Since the beginnings of Christian theology, people have recognized the tension between some of the violent portraits of God in the Old Testament versus the revelation of God in Christ.
We like to pretend that these views are not contradictory. We’ve created a dance of fancy theological footwork to merge the image of violence with the image of peace. We try to say it’s not “contradiction”, and use words like “paradox” and “mystery” instead. We say things like “God’s ways are higher than our ways.”
All the while, we know it doesn’t add up. The reality is that we see two opposing portraits of God in the scriptures: a violent God of wrath slaughtering his enemies and commanding his people to do the same, and Jesus… saying his Father is kind to the ungrateful and wicked, saying he loves his enemies and commanding us to do the same.
While I can’t claim to perfectly resolve this dilemma, my goal today is to provide a compelling case for why Jesus is, as Paul describes, “the image of the invisible God,” and THE standard by which all other images of God must be held accountable.
A God Made In Our Image
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” – 1 John 4:18
For a while now, I’ve been trying to sift my way out of all the confusion that comes from a flat reading of the Bible, where everything every biblical author over thousands of years says about God is equally true.
With such a conglomeration of opposing divine portraits, I had no peace of mind. I never knew how God felt about me. He loves me infinitely but also plans to destroy me if I don’t live right? This view held me in fear my whole life. In fact, the majority of people I see holding this view are also enslaved by fear, incapable of thinking reasonably about the nature of God or love.
“God’s love is a different kind of love then ours” is confusing and just another way of saying God isn’t loving. If we remove divine love from what we relate to as love, then it becomes something else and there is no use in calling it love. Such “love” has no power to cast out fear.
Today and through history, I see the this dichotomous view of God breeding self-righteousness and fear. I see people using whatever portrait of God they can find on the biblical smorgasbord of divine portraits to excuse whatever kind of violent and unloving attitude they have against people they hate or disagree with. I see condemnation of others who have different views as “heretics” and no general consensus on the truth of God’s nature.
The Bible has been used throughout history to excuse slavery, war, genocide, torture, vengeance, capital punishment, and the superiority complex of the “chosen”. The reality is that all of this can be found in the Bible. And yet, these things are the opposite of Jesus.
This is not an exclusively religious problem, nor is it a reason to think low of the Bible. Atheists are good at pointing out the violence in the Old Testament and making the Bible into an immoral, unethical book. However, the violence of the Bible is a human problem, a case study in primitive ethics and human violence which were projected onto “the gods” throughout history, our God included among them.
The Bible reveals anthropology just as much as it reveals theology.
The Bible shows the Spirit at work within our messy societal evolution, as he progressively leads us out of our delusion and into the revelation of Christ. I believe the Bible reveals that God’s love is big enough to allow humanity’s violent projections, as he works with us where we are at to bring us into a higher revelation of truth and love. After all, the Bible also inspires the most powerful visions of compassion, social justice, kindness, peacemaking, and love of enemies.
So I’ve had to wrestle into a new understanding of God, where the higher way revealed by Jesus trumps the violent projections of mankind onto the God of their forefathers. I have resolved to simply focus on Jesus, since I believe he is the highest revelation of God – a God who gives me peace and hope and yet never lets me be comfortable in sin or apathy. A God who demonstrates reckless, furious, self-giving love and pro-active empathy for humanity and is dedicated to justice for the oppressed and victimized. A God who is with us and for us. A God like Jesus.
There are several ways that we can make a God of our own liking instead of the one found in the gospels. Many accuse those who believe in a nonviolent God of making a God in their own image, but those who believe in a nonviolent God are getting their views first and foremost from Jesus, who as Puul describes, is the perfect “image of the invisible God.” Since their faith is based first and foremost in Christ rather than the Bible – since they are called “Christians” rather than “Biblians”, this is commendable.
Yes, we get Jesus from the Bible, but on this matter Brennan Manning hit the nail on the head:
I am deeply distressed by what I can only call in our Christian culture the idolatry of the Scriptures. For many Christians, the Bible is not a pointer to God but God himself. In a word – bibliolatry. God cannot be confined to a leather-bound book. I develop a nasty rash around people who speak as if mere scrutiny of its pages will reveal precisely how God thinks and precisely what God wants.
The four Gospels are the key to knowing Jesus. But conversely, Jesus is the key to knowing the meaning of the gospel – and of the Bible as a whole. Instead of remaining content with the bare letter, we should pass on to the more profound mysteries that are available only through intimate and heartfelt knowledge of Jesus.
– Brennan Manning, The Signature of Jesus, 1996, p. 174-175
It is never okay to quote the Old Testament to endorse something that Jesus clearly forbids.
Those who easily dismiss and rationalize away the radical, counter-cultural teachings of Christ by quoting random Old Testament scriptures are not followers of Jesus; they are followers of whatever they happen to get from the myriad of conflicting images they can find in the Bible.
If someone cuts them off in traffic, maybe they can follow the “love your enemy” verse, but if someone physically threatens them, it’s time to take their pick from the smorgasbord of examples of retribution in the Old Testament (or at least the apocalyptic symbolism of the book of Revelation!). By doing this, they are able to create a God exactly in their own image by choosing whatever image of God fits what they need in the moment.
We have done this all throughout history. As Brian Zahnd so aptly put:
Even if we restrict our inquiry into the nature of God to the Bible, we are likely to find just the kind of God that we want to find. If we want a God of peace, he’s there. If we want a God of war, he’s there. If we want a compassionate God, he’s there. If we want a vindictive God, he’s there. If we want an egalitarian God, he’s there. If we want an ethnocentric God, he’s there. If we want a God demanding blood sacrifice, he’s there. If we want a God abolishing blood sacrifice, he’s there. Sometimes the Bible is like a Rorschach test — it reveals more about the reader than the eternal I AM.
– Brian Zahnd, from his forward to A More Christlike God by Brad Jersak
A nonviolent God is really hard to make in your own image, particularly because all humans naturally see violence as an acceptable or even glorious means of shaping the world. Violence is the foundation of civilization and comes instinctively to us. This is what is so ironic about the accusation that believing in a nonviolent God is making a God in our own image.
If we want a God in our own image, a nonviolent God is NOT the way to go.
Jesus says God loves his enemies, and that we are to emulate him in this. If that does not rule out God killing and torturing his enemies, then there is no reasonable thing we can conclude from Jesus telling us that God loves his enemies, nor is there any example we can follow as to what loving one’s enemies might actually look like.
Jesus tells us to be like our Heavenly Father who is “kind to the ungrateful and wicked”, and THEN we will be his true children.
Old Testament Portraits Vs. Christ
“Kill them all. Men, women, children, and babies. Show them no mercy.” – God in Deuteronomy 7 and 1 Samuel 15
“Love your enemies. In so doing, you will be like your Father, who is kind to the wicked. Be merciful as your Heavenly Father is merciful.” – Jesus in Luke 6
Here we have juxtaposed two images of God. One is an image of God in the Bible from thousands of years before Christ and one is the words of Christ himself who is “the image of the invisible God” and the “exact representation of God’s being.” Like it or not, this demonstrates a black and white contradiction.
The answer is not to throw out the Old Testament, as Marcion did in the 2nd century. Because the Old Testament has the second voice too: an ever progressing understanding of Gods unconditional love – how he pleads the cause of the victim and hates violence.
Rather, the answer is to acknowledge the obvious problem and recognize two views of God wrestling with each other in the people of God and the writers of scripture, culminating in the higher way revealed in Christ.
The Son, not the Bible, is the perfect representation of the Father. You cannot overemphasize Jesus. You cannot believe in Jesus too much. Don’t try to “balance” Jesus with other stuff. Believe in him. This is the Son, with whom God is well pleased. Listen to him!
The writings of numerous authors over the changes of thousands of years within one religious tradition which we call “the law and the prophets” or “the Old Testament” by no means presents a univocal view of God. There is a conversation going on – a progressive, evolving understanding of the divine. Later writings sometimes critique earlier writings, and later prophets critique earlier prophets.
Just as we see the progression and evolution of ideas and awareness throughout human history, so too do we see a progression in the Jewish people’s revelation of God.
When the time was right, the Messiah came forth into history, and while many prophecies foretold him, he represented the fullness of truth in a way that went far beyond the limited, immature framework Israel had received and processed revelation through. Christ respected the law and the prophets because he recognized and affirmed the progressive revelation of God, and they, through the limited framework they knew, were inspired by the Spirit to come into agreement with the righteousness and truth of God being established on the earth.
Jesus was the fulfillment of this progressive revelation. This is why he said in Matthew 5:18, “For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”
In Christ, the Law was fulfilled. And in Christ, the prophets’ framework of righteousness and truth being established through violence became an allegory for the “violent” aggression of God’s inescapable love.
The law of Moses helped humanity progress out of the law of the jungle – the primal, survivalist humanity bent on conquest, where the powerful subjugated the weak. A more primitive humanity which followed the survival instincts of conquest needed a strict code of conduct, with the threat of punishment, in order to progress. It was their paradigm. It’s what they understood.
This is the beginning of bringing humanity out of a reality where violence was the foundation. The law was a product of its time, and therefore reflects that time. Its values were actually quite progressive for the day they were written. It served as a stepping stone. It sent them on a trajectory towards a societal order that valued justice for all instead of survival of the fittest.
As Israel progressed, we see the prophets giving an increasing voice to the oppressed. We see mercy and justice becoming the greater focus. We see the vision of a tribal God who demands sacrifice fading and becoming the God who “desires mercy and not sacrifice” (a phrase Jesus quoted twice) – a God who loves the nations and desires to be a father to all peoples, just as Abraham had envisioned in the beginning.
While the law put us on a progressive trajectory, it was ultimately unable to usher in the true image of God. Only love could do that. Only love incarnate could show us that.
