The Wrath and Love of God

But of the cities of these people, which the LORD your God does give you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes: But you shall utterly destroy them; the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD your God has commanded you: That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done to their gods; so should you sin against the LORD your God. Deuteronomy 20:16-18

This makes us all uncomfortable; I confess it makes me uncomfortable. It makes worldlings seethe in rage, but we'll come back to that.

There's a disconnect in modern Christianity between the "Old Testament God" and the "New Testament God," as though those were two separate persons. After all, the Book teaches Christians to be a relentlessly peaceful people. If someone steals your coat, give him your cloak. If someone cracks you in the face, turn aside so he can crack the other side of your face, too. If someone throws you into prison, sing in your bonds.

The Old Testament, and in particular the books of the law (Exodus-Deuteronomy) stand quite in contrast. Peace is still the goal and the end result; all the young Jewish nation is about at the time of Deuteronomy is warring so as to achieve peace and live in peace in a nation of their own. God promised them peace, if they would only obey him--and promised them war and conquest if they would not.

But first, Israel had a war to fight. Their promised land was inhabited by numerous small nations, mostly decended from Ishmael, that were not about to pack up and leave or to pay Israel to leave them alone. This was according to God's design; though the Book doesn't specify it, I have little doubt God rose up leaders of those nations and hardened their hearts just as he had with Pharoah, for God intended to destroy those nations, and Israel was the weapon with which he intended to do it. It would be a test for Israel, too; would they obey their God?

Back to the point: God commanded Israel, clearly and repeatedly, to kill everything that breathes in those heathen nations he named. The soldiers of Israel were commanded by God to kill every woman, kill every aged person, kill every child and every baby in every city they came to in those nations.

I don't know about you, but thinking about that--writing it, just now--makes my stomach turn. I don't know whether I'd have the heart to do that, even if commanded by the God I love and serve. I would hope I'd do by faith whatever God told me to do, but... honestly, I don't know. Couldn't know, unless it happened. I rejoice that God no longer requires any such thing of his people.

The world was different in 1000 BC, but God was not, and that's the point we have to understand and appreciate--this is exactly the same God that loved the world so much he gave his holy Son to die a bloody death to redeem us all from sin. The dichotomy of it is startling. God hates sin so much that these long-apostate nations... these nations did a lot of evil, especially in connection to their worship of false gods. They had made up their minds for good; they were beyond hope of redemption by that point. I know that simply because God decreed destruction upon them. They had their chance; they utterly rejected God, and God utterly destroyed them.

God hates sin. The word 'abomination' that appears so frequently in the Old Testament is a very, very strong word. Horribly disgusting. Repulsive. Sickening. These people are abominable, God told his beloved chosen nation, and I want you to kill them all, wipe them off the planet. Let's not forget that God had already done this himself; besides the annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrha, God with his own hand killed every man, woman and child on Earth, save only eight, on account of how terrible their sins had become.

The same God still sits on the throne. I think it does us very well, when struggling with our own sin, to read these Old Testament passages and remember, really remember, just how much God hates sin. That same wrath that has, many times in history, laid utter waste to entire cities, nations, and once even the entire world rightly should fall upon you when you sin. Should rightly have fallen upon you long ago, when you were yet in your sins.

But it didn't. The terrible, burning wrath of God fell squarely upon Jesus Christ the Son of God, who stepped in our place and took upon himself the full terribleness of the blow. His violently shed blood redeemed my soul and made it possible for me--a heathen, abominable to God, fully deserving bloody death and fiery hell--to become once again what man was created to be: A child of God. Beloved. Accepted.
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I don't think even many fundamental Christians today really appreciate the fullness of what Christ's sacrifice is really all about, because I don't think many of us read the Old Testament much. Or if we do, we just kind of glance it over and never really think about it, and check off the chapters on our Bible calendar.

I'm not an Old Testament adherent; I'm not a Judaizer; I believe the Book is very clear (book of Hebrews, especially) that the Mosaic law, which was meant to teach us how unable and unworthy we are, is null and void to the Christian, replaced by what I call the law of Christ, consisting of two commandments: Love God, and love your neighbor. But the Old Testament is very important to our understanding of who God is. When you explain the gospel to a person that's never held a Bible before, you really can't start with John 3:16 or with ten selected verses pulled out of their contexts in Romans. You have to start with Genesis 1:1, and follow the chronology as God has laid it out for us.

How can a Christian that loves God and loves righteousness read and understand Deuteronomy and the books surrounding it, see just how God reacts to sin, and be anything but deathly afraid of sinning? This is a big reason why the New Testament Scriptures work from the assumption that Christians don't, as a matter of habit, sin. (I John 2:4, to pick one of many examples: "He that says, I know him, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." That's in the Book, folks.)

You can't take the Old Testament and ignore the New, either! The very wonderful thing about appreciating the Old Testament is that it opens up whole new worlds of awe and love, when we consider what God did for us in giving Christ as the sacrifice to atone for my sins. When we say we're "saved", we mean it. Saved not just from hell to come; that's too narrow. Saved from the terrible wrath of God that comes upon all the children of disobedience.

How can we do anything but love with all our hearts the God that, even when we hated him and sinned brashly against him, loved his creation enough to give his life to reconcile us to himself?

And have you ever considered just how horrible the spectacle must be, from the point of view of an eternally holy and eternally loving God, to watch his beloved creation sin against him, hate him, spit in his face? Would God that none of us ever even comes close to knowing what that feels like.

We also do well to remember that the same God that dictated Deuteronomy 20 to Israel and for us is still God right now. The haters of God that sit in power in this world, the heathens that would kill people for being Christians or Jews--God is incredibly, incredibly longsuffering in giving them ample time to repent of their sins--but God's rage against sin is white-hot and will fall upon the nations that set themselves up as his enemies.