OT and NT God

"I like Jesus. I don't like God." You may or may not have heard such a statement, but you've likely encountered the concept, and it's also likely that you've thought it yourself. There are a couple of common ideas out there that feed this notion, and they're held by unbelievers and believers alike. The idea is this. "The God of the Old Testament is a mean God, a God of wrath, Someone to fear. The New Testament Jesus is a nice God, a 'turn the other cheek' God, a loving God who is concerned about our well-being rather than smiting all the time." May I suggest that this is a false impression?

There are two ideas here. One is that God the Father hates sin, so He is at odds with sinners. That means that God the Son came to die for us because He's not quite at odds with us as the Father is ... or something like it. Oh, no, I'm sure most of us have never actually thought it that far out, but that's where it comes up if we assume that God the Father hates sin, so He is at odds with sinners. The other idea is the one I've stated. The Old Testament God (you know ... the one who is at odds with sinners) is full of wrath, but the New Testament Christ is warm and friendly. These two ideas, then, are interlinked.

Examine, however, the truth (that is so often missed). Let's start at the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth. Why? Well, because of His divine wrath, right? Of course not! Well, He certainly didn't know that Adam would fall, right? Again, of course not! The truth is that God created the heavens and the earth out of love and grace, knowing that they would fall. Move ahead a couple of chapters. Adam and Eve fell. Ah, now we find the wrathful God, right? Not hardly. The warning was "In the day that you eat it you shall surely die." As it turned out, in the day that they ate they died spiritually ... but not physically. A God of Wrath would have smote them (because everyone knows that "smite" is much worse than "kill") on the spot and the story would have ended. No, God acted in grace, allowing them to live even though they deserved instant annihilation. In fact, it was God who planned for our salvation before Creation (Titus 1:2). The New Testament even talks of both Christ and God as our Savior. Paul refers to the Gospel as both the Gospel of God and the Gospel of Christ. The entire plan, from Creation to the Cross to completion, was the Father's plan. The entire plan was the Son's plan.

We tend to see a lot in the Old Testament that looks like wrath. The Red Sea wipes out the Pharaoh and his army. The ground opens up and consumes infidels. Israel is commanded to annihilate an entire people-group. God strikes and smites and bellows from on high. Whew! That's wrath! So we often miss entirely that the plan for salvation was His, laid out from the Fall, carried forward in Abraham, nurtured in Israel, and completed in Christ. On the other hand, it turns out that no one spoke of eternal judgment as often as Christ did. Hell is primarily mentioned in the Old Testament simply as the place of the dead, but Jesus is the one that fleshes it out as eternal damnation. Jesus talked of Hell more often than He spoke of Heaven. How is that for a warm, loving person? It was Jesus who pronounced curses upon the Pharisees and Jesus who drove the moneychangers from the Temple. It is Jesus, in Revelation, who comes back with a sword in His mouth. Are you sure, when you think of Jesus as warm and loving, that you're thinking about the biblical Jesus?

God the Father and God the Son are both God in essence. As such, they bear the same attributes. Jesus said that what He did on Earth was in imitation of what He saw His Father do, and He did whatever He saw His father do. If you find that the majority of what Jesus did appeared loving, kind, gracious, merciful, and all those sort of nice things, it would likely be that it's an accurate representation of the Father. On the other hand, when you think of God the Father as an angry God, I suspect that you're missing the better part of who He actually is. Jesus and God are the same terms. Beware when you think, "That Old Testament God was sure mean." He's the same God of the New Testament. You know ... that warm and loving one.