The law therefore set us on a trajectory towards societal order and justice, finally concluding in the revelation of our need for the rebirth experience through Christ. The law is therefore perfected in love. The law is fulfilled by the indwelling Christ who through us shapes a new humanity – the kingdom of God. Those who are led by the Spirit of grace are revealed as the children of God.
As Peter Enns says:
The New Testament leaves behind the violent, tribal, insider-outsider, rhetoric of a significant portion of the Old Testament. Instead, the character of the people of God–now made up of Jew and Gentile–is dominated by such behaviors as faith in Christ working itself out in love, self-sacrifice, praying for one’s enemies and persecutors.
Having a “biblical” defense for anything is easy. You can have a solid biblical defense for slavery, genocide, war, polygamy, nationalism, sexism, and racism. But when we hold these things accountable to the image of God revealed in Christ, we find them to fall short.
When people hold the nonviolent teachings of Jesus to be the truest image of God, it doesn’t make sense to say, “You’re trying to make God into your own image! His ways are higher than ours!” In truth, these short-tempered, violent, demanding portraits of God look strikingly similar to you and me, or at least, how we would be without Jesus.
It seems that the God many of us believe in needs to ask Jesus into his heart!
God’s Ways Are Higher
Violence is not a way that is higher than man. Violence is exactly like us. It is perfect altruism that is so much higher than our ways and our thoughts.
A God who slays his enemies, we can relate to, but a God who dies for his enemies… that is incomprehensible.
And a God that commands us to do the same? This is where it starts getting uncomfortable for us.
Jesus is the way of God that is so much higher than sinful man. In fact, in Isaiah, when God declares that his ways are higher than ours, it is in the context his lovingkindness and mercy, which is so unlike our human ways.
“’Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:7-8
The chapter literally goes on and on in extravagantly describing the outlandish lovingkindness that God has for us, detailing the overflowing peace and joy we’ll have – for the mountains will burst forth in joy before us and the trees will clap their hands for us – when we turn back to him.
So how are God’s way higher than ours? He has outrageous mercy and he freely pardons.
In fact, when Jesus finishes teaching us to love and do good to our enemies, he then says, “Then you will be children of the MOST HIGH who is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” This is the only place Jesus calls God the “Most High”. In other words, you can’t get any higher above human thought than this, and it is against all natural violent human instincts of selfishness and survivalism and revenge.
This reveals, without question, God’s core essence of love: the Most High is kind to his enemies. If someone were to strike God on the cheek, God would turn to them the other cheek. If someone were to kill God, God would not fight back. He would submit. And his submission would be his triumph over all powers. This is Jesus. This is the way of the cross. This is the high way of God.
Allow me to suggest that God never deviates from this highest way. God never deviates from being like Jesus. God is the high way. God is like Jesus.
The title “Most High” is used in the Old Testament to speak of God’s power, particularly his power over the nations as well as over all other powers and “gods”. Jesus usually spoke of God in terms of his Abba, Father, but when Jesus speaks of God in terms of his power as the “Most High”, he does so in terms of loving enemies and being kind to the ungrateful and wicked. This is typical of Jesus – subverting our ideas about God and about power.
“But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.” – Luke 6:35
This is how God is the Most High. This is how God has power over the nations and above all spiritual powers: God loves his enemies and is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. In the way of the world, power is who has the biggest muscles, the biggest bombs, the most resources that can do the most destruction, who has the most skill, etc.
But as 1 Corinthians 1 says, it is the cross that is the power and wisdom of God. God’s power is greater than the power of the world, not because he operates in the same manner only with bigger muscles, but because he operates in the opposite manner: humility, servanthood, kindness, forgiveness.
This is the tenacity and strength of the truth. This is Jesus. This is the cross. This is how the kingdom comes.
Children Of The Most High
But Jesus not only says that is how God is the “Most High”, but that is how we are children of the Most High. In other words, we are participants in this power. When we love our enemies, we become examples of the Most High’s nature.
Scripture even goes as far as to describe us as “gods” in this sense. Yes, when Jesus used the phrase “children of the Most High”, there is one other place that phrase is used, “You are gods; you are all children of the Most High.” – Psalm 82:6
When we learn the way of love and the Christ-heart takes form within us, it causes us to become peacemakers in a world of hostility – to reject tribalism, enmity, and retaliation – to have such an empathy for humanity as to seek the best for even our enemies. This is when we become like “like gods”. We become images of our Maker – children of the Most High.
There is a theme in Jesus’ thinking concerning this idea of being “children of God” or “sons of God.” (The phrase “children of God” and “sons of God” is interchangeable. Some use “children” instead of “sons” to be gender inclusive).
First, Jesus says if we love our enemies then we are children of the Most High. And again, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes the connection: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”
Sonship is not just a small part of the gospel. It IS the gospel.
John says that “To all that received him, he gave the power to BE CALLED SONS OF GOD.” Where else did we hear that phrase? Who will “be called sons of God”? Peacemakers.
So here we have receiving Christ made synonymous with becoming a peacemaker. The gospel, after all, is the gospel of peace and the good news of the kingdom of God, of “peace on earth and good will toward men”. Christ is the Prince of Peace. Jesus says the most prominent feature of the sons of God is peacemaking. To all that received the Son, he gave the power to be called sons of God – to be peacemakers – to usher in the kingdom of God.
Paul also uses this phrase “sons of God” in Romans 8, when he says all of creation is eagerly anticipating the revealing of the sons of God, for within this revelation creation will be liberated into glory. The renunciation of hostility towards our fellow man and the fostering of the Spirit of God within, of such great love, humility, and compassion, that we become peacemakers: creating family, destroying hostility, standing against the powers of injustice in the power of the Spirit, laying our lives down, shaping a new world, liberating this creation into the Fathers kingdom.
Peacemakers. This is when the righteous shine like stars in the kingdom of our Father.
Regarding peacemaking, why don’t we as Christians take this seriously, when Christ emphasized it over and over? Why do we not seek to live out the commands of Jesus, who we profess to be our Lord. “Why do you call me Lord and not do what I say?” – Luke 6:46
Good question, Jesus, let me think about that.
Violence is easy, instinctual, and natural. It’s all of our default. It takes but a quick glance at the world to know this is true. But as Jesus said, loving our enemies and bringing peace is what makes us true children of God.
Being a peacemaker is challenging. It takes far more creativity, imagination, and sacrifice than violence ever required.
And yet I love how Jesus gives us zero outs on this. Nowhere does he endorse or demonstrate violence. The best people can come up with is the temple episode, where we see Jesus at his most intense, but nowhere does it say he inflicted injury on anyone’s person.
So then it’s back to the Old Testament to vindicate our violence. Or at least the extreme apocalyptic imagery of Revelation! Yes, we can use that metaphorical apocalyptic imagery to vindicate our not taking Jesus seriously! John the Revelator to the rescue! Whew.. Almost put us in a bind there, Jesus. (For a better way to read the book of Revelation, click here)
Even with zero “outs” from Jesus, we are fishing, fishing, fishing, for some way… ANY way… to excuse our violence. We have a western world full of professed followers of Jesus, 99% of whom completely ignore his blatant command to love one’s enemies and renounce violence – who see peacemaking as weak and “not pragmatic”.
In this way, our “Christianity” has become like the Pharisees Jesus spoke so forcefully against, who “look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead.”
The Sword Jesus Came To Bring
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” – Matthew 10:34
Many people seem to think this verse throws a giant monkey wrench in the idea of a peaceful Jesus. Only in a world of one-line, out-of-context verse quoting is this the case.
In this verse, Jesus is not suddenly contradicting his ENTIRE message. Obviously! He is not discussing a literal sword, but rather, the sword of his mouth, just as the book of Revelation portrays.
This sword is his message of the kingdom of God, that wages war on the principalities and powers, the mindsets and ideological strongholds in people and cultures which individually and collectively form strongholds of oppression over humanity. As the apostle Paul said,
“We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” – Ephesians 6:12
The message of God’s humanity in Christ and his solidarity with the marginalized and victimized is a seed that begins to grow and infiltrate the thinking of this world, deconstructing ideologies of violence and injustice, and bringing into reality the angelic announcement that came with Christ’s arrival into the world, “Peace on earth and goodwill towards men.”
Christ’s command to peacefully love our enemies forces us to see common humanity in our rivals. It overturns tribal scapegoating, condemns the oppressive hoarding of wealth, and teaches us to care for the poor. Jesus demonstrated purity of heart, union with Abba, reconciliatory cosuffering, the ethics of peacemaking, and what it means to lay down one’s life.
When we enter into the message of Jesus, it begins a radical transformation within us and becomes a prophetic announcement of the kingdom of God in this world. In births in us a new way of being human… truly human. Human as Christ is human, as sons and images of Abba, who do what they see the Father doing.
This is how the lamb and his community of followers “wage war” and triumph over the beastly systems of this age, by the peacemaking blood of the lamb, by the testimony of those who have become like the lamb, and by those who have embraced the sacrificial, nonviolent love of the lamb, even if it means their own deaths.
The image of God on the cross deconstructs all images of a violent God. The Crucified God simply hangs lifeless, bloody and marred, as a symbol to humanity, drawing out empathy, exposing victimization, condemning violence, demonstrating forgiveness, making peace, deconstructing false images of God, casting down powers, and creating a new humanity with resurrection life.
Summary
Nothing makes me desire to be merciful more than knowing my Father is like that. My desire is to emulate him. Like Jesus, I want to do what I see my Father doing.
If my Father smites his enemies and pours retribution upon them, I will view my own enemies through that lens. Rather than responding with Jesus’ radical compassion and mercy, I’ll gleefully think about how those I dislike will be destroyed or tortured eternally.
But if, as Jesus said, my Father loves his enemies, is kind to the wicked, and gives to them without expecting anything back, then I will find myself hoping the best for my enemies, looking for the gold within them, keeping no record of wrongs, and seeking redemption in their lives.
