Think Wink.

Earlier this week I argued that we should not see a distinction in the way God operated in the Old Covenant and the New the way many people tend to do. The distinction usually falls like this, “In the Old Testament, God was wrath. In the New, God is love and mercy and grace.” In that previous post, I looked at Revelation 14 and the wrath of God depicted there being more intense than the wrath seen in the Old Testament. I want to do the same thing today, only this is looking at God’s love being cranked up and more intense than in the Old Testament.

Before I launch into my argument of God’s love increasing in intensity, I want to show that God operated differently in the Old Covenant era than he does in the New Covenant era. To do so, I want to look very briefly at Romans 3:21, “But now apart from the law the righteousness of God (which is attested by the law and the prophets) has been disclosed.” The first two words are νυνὶ δὲ, “but now.” In Paul, these two words together usually carry a temporal force to them. Thus Paul is saying that in the present, the righteousness of God has been disclosed apart from the law covenant. Paul is speaking of a new way of God acting. However, as I started to argue, this should not be taken to mean that God was a wrathful God in the Old Covenant era and now is loving in the New Covenant era. God is very much a wrathful God towards Israel and Judah and the nations. Just ask the Canaanites in Joshua’s day, or the Israelites in the days of the judges. But the wrath shown there is nothing compared to the wrath he shows under the New Covenant. What I want to show today is that God’s love is the same way. God was very much a loving God in the Old Covenant era, but his love is different, more intense or ratcheted up, in the New Covenant era.

One of my favorite passages in the Old Testament is Exodus 34:6-7 because it is where God unpacks the meaning of his name as his glory. There we encounter Hebrew words that mean grace, mercy, faithful, lovingkindness. It is the last one that is a constant theme throughout the Old Testament. It is used some 248 times in the Old Testament, the Psalms use the word 127 times. It refers to God’s loyalty and favor. It is God’s attribute given to those in his covenant. But it is grounded in something greater, his love. Deuteronomy 7:6-9 really conveys this idea,

6 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. He has chosen you to be his people, prized above all others on the face of the earth. 7 It is not because you were more numerous than all the other peoples that the Lord favored and chose you – for in fact you were the least numerous of all peoples. 8 Rather it is because of his love for you and his faithfulness to the promise he solemnly vowed to your ancestors that the Lord brought you out with great power, redeeming you from the place of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 So realize that the Lord your God is the true God, the faithful God who keeps covenant faithfully with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations.

Here, Yahweh declares that Israel is his treasured possession out of all the nations of the earth. But notice the ground in which he places that choice, that election, that treasuring and delighting of Israel: God’s love. There was nothing in that nation itself that could commend God’s love and favor to them. Rather it is his love and his making an oath to the patriarchs. Thus on the basis of his actions to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob’s twelve sons did God redeem Israel. He promised to do this for Israel and thus he did so. But the other reason is because God has loved Israel. He determined to love them, not because of them as a nation, but because he sovereignly and freely chose to do so. Let me put it in terms of Deuteronomy 4:37, “Moreover, because he loved your ancestors, he chose their descendants who followed them and personally brought you out of Egypt with his great power.” Because of Yahweh’s devotion and commitment to the patriarchs did God faithfully ransom Israel from Egypt and their Pharaoh. God’s commitment to Jacob was derived from Isaac; God’s devotion to Isaac arises out of God’s commitment to Abraham; but there is no reason given in the Bible why God chose to love Abraham and to make a nation from him in which would come the one to undo the curse that Adam and Eve placed upon the whole human race by their fall. There simply is no reason given. The only reason I can give is from Psalm 115:3, “Our God is in heaven! He does whatever he pleases!” It pleased God to reveal himself to Abraham and to promise him the blessing of righteousness to be received by faith. Not even Psalm 115 or Genesis 12 gives a reason why God came to Abraham. Thus God’s love is not grounded in human actions and will (Romans 9:16).

Consider Malachi 1:2-3, “I chose Jacob and rejected Esau.” More literally it would read, “I loved Jacob and I hated Esau.” The expression of hate and love are that Jacob was given the covenant of Moses and Esau was rejected for it and thus Yahweh remains opposed to Esau and will only allow them to grow in wickedness. Jacob will be restored by Yahweh because he loves Jacob.

But this implies that Israel and Judah were cut off from this love. Jeremiah says of Israel in his preaching against the idolatry of Judah in Jeremiah 3:8, “She also saw that I gave wayward Israel her divorce papers and sent her away because of her adulterous worship of other gods.” Later Jeremiah shows Yahweh pursuing Israel to come back to him, so that God does not permanently cut Jacob’s children off from his love. It was possible to be cut off from that love of God, in a profound sense. God does uphold the terms of the covenant and destroys them with natural calamities and foreign invasions.

But we can see that God’s love in the Old Covenant was along national lines. God loved Israel and chose Israel. God hated Esau and rejected Edom. God’s love and wrath was along a national understanding. In the New Covenant, it takes a more personal level, as well as it increases for in the New Covenant, God deals directly with sin in a full and final way, not a temporal way that is not lasting. Jesus’ death fully and finally pays the sin-debt of all those whom God unites to Christ by faith in Jesus. Hell is the full punishment for sin. The cross is the full punishment for sin. Paul says in Romans 3:25-26 that God did not fully punish sin under the Mosaic Covenant and its reign. Now under the New covenant, God’s dealings fully deal with sin.

But because God dealt with sin via the cross of Jesus Christ, we have to understand the love of God to do this. Romans 8:32 says, “Indeed, he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, freely give us all things?” Jesus was given by God for us to deal with our sin. Thus how can we say that if God was willing to give up his Son for us, how can we not believe that God will not give us all things (namely that in Romans 8:28-30 and 8:35-39). Understanding the foundation of God giving us his Son, Paul asks in Romans 8:35, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” Nothing because God gave up Christ and therefore God will give us all things, including the love of God. Paul affirms this in Romans 8:38-39, “For I am convinced that [nothing]…will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Why? Because Jesus Christ died to purchase that love for us. There is nothing to stand in our way of God’s love, Jesus paid the full penalty for our sin, unlike the sheep and goats in the Old Covenant. Jesus’ sacrifice is the perfect and full sacrifice that God demands for sin. Therefore we see how much God loves his elect: he gave Jesus for them so that they could have his love fully and completely.

The apostle John confirms this idea that we have God’s love, fully and completely, unhindered by anything. Consider 1 John 4:9-10, “By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God has sent his one and only Son into the world so that we may live through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice [ἱλασμὸν, propitiation] for our sins.” The very death of Christ shows us God’s love towards us. God sent Jesus to die on the cross to propitiate, absorb God’s wrath and to appease, God. And because Jesus died to give us full life and abundant life and so that we could fully know the Father (John 17:3), we know the love that God has. It is this sending Christ to die that precisely demonstrates God’s love. This demonstration was never done before in redemptive history and does not have to happen again. It is the fullest and most complete demonstration of God’s love and we have never seen God love a people so much that he gave his son for them! How great is the love of the Father for us that we should be called his children at the expense of his Son!

Our redemption and adoption is the greatest expression of love the universe has ever seen. It was made possible by the death of the Son. Let us praise the God who sent Christ to die and the pay the full penalty for sin that no animal could ever pay. Let us behold the glory of that God.

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