The Gospel: Revisited

As of lately, Steven and I have been reading through parts of the Old Testament. And to let you in on a little secret, it's usually not my favorite part of the Bible to read.

I remember thinking as a little kid, "Why do we still read this part? God only seems mean, destructive and scary. Isn't He supposed to be loving, gentle and kind?" To me, it seemed as though God underwent a major personality change between the Old and New Testament. Old Testament: irritable and grumpy. New Testament: gracious and forgiving. The two just didn't connect. So for most of my life, I hovered around the New Testament. The parts of Jesus loving the unloveable and feeding the hungry were much more appealing than the God of the Old Testament who sent floods, plagues and unrelinquished judgment on the world.

And while I would like to hope that my faith and understanding of the one true God has matured and developed over the years, I sometimes fall back into my childish thinking that God has it out for me. That He's this big guy up in the sky who's waiting to scold and punish my every move. That He's really not a display of perfect hesed, but rather one of cruel and unfair hatred.

And so, I just couldn't help it. In reading all the stories of God sternly, brutally and powerfully punishing sin, my faith began to fade. I didn't like how God would give a command, someone wouldn't obey it and then BAM. God would strike them down. Just like that. To me, it didn't seem like the punishment matched the crime. For one small sin or act of disobedience, God decides to do away with the entire sinner? How is that the same God who claims to be the "compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin (Exodus 34:5-6)"? Nothing about it seemed to make sense. Usually after reading, I would turn to Steven and say something like, "Gosh, God was kind of harsh, don't you think?"

And ashamedly, somewhere in the midst of this, I was no longer excited to follow such a God. In fact, I think I may have started running in the opposite direction. I began to think that if I did anything wrong, God would surely punish me. If I loved Steven too much, God would take him away. If I missed my family too much, God would never let me see them again. If I wasn't radical enough, God would deny me at the gates of the promised land. Unknowingly, I found myself in this horrible thought cycle-- thinking I had to manipulate God by trying to appease Him. That if I did everything right, then God would have no reason to take anything away.

Being in Thailand, it is always heartbreaking for me to go to the Buddhist temples.

There's a deep unrest and sadness in me as I watch people burn incense, give offerings and chant prayers to Buddha--all in hopes of earning enough merit to receive blessings instead of curses.

But here I am. In Thailand, as a missionary, claiming to believe the Gospel.

Yet thinking and acting like a Buddhist.

Oh, how the truth of this just rocked me to my core and made me weep in shame. As I questioned and admitted this to Steven last night and this morning, I asked him and God to help me remember the Gospel. I literally asked Steven to retell me the Gospel because I felt like I had forgotten. I asked God to show me who He really is and to not be scared of seeking truth.

And this is what happened.

God reminded me that it is not about me. When I looked at the times where I thought God used harsh and severe punishment with His people, I was viewing it through the eyes of man. I have such a man-centered perspective of sin. To me, a little sin doesn't warrant death. But viewed in the eyes of God, it does. For we have infinitely offended a holy God and in turn, are deserving of infinite wrath. Because God is perfectly holy, perfectly righteous, perfectly just, perfectly hesed, perfectly perfect... any sin against Him does warrant death. David Platt says, "You sin against a rock. You are not really guilty. You sin against man. You are guilty. You sin against an infinite holy God, you are infinitely guilty."

So my question ought not be, "Why does God seem so harsh?" The real question should be, "How can I, a sinful man, stand before a holy God and not be destroyed?" For when the focus is off of me and my narrow perspective and turned to God and His grand perspective, it changes things. Instead of the Old Testament being filled with isolated incidents of God's judgment, it becomes a story of God's radical and incomprehensible grace and pursuit of undeserving men. For every 1 time God exercises judgment, there are 1000 times where He doesn't, shows patience and withholds his condemnation. I just didn't pay attention to those countless times because I thought those were a given. Something I had a right to. Something expected and already deserved.

I was wrong.

God doesn't change personalities from the Old and New Testament. He is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin from Genesis to Revelation.

And it gets even better.

Not only does God show infinite patience and mercy with the guilty, He had Jesus, His perfect Son, take on our guilt and shame at the cross so that we would be covered by His blood. Because of God's redemptive work on the cross, I am now blameless. Innocent before a holy God. So when God looks at me, He only sees Jesus' perfection. No dirt, no sin, no shame. Just Jesus.

Wow. This is such good news. The greatest news. Because this means there is nothing scary about God. Nothing to manipulate, nothing to appease. Because if God wanted to make me pay for my actions, He wouldn't have sent Jesus.

This is the Gospel revisited.