In an odd twist to the “imago dei”, we become made in the image of the God we worship. The God you worship will be the God you become like.
A violent god is not the God we see in Christ. It’s a god fashioned in our own image. A nonviolent God is so very unlike us – so much higher – calling us into our true image. Our violent God does not exist. But neither does our easy-going Jesus exist. His love is both tender and furious. It comes to level the mountains and raise up the valleys. It comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. It continuously shakes us out of our delusions to expand our awareness of the cross’ divine wisdom – kenosis and theosis – self-emptying love and partaking in the divine nature. It lures and pushes us forward to become peacemakers and lay down our lives for one another – to grow into the true image of God – children of our Father. This is the kingdom come. This is peace on earth, good will toward men.
A violent and retributive God makes followers who don’t take radical forgiveness and peacemaking very seriously. Jesus is not that God. Jesus lays down his life for his enemies.
So what’s the problem?
The problem is that instead of following Jesus, people follow the Bible. The Bible is good if you see it as a progressive, incremental revelation of God finding it’s fullness in Jesus (meaning that all revelation before him was inferior).
Jesus IS the point. He IS God incarnate. If there is something in the Old Testament that seems to contradict Jesus, always go with Jesus.
Thanks for reading. We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Are you thinking about Jesus’ comments on Hell? Click here to read our series covering EVERY SINGLE TIME Jesus mentions “Hell” in the Bible. Would you say, “Yes, God is merciful, but he is also just”? If so, subscribe below to receive our upcoming article on the false dichotomy of mercy and judgment.
Bev Maxwell says
Refreshingly insightful again – thanks!
Jacob Wright says
Thank you Bev!
Dad says
Well said. I couldn’t agree more.
As Morgan on TWD would say it… “All life is precious.”
Dave H. says
Amazing how literally anything can be spun and justified, even if it’s ISIS-like behavior. “Kill them all. Men, women, children, and babies. Show them no mercy.” – God in Deuteronomy 7 and 1 Samuel 15
Jacob Wright says
Seeing the behavior of ISIS in our day forces us to deal with these biblical passages that portray the same kind of God.
Ed Carter says
We can get further clarity, I believe, by going back to Eden . If we can see the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as a picture of the Law, and the fact that God did not want Adam and His children to relate to Him in that manner. Didn’t God say to Adam not to partake of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Isn’t that the Law, knowing what is Good and knowing what is Evil then choosing ?
Perhaps that is the manner in which the angels relate to God. Perhaps that was why the serpent was jealous of Adam, the very Image and Likeness of God. He rather fancied, I imagine, that it was he that was that Image, or at least should be.
God’s preference for Adam was eating of the Tree of Life, Christ Himself, Life Itself. Jesus doesn’t think about whether an action is good or bad. He doesn’t choose not to do evil, to do good, all His actions ARE good.
God wanted to be “King”, that is, wanted the relationship` with Israel to be a life lived in Oneness with Himself. What was the response of the Jews? “Moses, just get Him to tells us what He wants us to do. Give us some rules, but really, leave us alone, separated. You stay away from us, we will do all that you say.
“Kinda like what most Christians are looking for “in heaven”. Most want autonomy from, not union or oneness with God. Most believe the serpent was telling the truth.
Everyone, including Adam was already living under law, eating the fruit of the Tree of knowledge. If not, why was Cain’s getting rid of his brother “wrong”? “Thou shall not kill” wasn’t engraved in stone yet.
God became the punisher , the withholder of “blessings” if things weren’t done exactly as prescribed by fiat.
Even as the Law was being etched in stone, God was giving Moses the diagram for the Temple in the Wilderness, the covering for The Mercy Seat, where the heart of God is revealed.
Jacob Wright says
Thanks for your insight.
Joe says
A well thought out and articulated post. The God of peace is the most difficult one to comprehend. It’s much easier to just accept the God we want to see, the one who stands behind our desire to destroy our enemies. I am still working through a lot of this. For instance, I find it very difficult to re-interpret the story of the Exodus in light of Jesus. I’m not sure how it plays out, but I believe what Jesus taught – that we are to love our enemies and that this is a reflection of God. So, we must start there. God cannot go against Himself and His own standards. Anyway, thanks for writing this! Looking forward to more posts!
http://godsfoolishness.blogspot.com
Jacob Wright says
Thank you Joe.
Tim Reside says
Competently comprehensive, cogent and concise. This represents “glad tidings of great joy for ALL people.” Thank you!
Jacob Wright says
Very much appreciated sir! And amen
Ralph Egyud says
Thanks for taking the many hours (lifetime) to prepare and share this view. I’ve been thinking along some parallel lines but you have gone into much greater depth.
One facet that I’d like to hear more from you about is the idea of the OT as a progressive revelation designed to bring us from a bloodthirsty past to a merciful present. To someone who leans on a flat-reading inerrancy of scripture, this would sound like you are overthrowing most of the OT account for the sake of your own beliefs. I don’t believe that you are doing that, because it would go against your grain as a seeker of truth whether it is convenient or not. But for me, it leaves a gap in your otherwise well-presented case. Perhaps you’ve already addressed this elsewhere.
Anyway, bravo!
Jacob Wright says
Thank you for your comment Ralph and appreciate your encouragement. Let me address your concern stated thusly:
“To someone who leans on a flat-reading inerrancy of scripture, this would sound like you are overthrowing most of the OT account for the sake of your own beliefs.”
As I discussed, this happens anyway even if we accept the every portrait of God in the Bible as equally true. Since the Bible is a smorgasbord of divine portraits that we can choose from, what happens is we throw out other pictures of God for the ones we need. If we want to do violence to our enemies, we need only appeal to the retributive pictures of God in the OT while throwing out the portrait of enemy-love and forgiveness in Jesus. So we are already picking and choosing. We all are. What I am arguing for is picking and choosing Jesus. I am arguing for the supremacy of Jesus and his revelation of God.
As I said, this doesn’t mean throwing out the Old Testament, this means if we find something in the Old Testament that is in obvious contradiction to Jesus, we are to be faithful to Jesus. We are to realize that it was because they did not yet have the revelation of the Son.
This is actually much more uncomfortable because it demands much more of us. It requires discipleship of us if we take Jesus seriously.
henry says
As I said, this doesn’t mean throwing out the Old Testament, this means if we find something in the Old Testament that is in obvious contradiction to Jesus, we are to be faithful to Jesus. We are to realize that it was because they did not yet have the revelation of the Son. = I agree with these
Ann Hughes says
If I had had teaching like this when I was going to church, I wouldn’t have left. Thank you so much for this clarity. I fell in love with Jesus and the bible again reading this.
Jacob Wright says
Very encouraging to know that this sparked in you a renewed interest in Jesus. Peace to you this Christmas season.
Curtis says
I’ve been on this page for 5 years now. A beautifully articulated holistic scheme of God’s plan for the redemption of humanity, I loved it! Thanks, Jacob.
Jacob Wright says
Thank you Curtis
Alaina says
Interestingly I was dwelling on this same concept yesterday. Although you did a much better job exploring all the positions.
But if you would, I would appreciate your opinion on my own musing.
http://www.aresurrectedhope.com/2015/12/mixed-signals-reclaiming-old-testament.html
Dominic Bnonn Tennant says
“Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.” —Jude, commenting on what his half-brother Jesus, aka Yahweh, does to people who don’t believe and obey his word.
I think your claim that “the Bible is a smorgasbord of divine portraits that we can choose from” is just nonsense, tbh. The Bible is inhumanly consistent in portraying Yahweh/Jesus as a warrior king who finely balances the demands of upholding his honor with the demands of his complete devotion to his covenant people.
It sounds like you just don’t like God’s actual character, so you’re trying to reinvent him around Jesus, forgetting that Jesus himself upheld the Torah’s portrayal of Yahweh and stated that the Scripture cannot be broken. You’re trying to conflate one of Jesus’ missions (the self-sacrificial one) with his entire character, forgetting that his next mission is the one the Jews originally expected: the one where he conquers the world.
To be totally blunt with you, your Jesus strikes me as a limp-wristed pansy-ass nancy-boy. Did he not strike down all the first-born of Egypt? Did the Exodus not happen? How about the Flood?
Incidentally, I wonder if the first problem you’re having here is that you don’t understand what biblical love is. I agree with your concern that there must be an analogy between our love and God’s; but that doesn’t mean God’s love is just our love on steroids. Could you articulate what your view of love is? For example, what do you take John 3:16 to be saying?
Jacob Wright says
Your aggressive tone is typical of those who indignantly defend the idea of a violent God.
Concerning Jude 5, the original manuscript does not say “Jesus”, but “kurios”, which means “Lord”. Now, this might be a moot point considering we believe that Jesus is Lord, but let’s deal with the language that is actually used. The apostles were Jews and as I noted the Hebraic scriptures are not at all consistent through thousands of years on the nature of God. There is much conversation and debate going on through Israels history and their scriptures reflect that. For example, the book of Ecclesiastes and the book of Job communicate two opposing ideas of God, and likewise so do Deuteronomy and Proverbs.
The Bible, particularly the Old Testament, shows an evolution/progression of thought concerning the divine. Coming out of the pagan cultures of the earth, Israel’s faith evolved from polytheism or henotheism to monotheism. Just as with many concepts in the Bible, through its different authors and writings spanning thousands of years we see a plurality of views, wrestling with each other and coming to new ways of thinking concerning the nature of the divine. The multivocal nature of the Bible, instead of being seen as a threat (shaking the self-certain evangelical insistence of inerrancy), it should be viewed as a beautiful testament to this faithful universal Presence that is drawing us up and forward into truth, relating to us where we are at, and summoning history towards himself.
Passages in the Hebrew Bible assume the existence of other gods and can be compared to other passages that declare that “there are no other gods besides” the God of Israel.
