I am taking another class at Dallas Theological Seminary, this one under Dr. Bingham, and am having my mind stretched and expanded in some interesting and challenging ways. The class this week is on the History of Doctrine, and a discussion today ensued on why the church ignores much of the Old Testament. A big part of the reason is because the church is uncomfortable with how God is portrayed in the Old Testament. He seems judgmental, angry, jealous, vindictive, loves war and killing, and appears downright nasty. How do I harmonize the Old Testament’s (and even some of the New) view of God with the picture that Christ gives me?
I posed the question to Dr. Bingham on how we respond to those such as Dawkins, who in his book, The God Delusion, called the God of the Old Testament many of those things mentioned above (and much more). Bingham’s response was at first surprising and then absolutely refreshing to me:
Justice, when executed by a Perfect Judge, is beautiful.
How in the world can I find those descriptions beautiful? One of Bingham’s favorites is Isaiah 63:3, which describes God as walking on and squashing, squeezing the blood out of, those who are wicked, staining his white garment with the blood and gore of those He has crushed. It hit me like a ton of bricks, or maybe like a man being squeezed just a bit :).
The “nastiness” of God simply shows me how serious He views sin. Read that again. That anger, that seeming ugliness, the death and blood and sacrifice required by God, is because of my sin. All of this is a vivid image, a stark reality of just how serious sin is to a holy God. It is ugly because sin is ugly. It is bloody because sin is bloody. It is horrible because sin is horrible. The consequences of sin are ugly, bloody, and horrific. The cross is ugly, it is bloody, it is horrific because of sin. “Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin.” (Heb. 9:22)
The God of the Old Testament is just as beautiful as the God of the New and He is one and the same. “How beautiful are the feet of them who bring good news”, the news that Jesus Christ, “who knew no sin, became sin”, took the trampling and anger and fury of God in my place, that “I might become his righteousness in Christ”, so that I might be in the palm of his hand and not under the heel of his foot (Is. 52:7, 2 Co. 5:21).
