases and prejudices will be a part of their perceptions, teachings and what they produce.  That was the case with the Bible

Five – God thus never promised that the Bible would be perfect, he never intended that the Bible would be perfect.  God did not prevent human errors, human bias, human perceptions from being a part of the Bible.  When humans perceive the Bible as perfect they are bound to misunderstand God.  In the old covenant the Messiah, the Savior, the Cross of Christ was in the future, and it was at best veiled by even the most perceptive prophets and authors.  Today, on the other side of the Cross of Christ we look back and we can, or at least we should see, the limitation of those before the Cross of Christ.   Thus, the new covenant interprets the old covenant, it uncovers it, it makes greater sense, it sheds Light on the shadows in which the people of the old covenant lived (as God intended – see Colossians 2:17 – and the greater context beginning in Colossians 2:6-17. 

Six – when God revealed himself to humanity in the old covenant, it was primarily, and with a few exceptions, almost exclusively to the Hebrew people.  He did not reveal all of his nature and attributes – only as much as he deemed necessary for that era.  He reveled himself in the old covenant through Moses, the patriarchs and the prophets.  But when he revealed himself more fully in the new covenant he came himself – he revealed himself in person, in the person of Jesus Christ.  Thus God progressively reveals himself in the Bible – indeed, it seems he does so in the relationship he offers to individual humans – progressively, as Peter says, as God’s children we grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.  And again, we thus read the Old Testament through the eyes, the revelation, the Light of the New Testament.

  • 4. Thus, and again this is but a brief discussion, when we read of  God ordering the armies of Israel to commit genocide in the Old Testament, from what he know progressively in the revelation of God in the flesh, from his cross, empty tomb and resurrection, we must ask whether human beings were ascribing their perceptions of God, saying that God wanted them to do what they had already done or what they wanted to do.   For again, God is one – he was the same in the past, he is the same now, and he will always be the same in the future – see Hebrews 13:8 and Revelation 1:8.

For a more detailed discussion of the important topics you raise, I have written a long article titled “When Did God Become a Christian?” – it is available on our website in our Free Resources under the topic of “Christianity”. 

We hope that our articles and resources bring comfort, hope, encouragement, and healing to our readers. If you’re experiencing that, please subscribe freely, share freely, and, if you’re able, please consider donating freely toward paying it forward by clicking the blue giving at the top of your screen.