“God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” – Psalm 82:1
“The term divine council is used by Hebrew and Semitics scholars to refer to the heavenly host, the pantheon of divine beings who administer the affairs of the cosmos. All ancient Mediterranean cultures had some conception of a divine council. The divine council of Israelite religion, known primarily through the psalms, was distinct in important ways.” – Michael S. Heiser, “Divine Council,” in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry & Writings
With this in mind, you have an evolving understanding of God and his relation to humanity through the Hebraic scriptures. Israel’s strict monotheistic creed caused them to attribute all things, good and evil, to God. But as revelation progressed they realized that they could not attribute both good and evil to God, so the idea of the satan (the adversary) began developing. This is why everything is attributed to God in the OT, and the satan is only mentioned 18 times, and only as a servant of God that carries out God’s adversarial destructive work. When Christ came, he was careful to differentiate his Abba from the satan. Jesus divorced the adversary, the stealer, killer, and destroyer from our concept of God. God is only good and only gives good things. He causes his rain and sunshine to fall on both the good and the evil. The satan steals, kills, and destroys. God gives life.
There is not a consistent view of the satan in the Bible. It is progressive. The concept of the satan evolves from servant of God who administers Gods destructive will in the OT to cosmic rebel who God has come to cast out in the NT. Since no longer could everything be attributed to God, notice that all of the sudden the satan is mentioned hundreds of times in the NT, whereas in the OT he is only mentioned 18 times. Think about that for a second, the OT, a portion of the Bible that is 2/3 of the Bible and covers thousands of years of Israel’s history has the satan only mentioned 18 times, whereas the NT, a portion of the Bible that takes up about 1/3 of the Bible and was written simply to testify of Jesus and what he revealed, has the satan mentioned hundreds of times.
This should give us pause. What do we find revealed in the life of Jesus? We find a clear and consistent ethic of non-violence, enemy-love, peacemaking, and reconciliation, teaching that he comes to bring life and he is the image of his Abba, while at the same time warnings of the self-destructive consequences of sin, and harsh rebukes against the religious who misrepresent his Abba. Jesus is not a hypocrite. He doesn’t command enemy-love and then violently kill his enemies. Nowhere is violence and destruction found in the actions of God when he walked into history in his flesh and blood Son.
So what of Jude? Jude is still participating in the conversation around who God is that is going on in the Hebraic scriptures. He is still operating in that paradigm of God that draws littles distinction between God and the adversary (the satan).
“In some Old Testament stories, there is often little distinction between ‘the wrath of God’ and the violence of ‘the destroyer.’ The ‘destroyer’ is virtually God’s ‘hitman,’ sent on missions to keep God’s hands clean. But Jesus and Paul draw a sharp distinction: God is always a life-giver and redeemer. Satan is the death-dealer and destroyer.”
“What have we seen in Scripture and in our experience? First, that God in his love grants authentic freedom to humanity and to the natural (and supernatural) forces of the world. God in his wrath also consents to permit, and not spare, the powerful consequences of these forces to take their course. And so, in the Bible, where we see or hear of God’s wrath, what we actually witness is God’s nonviolent, cruciform consent—the painful results of God letting us have our way.”
— Brad Jersak, A More Christlike God
Rethinking the wrath of God is necessary because Jesus did not exhibit destructive wrath towards sinners. He did exhibit anger at those who misrepresented his Abba, but this was not the destructive violence that is typically seen as the wrath of God. Even in the temple, which is literally the only scenario where Jesus expresses any kind of physical aggression, there is simply no evidence that Jesus inflicted any physical harm on anyone. He overturned tables, he drove them out. He did not wield a sword, slicing and dicing the money changers and turning the temple into a bloodbath.
Again, we need to rethink the wrath of God in light of Jesus, who does not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them, and who is the perfect representation of the Father.
There are certain “biblical” portraits of God that Christ rejected. He rebuked his disciples for trying to operate in the Old Testament call-down-fire-on-your-enemies retributive response, which Jesus said was a different spirit. Jesus also taught against the Old Testament eye-for-eye idea of God and said his Heavenly Father loved his enemies, and if we imitate this, we are truly children of God.
With the revealing of the Son then, we see a sharp distinction between the destruction of the satan and the life-giving nature of the Father. The wrath of God then becomes an anthropomorphism for the destructive wages of sin. As Paul said “Whoever sows to the flesh will of the flesh reap destruction.” That is, sin has destructive consequences, and therefore people naturally thought that it was God who issued the destruction in his wrath. But if we look at Jesus, we see that God is out to save and heal us, not destroy us. And if we believe that God is out to both destroy us and save us from himself destroying us, then we end up with a schizophrenic God.
Again, look at Jesus parable of the prodigal son. When the son left home, he ran into all sorts of complications that ended him up wasting away in a pigpen. Sin is self-destructive. This is the anthropomorphic “wrath of God”, but it’s not the loving father destroying his prodigal son. We know the attitude of the father towards the prodigal son and it’s not wrath.
Look at the parable of the lost sheep. The shepherd is not out to find the sheep so he can wrathfully destroy it for going astray, but to save it from its own self-destructive waywardness.
Jesus never preached the wrath of God to sinners, he preached a God who came to give them life, and heal them of their deadly sin disease. This is not to say Jesus did not warn of the natural destructive consequences of sin, symbolized by the fire of the valley of Hinnom, a loathsome place where dead bodies wasted away and burned to ashes. There is one time when Jesus used the word “wrath”, and he left the “of God” part off. Jews knew “wrath” meant negative consequences, but there was a lot of mixed on what God did and what the satan. Jesus clears this up for us. The satan is the destroyer of mens lives, and the Father is the healer and redeemer and giver of life.
I quote you again: “The Bible is inhumanly consistent in portraying Yahweh/Jesus as a warrior king who finely balances the demands of upholding his honor with the demands of his complete devotion to his covenant people.”
Exactly the opposite, actually. The Bible nowhere portrays Jesus as a warrior king upholding his honor, but rather, in the book of Revelation, this whole OT apocalyptic imagery of a warrior Messiah is a subverted and turned completely upside down. No longer does the warrior hold a sword as depicted in the OT, rather the sword is now coming out of his mouth. The sword therefore becomes metaphorical of his message. His robe is bloody before he has even gone into battle, signifying his own blood. Christ treads the winepress of the wrath of Almighty God by being the lamb who was slain. John the Revelator is envisioning a Messiah who conquers the beastly systems of the world by laying down his life, and his followers as doing the same. It is what some scholars have called “violently anti-violent.”
In the Son, we see the full revelation of the Father as non-violent. But rather than this making Jesus “a limp-wristed pansy-ass nancy-boy”, the cross is the wisdom and power of God, in casting down the powers, and bringing God’s kingdom into this world. Your Mark Driscoll Jesus does not exist, Dominic. It is a Jesus in your own image, which has not yet understood the wisdom and power of God in the Crucified One.
Grace and peace to you, Dominic.
Dominic Bnonn Tennant says
Your ad hominem is unintentionally comical. Would you have said the same thing to Jesus when he called false teachers broods of vipers (aka the offspring of demons) hypocrites, children of hell, blind guides and fools, full of greed and self-indulgence, and lawlessness murderers? (Matthew 23) How about when he threatened all the merchants in the temple with a hand-made whip and scared all their livestock out? That Jesus! Such an aggressive guy! I guess that’s why he indigantly defended the idea of a violent God:
And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’” (Mark 7:9-10)
…and likened his own return to the Flood and the destruction of Sodom, both of which he clearly believed happened:
“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot—they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all—so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed.” (Luke 17:26-30)
The rest of your comment is just a series of assertions cowering helplessly while they wait for the arguments to arrive and back them up. Since what is freely asserted may be freely denied, there’s no real need for me to respond to any of it. That said, a couple of points are particularly noteworthy:
This is a remarkable claim considering that modern Bibles like the ESV, NET and LEB all prefer the reading “Jesus”. At best you could say the manuscript evidence is conflicted, but to outright assert that the original manuscript says kurios…well, I see why they call you Brazen Church.
What is particularly silly, though, is that you yourself concede this doesn’t affect our understanding of the passage. The Lord is Jesus, so Jude’s point remains the same. So I take it that you think Jude was simply wrong. He was just too violent or aggressive to understand that the Exodus didn’t really happen, and that the Bible is not God’s actual word?
I think you’re all talk. Why not actually document these “opposing” ideas so we can see how you handle Scripture and assess your arguments for ourselves?
So you’re just regurgitating the opinions of unbelievers who presuppose that the Bible is not God’s word. Have you even read the work of Michael Heiser, who you quote on the Divine Council in your comment? If you had, you wouldn’t have such a jejune view of Israel’s “religious development”. They were not originally polytheistic (indeed, broader anthropological evidence points to the opposite development among earth’s cultures, starting with monotheism and degenerating into polytheism). Rather, they always believed in other divine beings who administered the cosmos in a council, while simultaneously denying that those beings were worthy of worship or on the same ontological plane as Yahweh. To impose Enlightenment theological categories like polytheism or henotheism on an ancient Near Eastern religion just demonstrates that you don’t understand what is going on here.
You claim that it is traditional evangelicals who have a “flat” reading of Scripture, and then you turn around and read it like a newspaper yourself. Do you think, in Zephaniah 2:15, that Nineveh is trying to claim it is the only city in existence? If not, why do you think that when Yahweh uses the same language, he is trying to claim that he is the only divine being in existence?
This is especially ironic considering that you quote Psalm 82:1 to prove your case that Israelite religion evolved—yet Jesus quotes Psalm 82:6 and immediately goes on to claim the Scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35). So according to Jesus himself, the one guy you are apparently prepared to believe, there is indeed a divine council of other gods, and we can know this because the psalms are Scripture and therefore cannot be false—just like the rest of the Old Testament.
