| The Dueling gods of the Bible |
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| Written by Arron Bergeron |
| Sunday, 22 March 2009 23:35 |
The Dueling gods of the BibleI assure you, the small “g” is intentional. Quite often the comment is made that there seem to be two different gods presented to us in scripture. Man has a particular bent, if he believes in God at all, to want God to be loving and kind and merciful. And so they readily accept Jesus from the New Testament. On the other hand, no one wants to worship the God who judges sin, or chastises His chosen people for disobedience, or worse yet… sanctions the destruction of whole people groups ( there are great rebuttals to this charge, but that is not the purpose of this short column). Some of the most intelligent men in recent history believed this lie. Even the famed apologist C.S. Lewis dismissed the Psalms, almost wholesale, because of some form of such reasoning. I once sat in a study where a young man bellowed out, after the study had reached its end of course, “I hate the Old Testament, I hate it. God is just a tyrant”. Every so often it seems that this attitude comes out from some corner somewhere. In response, I think it important to highlight some argumentation and counter examples often missed, or ignored, in order to espouse this view. The God of the New Testament is equally full of wrath and judgment. Consider the following passages of scripture: “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him." (Joh 3:36) Read the history in Acts 5, where God strikes Ananias and Sapphira dead on the spot. What about Paul, who asks the Roman Christians if God is unjust who inflicts wrath (Rom 3:5). The God of Hebrew scripture extends great mercy. Consider the following: And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation." So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped. Then he said, "If now I have found grace in Your sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us, even though we are a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance.” (Exo 34:6-9) There is a complete failure to recognize the unfolding nature of the historical record of scripture. A thorough reading of the book of Hebrews is a case in point. Consider also: “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (Joh 5:46-47) The church, in citing scripture, did not mean the New Testament. Whenever the Apostles referred to “scripture” they almost exclusively meant the Hebrew Scriptures. One would have to be blind or willingly ignorant of the affirmations of Hebrew scripture all throughout the New Testament. The very fact that we have programmed ourselves to call it the New and the Old Testament just serves to show how we are sometimes trapped into thinking of it as two halves of one book, but this is wrong. The period of silence between Malachi and Matthew does not warrant this separation. There were 400 years of silence between Joseph and Moses, for example, but we don’t recognize that as the break point between two halves of the Hebrew Scriptures. To do so with the Older and Newer Testaments is just as illogical in many ways. I believe there is one verse which easily answers this charge. Galatians 3:24 states; “Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” In this it is clear, all that preceded Matthew’s gospel, although primarily the Law of Moses is referred to here, was written to teach us the filth of sin and God’s judgment upon it. There can be no thankfulness, and there will be no understanding of the need, for salvation apart from that important lesson. The reason why I use a small “g” in the title is simple. Espousing of gods that are dueling or competing in the testaments actually espouses two gods that don’t exist. They are idols. There is only one God, and He is both just and merciful. He cannot be good if He doesn’t judge sin, and He cannot be greatly merciful if there is no extension of great mercy. This brings us right back to the gospel message. Jesus extends mercy to those who repent toward Him, while at the same time satisfying God’s justice on our behalf by being our substitute. Mercy and Justice reconciled in the person of Jesus Christ. He did all that could be done on our behalf. Grace and peace, Arron Bergeron |