Needless to say, this sets up an intolerable tension in your view of Jesus and the Old Testament.
Except that in the most theologically significant times that God destroys people, it is either he who takes direct responsibility (eg Exodus 12:29), or his angel (eg 2 Samuel 24:15-16)—who is Jesus (http://goo.gl/vLhs6P)
Haha, so if violent criminals break into my house and rape my wife and children while I do nothing to stop them, I should describe that as my “wrath” rather than my “collaboration” or my “cowardice”. Check. I stand by what I said about your Jesus. When your God is less impressive at dealing to evil than Jack Bauer, why should anyone worship him?
Jacob Wright says
All of your points can be fully addressed, and can and have been dealt with in better and more consistent ways then you attempt.
Dominic, your arrogance, scoffing, and condescending attitude is just like your god, and makes you undesirable to have a good conversation with. You prove the point of my article. Go on your way, and your god go with you. Peace.
Russ says
Welcome brother. Very well done. Am passing along.
Jacob Wright says
Thank you Russ
Brian Forbes says
Mt. 23:2-3 “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you.”
Mt. 5:19 “…whoever practices and teaches these commands [of Moses] will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
Amen.
Your answer doesn’t really address anything about Moses. Not in the minutest way. It doesn’t explain why Paul, who was accused of disobeying the Law of Moses, said in his defense that he had done nothing to offend the Jews. It doesn’t tell us why Jesus warns so strongly against sin and causing to sin (i.e. cutting off our hand / millstone around the neck / would be better if he was never born). It doesn’t explain why Paul calls the Law good. And it doesn’t explain his epistles. It doesn’t explain why there are several places where OT folks said that the Law of God is perfect and wonderful. It doesn’t explain why some of the feasts were “for all generations, forever.” God is the one who cursed Adam with death, and, according to Jesus, we are to fear God who can throw both body and soul into hell. The list goes on and on. The only thing your view does is reconcile the Jesus of mercy with your disappointment with the common view of hell.
There are other ways to get to the same place. Namely, Ro. 6:16 says that we become slaves of those we obey. Hell is made for the demons. We are subject to those we obey. Ergo, we go to hell as their property. Hell is, in a manner of thinking, misery of our own making. As a loving Father protects his child from running into the parking lot without holding hands with a spanking, a loving God will protect his children from hell using disease and warnings. Any time God gives a consequence, either individually or corporately, it’s because something worse will befall us if we choose to disobey him. But God will always honor our freedom of choice. It was a gift He gave to us, and He’s not going to just take it away.
Not everyone that is Christian is afraid of the idea of hell. We don’t all think that the Mosaic Law was immoral. Some of us actually like the God of the OT. Count me among them.
Jacob Wright says
There is not a “God of the Old Testament”. There are various portraits of God within the pages of the Old Testament. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that I don’t like “the God of the Old Testament”. I recognize it as a multi-vocal text, written by numerous authors over thousands of years, all within the framework of a faith tradition. Christianity also is a faith tradition with various conflicting views on God over the last 2,000 years. All this to say, I love much of the portraits of God in the Old Testament, others not so much, and Jesus most of all.
Everything you said, including the scriptures you mentioned, can be explained using a better interpretive hermeneutic than the one you use. As it is, I don’t wish to argue with a fundamentalist evangelical who refuses to see things any other way than the twisted logic of the Janus-faced God of his preconceived notions. Godspeed, Dominic.
Jacob Wright says
Oops I misread and thought I was still talking to Dominic. Oh well, to both of you 🙂
Brian Forbes says
Perhaps you don’t have an answer. My God is one. (Deuteronomy 6:4) If the views of scripture really are conflicting, you no longer have corporate revelation of his nature, but you have to rely on individual revelation. You have to be a prophet yourself to understand who God really is. Might as well toss the Bible altogether – use it as a way to brainstorm up your own personal deity. You just dug yourself a deeper hole, my friend. Your second answer was worse than the first. I see no conflict between the character traits revealed about God. Keep in mind that we have a sliding scale, and it will all make sense.
Luke 12:48 But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.
The priests were required to be purest on a high holy day, the prophets had a very high standard. The active priests were “cleaner” than the ones who were on vacation, and they were cleaner than the rest of the people around them. The Israelites had a higher standard than the nations. (Deuteronomy 14:21) It makes sense once you know how it works.
Also remember that the “time of the Gentiles” was planned:
Luke 21:24 They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
There will be an implementation of the sacrificial system again. (Ez. – last third of the book, Isaiah 66, Zech. 14, etc.) Sin is defined as transgression of Torah (1 Jo. 3:4).
Get to know the book a little better. Try to reconcile the passages. It’s not only possible, but it’s satisfying. It’s my advice to you. Take it or leave it.
Jacob Wright says
It’s hard for me to tolerate the consistently smug condescension in yours and others tone who advocate your view, but I’ll continue to talk to you anyway. It’s quite typical of fundamentalist types to make certain-sounding claims without substantiating them in any kind of way, all the way being absolutely certain that they stand on the higher ground. It only reveals your logical bankruptcy though, which I will demonstrate in a moment.
I understand you are absolutely certain that your position is right, that the Bible is completely consistent all the way through on all of its metaphysical claims, even though it is a compilation of 66 books, over thousands of years of evolving thought, from numerous different humans, grappling with the uncertain metaphysical questions of the ages. You are absolutely certain that God dictated a perfect book, somehow, even though there is no reason to believe this, other than that in your paradigm, if it is not so, then your faith is shaken, because your faith is in a book, and not in a living God.
All the evidence of common sense and scholarly study points contrary to your claims. Simply read the various books of the Bible, and you see it multivocal on a number of issues, you see all the various conflicting contradictions and the evolution of thought concerning the nature of the metaphysical. Such is the human race, how we develop and come to new understandings. It’s our history in all avenues. It’s anthropology. God works with it. God is in the mess with us, luring us forward to know who God is. Evangelicalism likes to deny the humanity of the Bible, and thinks that God’s revelation is absolutely dependent on certainty, on God dictating a perfect text, instead of the obvious reality that that is just not how our human history plays out.
Even if God dictated a perfect text, God did not dictate a perfect interpretation. Why not? No one agrees on the Bible. Even today, the entire church disagrees on matters of theology and the Bible. We are all guessing, and to be absolutely certain of any one view is just to be on your way to starting a new denomination that uses the Bible, in your words, “as a way to brainstorm up your own personal deity.” Everyone already does that. The Calvinists have a different deity than the Arminians. Same name, opposite nature. John Wesley said the Calvinist God was the same as what he called the devil. And they both use the Bible.
We all read the Bible subjectively, and interpret through our convictions and our experience, and come up with vastly different conclusions. There is no unanimous decision on the nature of God. Such is metaphysics. It’s abstract. It’s not able to be brought down to concrete reality and be shown as testable and provable. We are all involving ourselves in guesswork, according to our experience and convictions, and in an age-old tradition of conversing and debating about who God is.
You claiming that I just dug myself a deeper hole does not actually mean I dug myself a deeper hole, assuming I have even dug myself a hole in the first place. It just means that the paradigm which you hold cannot comprehend or work with my position, because my position is unworkable within your paradigm, and would eventually lead to its deconstruction.
In numerous ways in the New Testament we are told that all before Christ was a shadow, that no one saw God or knew God before Christ, but that Christ has put on full display what God is like. All revelation of God before Jesus was a shadow, but Jesus is the reality and the fullness. The living, breathing, walking and talking man Jesus is God-incarnate.
“The image of the invisible God.”
“The exact representation of God’s being.”
“The radiance of the Father’s glory.”
“In whom all the fullness of God dwells in bodily form.”
Christ said of himself, “Whoever sees the Son has seen the Father”. So, whereas in the Old Testament you see a shadowy revelation of God, it was progressing and leading up to the fullness of divine revelation in the person of Christ. Not a vision, not an epiphany, but the unveiled Word of the Father in the flesh, of whom it is true, “everything the Father does, the Son does likewise”.
A shadow is very shadowy, in which things can be misconstrued and misinterpreted. For example, in the Old Testament the saints saw God as siccing evil spirits on people to deceive and torment them (1 Kings 22:22, 1 Samuel 16:14), but in the New Testament Jesus is shown as never partnering with evil spirits but always casting them out.
In the Old Testament, while satan is barely featured (19 times in a portion of the Bible that takes up the large majority), when he does appear he serves as God’s agent of destruction, as part of the “council of the gods” and revealing a facet of the divine nature, serving as God’s tool of adversary. In the book of Job, God even teams up with satan in a kind-of cosmic bet to visit Job with calamity to test Job’s righteousness. Contrast this with the New Testament, where satan plays a main role in every book (mentioned 100’s of times in a portion of the Bible that is significantly smaller), and is always shown as a cosmic rebel who is the antithesis of the Father and whom Jesus has come to destroy. Jesus goes about his whole life completely opposed to satan and all of his works, heaven-bent on driving him out of the world. Jesus reveals his Abba as never coming to steal, kill, or destroy, but only to bring life.
“For this reason the Son of God was manifest, to destroy the works the devil.” – 1 John 3:8
In the Old Testament, the law was “an eye for an eye” and this was in order to curb towards mercy and away from excessive vengeance, such as burning down a whole village in return for an eye wound. But the New Testament is the fulfillment of perfect mercy that breaks down the walls of animosity and results in restoration: “No longer an eye for an eye, but I tell you, turn the other cheek”.
All of theology comes down to this question: What is God like?
Is God like the devil sometimes? Does God steal, kill, and destroy human lives sometimes? Is all of the Bible equally true and revealing of God, or does Jesus trump all other revelation and give us a better understanding? Does God partner with evil to bring destruction and torment on people for their wrongs as shown in the Old Testament? Or are those the natural consequences of a fallen world that a good God desires to save humans from as shown in Jesus? Is God both our enemy and our savior? If God is like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, does there ever come a point where if the son doesn’t return, the father sets out on the road to hunt the son down in order to angrily kill him? What is Gods heart towards us? Is sin a crime that God desires to destroy us for or a deadly disease that God desires to heal us from? Is God out to both destroy us and save us? Is God actually trying to save us from himself? Is God schizophrenic?
What does Jesus reveal?
Did you ever wonder about the near absence of satan in the whole Old Testament? Even though the Old Testament is significantly larger than the New Testament, satan is only mentioned 19 times, the majority of those times being in the book of Job, whereas in the New Testament which is significantly smaller than the Old, satan is mentioned hundreds of times and in every book. The Israelites did not have much of a differentiation between God and satan. The Jewish mindset often would say “the Lord” did “this deadly thing” or “the Lord” did “that deadly thing,” but then later assign the actual destructive action to an angel. They interpreted all “angelic activity” as “the Lord”.” In Jewish literature satan is also considered “the angel of death” who carries out the Lord’s destructive wrath.
“Old Testament saints wrongly included Satan in their functional definition of God. Whenever there was temptation, destruction, wrath, and death, all activities which the New Testament would later assign to Satan, the Old Testament would instead attribute these destructions to God Himself. They would not pray against the wiles of the devil, the way the New Testament instructs, but would rather beg God to stay His own wrathful hand. Satan was nowhere in their causative equation. God was the ONLY cause of both good and evil. The New Testament, by contrast, DIFFERENTIATES the identities of God and Satan totally. What is joined at the conceptual hip in the Old Testament is separated and forever severed in the New. Jesus, it could be argued, IS the DYNAMIC DIFFERENTIATION of God’s image from Satan’s image. He is the refining fire which burns all the unworthy attributes the Old Testament God out and away from the pure and perfect divine nature. Simply stated, the Old Testament view of Satan is lacking New Testament illumination. And, as a result, the Old Testament often blends the identities of God and Satan TOGETHER, which ends up confusing the true source of Old Testament “wrath.” Only as we NOW reinsert Satan back into the destructive Old Testament passages can we rightly understand what Jesus was doing in the Old Testament versus what Satan was doing. Learning to do this instinctively will forever free up our thinking and our understanding of the Old Testament.” (Richard Murray, Satan: Old Testament Servant Angel or New Testament Cosmic Rebel?)
Author Stephen Harris notes that the Old Testament Satan is not the same entity as the New Testament Satan:
“[In the Old Testament] the Satan figure acts as Yahweh’s spy and prosecuting attorney whose job is to bring human misconduct to the deity’s attention and, if possible, persuade Yahweh to punish it. Throughout the Old Testament the Satan remains among the divine ‘sons,’ serves as God’s administrative agent, and thus reveals a facet of the divine personality.
At the outset, some Bible writers saw all things, good and evil alike, as emanating from a single source– Yahweh. Israel’s strict monotheistic credo decreed that Yahweh alone caused both joys and sorrows, prosperity and punishment (Deut. 28). The canonical Hebrew Bible grants the Satan scant space and little power. Whereas the Old Testament Satan can nothing without Yahweh’s express permission, in the New Testament he behaves as an independent force who competes with the Creator for human souls.
According to Mark’s Gospel, one of Jesus’ major goals is to break up Satan’s kingdom and the hold that he and lesser evil spirits exercise on the people. Hence, Mark stresses Jesus’ works of exorcising devils and dispossessing the victims of demonic control. The New Testament, then– in sharp contrast to the Old– shows Satan and the devil as one, a focus of cosmic evil totally opposed to the Creator God. This ‘evil one’ is the origin of lies, sin, suffering, sickness and death.” Understanding the Bible, A Readers Introduction pages 26-28.
The renowned International Standard Bible Encyclopedia is in full agreement with this in its entry on Satan:
“The Old Testament does not contain the fully developed doctrine of Satan found in the New Testament. It does not portray him as at the head of a kingdom, ruling over kindred natures and an apostate from the family of God.
It is a significant fact that the statements concerning Satan become numerous and definite only in the New Testament. The daylight of the Christian revelation was necessary in order to uncover the lurking foe, dimly disclosed but by no means fully known in the earlier revelation.
In the early states of religious thinking it would seem to be difficult, if not impossible, to hold the sovereignty of God without attributing to His agency those evils in the world which are more or less directly connected with judgment and punishment.
The progressive revelation of God’s character and purpose, which more and more imperatively demands that the origin of moral evil, and consequently natural evil, must be traced to the created will in opposition to the Divine, leads to the the ultimate declaration that Satan is a morally fallen being to whose conquest the Divine Power in history is pledged.”
Finally, scholar Jeffrey Burton Russell, who has written multiple volumes on the the historical development of our understanding of Satan, notes that the reason early Jewish thought saw Satan as God’s servant is as follows:
“Since the God of Israel was the only God, the supreme power in the cosmos, and since, unlike the abstract God of the Greeks, He had personality and will, no deed could be done unless He willed it. Consequently, when anyone transgressed morality, God was responsible for the transgression as well as for its punishment.” The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of God in History, Cornell University Press, 29-30.
“An active supernatural being, interested not only in fulfilling God’s orders, but also on his own initiative, in fighting, harming, and destroying man, the Angel of Death is identified in the Talmud (BB 16a) with Satan (‘Samael) and with yeẓer haraʿ (‘evil inclination’). He symbolizes the demoniac forces, which were responsible for Adam’s fall and which continue to fight his descendants.” – Jewish Virtual Library http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0002_0_01095.html
“‘The satan’ in Job is an officer of the divine council (sort of like a prosecutor). His job is to ‘run to and fro throughout the earth’ to see who is and who is not obeying Yahweh. When he finds someone who isn’t and is therefore under Yahweh’s wrath, he ‘accuses’ that person. This is what we see in Job — and it actually has a distinct New Testament flavor. (We also see it in Zechariah 3). But the point here is that this satan is not evil; he’s doing his job. Over time (specifically the idea of ‘being an adversary in the heavenly council’ was applied intellectually to the enemy of God — the nachash (typically rendered ‘serpent’) in Eden, the one who asserted his own will against Yahweh’s designs. That entity eventually becomes labeled ‘Satan’ and so the adversarial role gets personified and stuck to God’s great enemy (also called the Devil). This is a good example of how an idea in Israelite religion plays out and is applied in different ways during the progress of revelation.” – Michael Sheiser, The Naked Bible: Biblical Theology Stripped Bare of Denominational Confessions and Theological Systems
Satan was understood as Gods obedient agent of death, administering Gods destruction, sent by God as the prosecuting attorney who both causes people to sin and then accuses and destroys people for their sin. Even though the word “hasatan” (meaning adversary) is only mentioned about 19 times in the Old Testament, (14 of which are in Job) other names like “the angel of the Lord”, “the angel of destruction”, and the “destroyer” are also employed referring to this idea of “hasatan” or “adversary”.
In the Old Testament, satan is not considered evil (in the anti-God sense, since both good and evil came from the Lord), but is part of God’s divine council, who simply obeys God’s destructive will. In the Old Testament, both good and evil come from the hand of the Lord, therefore any time anything bad happens, it is always attributed to the Lord, or the angel of the Lord, even if satan, or evil spirits did it. Israel sometimes said “The Lord did this deadly thing” or “The Lord did that deadly thing” but then would attribute the actual action to an angel or Satan. “The Lord sent these evil spirits” and “the Lord sent this deception.” “The Lord sent this angel of destruction” and “The Lord had satan do this.” That is because they saw all things, both good and evil, coming from the hand of the Lord. The Old Testament simply did not differentiate from the Lord and satan, and all stealing, killing, and destroying is attributed to God, even though the Lord many times is shown to be doing it through ˙the adversaryÓ (the satan), or an angel of destruction.
To give an example of this, when David sinned and numbered Israel, there are two documented accounts of this in the Bible. One blames God for it, and the other blames satan, because to Israel, there was no difference. All destructive behavior was attributed to God, and sometimes specifically making “the adversary” (the satan) the angel or servant fulfilling God’s destructive behavior. This is evidence that the Israelites sometimes saw Gods destructive anger as synonymous with Satan. Here I will quote two different passages of the account of Davids numbering of Israel, but notice the two different causes in each account:
“The anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and He incited David against them, saying, ‘Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.'” 2 Samuel 24:1
“Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel.” 1 Chronicles 21:1
Same exact happening, but two different causes. In one, it is the Lord that caused Davids destructive behavior, and in the other Satan caused Davids destructive behavior. Is this an error in the text? Or is this an example of the general perspective of Israel that Satan was synonymous with Gods active anger? This is not just a minor little obscure thing here in these passages, but rather a blatant example of a more general Old Testament perspective of God. There are many other places where when Israel attributes things to “the Lord” it is because they saw the Lord behind everything, and therefore if an angel of destruction (satan) did something, it was ultimately “the Lord” doing it. In Jesus, we see the full disclosure of the character of God as he completely divorces the idea of God from the idea of Satan so that the two are directly opposed.
The perspective of the ancient Hebrews was that “the adversary”, or “the satan”, was Gods servant of adversary. In the Old Testament God is seen making people do evil then condemning them for it, killing babies, approving rape, sending evil spirits, creating evil, and stealing, killing, and destroying. But this is merely because the Old Testament saints did not have a fully developed picture of God. To them, God being all-powerful, meant that He was behind everything, and the satan was ultimately a servant of the Lord that carried out Gods dirty work. Jesus came and perfected our understanding of God, that God and the satan are not teamed up.
The Israelites did not have a differentiated view of God and the satan. Both good and evil, in their perspective, came from the Lord. “Adversary”, which is what satan means, was from the Lord. They were like hyper Calvinists concerning the sovereignty of God. The satan was not opposed to God in their view, he was Gods minister of wrath. The idea of the satan evolves anthropologically and biblically. The Old Testament saints saw the satan as Gods obedient servant who is part of “the council of the gods” who fulfills Gods destructive behavior.
By the time Jesus rolls in, the idea of “hasatan/adversary/opposer/accuser” has shifted, and Jesus shows Satan to not be an expression of Gods anger who does Gods dirty work, but to be a cosmic rebel who is the antithesis of the Father and who Jesus has come to cast down. When Jesus came, he revealed the truth of the matter that this concept of “the satan”, the destroyer, is not/was not ever Gods servant or part of God. Jesus reveals the satan to be opposed to God. Jesus divorces the idea that the satan is Gods servant of destruction, but rather that the satan is an independent being who is a rebel of God the life-giver, and who wreaks havoc on creation. Jesus says that God is the God of giving life, and the satan is the one who steals, kills, and destroys. Jesus spends His whole ministry destroying the works of the devil and then it culminates in Jesus declaring, “’Now I will cast the ruler of this world out…’ Signifying what death He should die.” (John 12:31) Jesus perfectly reveals the character of God and says, “The theft comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I have come that they might have life, and life to the fullest.” Everything Jesus did contradicted the work of a wrathful destroyer, and this perfectly reveals God.
Whereas in the Old Testament the Hebrews saw God as inflicting people with evil spirits, in the New Testament we have Jesus casting out evil spirits. Whereas in the Old Testament we have Satan as Gods obedient servant angel of destruction, who carries out Yahwehs disasters, in the New Testament Satan is revealed as a cosmic rebel who is completely opposed to the Father and whom Jesus has come to drive out and destroy. Jesus completely differentiates the Father from Satan once and for all when He says “The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. But I have come that they might have life, and life to the fullest.”
This is why satan is suddenly mentioned so many times in the New Testament. Because Jesus divorces satan from our concept of God and declares satan to be an evil, cosmic rebel, who is opposed to the Father, and who is the author of all stealing, killing, and destroying, not a part of Gods divine council that does God’s dirty work. No longer can we simply attribute all these destructive actions to the Father. So satan is mentioned significantly more in a significantly smaller portion of the Bible. Does this begin to make sense of all the stealing, killing, and destroying that is attributed to God in the Old Testament?
Surrounding pagan beliefs of the time influenced Hebrew thought, because after all, the Semitic people came out of these cultures. As Judaism moves from hanotheism (plural gods) to monotheism (one God), the idea of “the satan” is that he is part of the “council of the gods”, he is working for God, as Gods kind of prosecuting attorney, who tempts people to transgress the law and then reports them to God to be condemned for doing so, “the accuser”, but as the evolution of the satan in Hebrew thought progresses, there emerges the view that the satan is a cosmic rebel. Jesus says that he has come to bring life, and to cast the devil, the destroyer, out of the world.
The Old Testament saints got it wrong sometimes on who God is and what he does and mixed up the character of God and Satan sometimes. They had a revelation in part, but Jesus was the full revelation. Jesus revealed Satan as the author of destruction and the Father as the author of life from whom comes every good and perfect gift and with whom there is no shadow of turning from this.
So with the full revelation of the Father in Christ, we can go back and navigate the Old Testament and perceive when Israel is mixing up God and satan. The way we can interpret Old Testament “wrath of God” is this way: the wrath of God is not the literal anger of God destroying people but is God allowing humans to reap the natural and supernatural consequences of their destructive choices, ie. being under the tyranny of satan the accuser and destroyer. The Father doesn’t want this, and He pleads with us against it. Sodom and Gomorrah? Is this the Father destroying Sodom in His “wrath”? Or is this the Father sorrowfully allowing Sodom to reap the consequence of their own sinful choices and being destroyed by the “destroyer” satan? In light of the Father revealed in Jesus, I believe it is the latter. We can do this for many passages in the Old Testament.
In Romans 1 we see this explicitly: “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” (Romans 1:18) What does this “wrath of God” look like? In verse 24 it explains: “God gave them over” to their sin and it resulted in death. In other words, the “wrath of God” is not literal anger that crushes sinners, but is God simply allowing people to reap the consequences of their own choices, and these consequences are being under the cruel tyranny of satan the accuser/condemner and destroyer. There are so many times in the Old Testament where God says He will pour out His wrath on Israel, but when it comes down to it, all this looks like is God withdrawing His protection and allowing them to reap the consequences of theirs sins.
I refer to the parable of the prodigal son: as long as the prodigal was wasting himself away on prostitutes and debauchery, he would end up in the pigs pen, and be under a domain outside of his fathers life and love and this has its natural consequences in death. Paul says that those who sow to the Spirit reap life, but those who sow to the flesh reap destruction (Gal 6:8). We could say this destructive domain the prodigal was experiencing was the “wrath of God”, but it was not the literal anger of his father against his son trying to destroy him, rather it was the Father allowing the prodigal to reap the natural destructive consequence of being under the domain of the accuser/condemner and destroyer. This was hopefully to bring his son to repentance, and bring him back to the safety of his father, which it did.
God never destroys people in wrath. Gods wrath is a metaphor for allowing people to reap the destructive consequences of their sin. Satan is the one who destroys people in their sin, and Satan is directly opposed to God who comes to give life.
So does God ever have literal wrath? I believe He does. We need to define literal divine wrath in terms of what it looked like in Jesus.
In case one is unaware, Jesus did not walk around huffing and puffing, angry at sinners wanting to kill them. The ones He did express anger at were those who misrepresented the Father. If there was wrath in the heart of Jesus it was directed against mindsets, systems, principalities, and powers that kept people under the bondage of Satan the destroyer. Jesus wrath drove out evil spirits and set the captive free and bound up the brokenhearted and healed the sick. The real literal wrath of Jesus was aimed at casting the prince of this world out, and saving people, not on destroying people.
However, as far as the destructive “wrath of God” is concerned, written in the Bible, it is consistent with the progressive revelation of scripture and the character of Jesus to understand it as a metaphor for the divine consent of allowing us to reap the destruction of our own sin. So while sometimes the Bible portrays the wrath of God as an active literal wrath, it is really a human way of conceptualizing God simply handing people over to their own destruction. For example, in Romans 1, it talks about “the wrath of God being revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness”, but later in the chapter Paul describes this “wrath” as God simply “giving people over” to their sinful ways, resulting in death. Another example is in Exodus, where the rebellious Egyptians are warned that “the LORD” would kill every firstborn, but later it attributes the actual action to “the angel of death”. Is the LORD the angel of death? No, in fact the Israelites traditionally saw the angel of death as Satan. It is Satan who comes to steal, kill, and destroy. So here we have another case of God withdrawing His protection and allowing people to reap the consequences of their rebellion, and these consequences were reaping the destruction of the destroyer.
Consider some other portions of OT scripture:
“Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. Saul’s attendants said to him, ‘See, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the lyre. He will play when the evil spirit from God comes on you, and you will feel better.’” (1 Samuel 16:14-15)
As we know, the story goes on to say that David plays the harp for Saul and, by his anointing, drives away the evil spirit the Lord sicked on Saul. So here we have God tormenting Saul with an evil spirit, and David under Gods anointing interfering with Gods tormenting purposes and driving away the God-sent evil spirit. David, under God’s anointing, going against what God himself is doing.
This comes back to what the Hebrews believed about God vs. what is revealed in Jesus. The Hebrews simply saw in part and didn’t have the whole revelation of God’s character. There are other places as well where it says that God sent evil spirits to deceive people (1 Kings 22:22). The God of truth, who wants people to live in truth, sends evil spirits to deceive people? Jesus reveals otherwise. Jesus reveals that God is not in line with everything the Old Testament attributed to God simply because they thought he was the author of everything. Jesus reveals God as opposed to evil, chaos, destruction, deception, retribution, etc. whereas the Old Testament commonly attributed all these things to God.
Allen says
You may have some salient points, but your consistently condescending attitude toward those who disagree with you is entirely unacceptable in any honest discussion of God’s word. You’ve lost a subscriber.
Brian Forbes says
I get the impression that you pasted this from some other thing you already had written.
You did bring up a couple of reasons for your doubt of the scriptures, but they have answers. You didn’t tell us how we ought to read the scriptures. You told us that we guess, but you didn’t tell us if that’s what we SHOULD do. You didn’t tell us whether Moses was actually a righteous monarch or if he was an evil dude. We guess. We guess on the scriptures and we guess on what you might believe about them.
Take Snape from Harry Potter. You could argue that the Snape of book 1 was not the same as the Snape from book 3, and certainly different than the Snape that arose at the end of book 5 through book 6. It isn’t until book 7 that we finally know. Snape is just a complex character. He’s brilliant and skilled. Is he a split personality? Of sorts. God is too, in a manner of speaking. He’s not the same to the righteous as to the wicked. Keeping that in mind, he has a perfectly consistent character.
I agree that there is progressive revelation, and that would explain a lot of what you see as a discrepancy. What I don’t understand from your perspective, though, is why you think that the next revelation negates the former. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. If it was true once, given the same situation, it will be true again. It will always be true. You said that the OT people just didn’t understand as well as we do and that they were wrong. And why wouldn’t Paul also be wrong about what he understood from the scriptures? Maybe there’s a modern day prophet who can set us all straight. Garbage!
What I find particularly distasteful about what you wrote is this. I don’t see a conflict between the God / Satan portrayal of the OT and the God / Satan portrayal of the NT. Sure, there is new revelation about how it works in the casting out of evil spirits by the authority of Jesus, but it’s the same. God still uses evil spirits in the modern day. He is the ultimate sovereign! And you are saying by your reinterpretation that you know more than someone like Daniel, Moses, or Elijah about how all of this works. Those men were filled with the Spirit of God. They were in close communion with Him, and they probably knew secrets of the spiritual realm that we never had written down for us. If you’re going to live your life according to a Swiss cheese interpretation of the OT, it’s your business. I can’t stop you. I just don’t think you’re right. I respect Moses quite as much as Paul, and you haven’t given me reason to think I’m wrong about that.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with a lot of what you wrote, but I can’t go item by item and identify what and why. Keeping it simple, I think we need to take Moses as instructions on morality, and there’s nothing in the NT to cause me to believe it shouldn’t be.
2 Tim. 3:16 “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness…”
If I’m going to err, I’d rather have Moses to blame for it. I’d rather be guilty on that day of trusting Paul and James than trusting my own reasoning, which the scripture says is sometimes faulty. (Proverbs 3:5-6, Proverbs 14:12) I don’t see as a conflict what you presented here, just a different emphasis. You can try to reconcile the views in a way that vindicates the scriptures, or you can say that some of it is false and you are the ultimate discerner of truth. We all have to make our own choices. I choose to trust the Bible as it is written, and I don’t see the conflict that you say you see.
kevin scholes says
i like what you have said and see that to be like God is to be kind and loving to our enemies seeking to fight the spiritual warefare and use diplomacy and even turning the other cheek but doesn’t there come a time when a peaceful solution isn’t tenable and violence is needed like stopping evil on a physical level
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Bill says
Although there is a lot more I could ask/raise I have two main points I’d appreciate you responding to:
1. You say “So what’s the problem?
The problem is that instead of following Jesus, people follow the Bible. The Bible is good if you see it as a progressive, incremental revelation of God finding it’s fullness in Jesus (meaning that all revelation before him was inferior).”
Please let me know what you think how Luther’s view of ‘Sola Scriptura’ fits in with your argument of it being a “progressive, incremental revelation ….”
In addition how do you reconcile 2 Peter 1:19-21? ‘And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.’
It seems to me that if not explicitly stating it to be the case you are in fact in danger of not believing that the Holy Spirit is responsible for scripture but it was simply the authors’ opinions and limited understanding.
2. If God is not angry and as Paul puts it ‘we were all by nature objects of God’s wrath’ what was all the suffering and agony that Jesus went through about? After all it was pretty extreme!
The substitutionary atonement of Christ implies to me there is an angry God and sin has to be atoned for. Do you believe in substitutionary atonement?
Michael Green says
Good Article. If I might be so bold as to throw some extra tidbits for consideration:
I don’t think God ever desired sacrifice. I know that in your article you try to point out a kind of arch that goes FROM a point in history where God comes in at Leviticus chapter 1 and lays out five sections of proper sacrifices, and then moves away from that understanding to one that is saying that sacrifices are not something he desires anymore, but I might suggest that the arch that you notice isn’t something that revolves around a understanding that GOD has shifted WITH us to this new vision, but that God is already in a position of saying that “it is good” and he is taking us by the hand step by step to get us back to that understanding of life and the world and the relationship between creation and the divine.
Think of the Garden. The first thing God says to Adam after meeting him in Eden isn’t “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
The first thing he says is “Who told you that you were naked?”
Who told you that you aren’t “very good” just the way you are?
When Genesis 4 rolls around we’re shown the first sacrifice in biblical text. It’s interesting that beforehand we see no such decree from God saying that it has to be made. God didn’t demand it then. As the story moves forward, we see God reaffirming this stance:
Psalm 40:6
Sacrifice and offering you did not desire—
but my ears you have opened[a]—
burnt offerings and sin offerings[b] you did not require.
Isaiah 1:11
“The multitude of your sacrifices—
what are they to me?” says the Lord.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.”
Psalm 50:12,13
If I were hungry I would not tell you,
for the world is mine, and all that is in it.
Do I eat the flesh of bulls
or drink the blood of goats?
Finally, Micah 6:7,8
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
The scriptures say God doesn’t need the sacrifice, and God doesn’t even want the sacrifice. I would suggest that this position is true even if you present him with a sacrifice as pure as Jesus.
So why does God come into Leviticus Chapter 1, and begin by establishing his list of sacrifices?
Because God is meeting his people where they’re at.
If it’s not about making God happy, It has to be about us being happy. We needed to know that God was looking out for us.
And that’s exactly what God does: God meets his people where they’re at, uses a language that they’re familiar with and says “Listen, we’re Good.”
And let’s take a second to notice how petty the sacrifices are for the times: the sacrifice on the day of atonement for the sins of ALL of Israel? A goat. Well actually two goats but still, that’s it? Not 10 goats or 100 bulls or my firstborn? Just a goat? Like, that’s nothing.
So why are we given the sacrifice?
Because God wants us to know that creation is Good. We have nothing to worry about. He loves us no matter what. We have a seat at his table and he invites us to trust that we can always come and sit in his presence, and enjoy in his goodness.
By the way, THAT is the Gospel.
Understood by Abraham, Israel, and by Jesus.
So enter the book of Hebrews:
“This is an illustration for the present time, indicating that the gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to cleanse the conscience of the worshiper” Hebrews 9:9
“How much more then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve a living God!” Hebrews 9:14
“The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. Otherwise, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
Therefore, when Christ came into the world” Hebrews 10:1
“therefore, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.” Hebrews 10:22
The blood was offered for the sprinkling of our conscience.
And Jesus’s death was the ultimate sprinkling of our conscience. So we would know that beyond a shadow of a doubt that God loves us. And we have no reason to worry. If God can’t convince us by laying down his own life on our behalf, there’s going to be problems. Because God’s plan is to put the world back together. And he’s looking for partners. And we’re never going to be able to partner with him, if we spend all of our time worrying whether or not God is holding out on us. Worry about whether or not I need to do more work, or sacrifice more, or protect myself, prove myself and preserve myself, in the face of an angry God.
He’s not angry. He loves us. He accepts us. Your mistakes do not get in the way of a relationship with him.
And he crawled up on that cross himself to prove it.
Not because of some legal requirement.
Because our hearts demanded it.
And God willingly and voluntarily did it.
And that’s what leads us to the Resurrection. Why Jesus came back to life. The Resurrection is saying that everything that holds us captive is a lie, a sham, and the only thing that remains is victory, restoration, and freedom. The order of death has failed. The order of Life reigns supreme.
Joey Pettit says
I’ve been reading all of your blogs over the past few weeks and I’m blown away. God has been showing me a lot of this over the past year but I couldn’t put what I was being shown or what I felt into words like this. One thing that keeps coming to mind while I’m reading your blogs is the flood. This story seems to show God’s vengeful wrath being executed and then Him feeling bad after and repenting saying He would never flood the earth again. I know that this is not the case and it’s much deeper than that but that is the common belief about the flood. Could you shine some light on this subject for us? I would love to here your thoughts on it.
Jan Booij says
Dear br. Jacob. About your 2 comments: “God never destroys people in wrath. Gods wrath is a metaphor for allowing people to reap the destructive consequences of their sin.”
“It is Satan who comes to steal, kill, and destroy. So here we have another case of God withdrawing His protection and allowing people to reap the consequences of their rebellion, and these consequences were reaping the destruction of the destroyer.” Till so far.
I don’t like to go in the discussion, I read all you have written and many comments. I only have a question: What is your vison about the passage in the Bible about The Flood ? One Bryan asked you this. I take the KJV: My vision is written also below. I am curious.
Genesis 6: 5-13 5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.6And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.7And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.8But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.
9These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.10And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.11The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.12And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
The Ark
13And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.1
Further we can read what God did according to the Bible. Have I to understand that these plans came not from God but He allowed the people to reap the destructive consequences of their sin and Satan – or as you say the evil destroyer – brought the floodwaters on the earth from the great dephts and the heavens?
I cannot see in these Scriptures that God did not want this. Than I have to believe that He could not stop Satan and thank God He could narrowly save 8 people. I hope you will not say that I am happy that God destroyed so many people and animals. I am not. Sorry for my bad English, I am Dutch. God bless you. Jan Booij.
Jan Booij says
I tried to post a comment. I do not see it. Is the possibility to react closed?
hotzpacho says
First off, great article; well written. I love to see articles explaining good vs evil and how it relates to God. I’ve been saying the same things for years. My background is in Hebrew and Greek and i have taught both languages for almost 3 decades now. Very few people understand the languages and default to the English translations without learning about the history, context, culture, etc. They lose sight of the truth too often.
The only part of this article i disagree with is this: the idea that followers of Jesus are supposed to roll over and take the beatings the world throws their way. This would be fine if the promise for a good life is in the next life (after you die), or that when Jesus returns he’ll establish a better life with rewards for those that have suffered. Both of these concepts and ideologies were established during the middle ages by a growing Catholic Church. Both were meant to keep people oppressed and in an emotional and mental enslavement, not to mention a financial one as well. The idea that Jesus will return in the future (to us) means that the lives of those before us were irrelevant, and life to God is never irrelevant.
The book of revelation and the sermon on the mount were in reference to the generation Jesus was speaking to. They were going to be the last generation of the law. There are many historical records of the events being described in those accounts both figuratively and some literally, occurring during Rome’s siege and destruction of Jerusalem in and around 66-70 A.D. Going forward from there we are to usher in the kingdom of heaven here on earth. We are to not just turn a cheek and be run over by evil, but spread light into darkness. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, multiply food, perform miracles, change water into grape juice (not wine, lol). Sitting by and letting your enemies run a muck does not force evil into submission, it gives evil dominion over you.
Mankind is to have eternal life, that means life going on and on forever, not life > death > life again. This life, this world, this universe, is our canvas to paint the kingdom of heaven, and it can be done without using evil, but definitely not by turning a blind eye to it.
Did Jesus roll over and die? No he gave his life, he had complete control, no one took it. Did Jesus just walk by the sick and needy and say be content, your reward is in the next life, turn the other cheek. No he healed them, restored them, fed them, etc.