An emotion that is common
to the human experience is shame. Most,
if not all of us, have had an experience at some point in our lives wherein we
felt singled out, marked, maligned, and marginalized due to a number of
different possible reasons. Perhaps a
character trait was different than the norm which resulted in unwanted
attention. Maybe a mistake of word or
deed was made that brought about a feeling of foolishness. Possibly we in our pride drew attention to
ourselves for the purpose of showing off and then it backfired and we failed
spectacularly in front of our self-made audience. There are as many variations of this theme as
the day is long. But without a doubt the
worst type of shame is when we are caught by another in the act of doing
something we’re not supposed to. Society
has developed multiple pop culture references to this phenomenon such as being
caught “red-handed” and “with your hand in the cookie jar”. One has only to spend a few minutes around
children to see this tableau play itself out.
The child knows he is not allowed to play with Daddy’s tools. He knows he has been punished in the past as
a warning. But the urge to do that which
is wrong, driven by the sin within him, is so strong, that eventually he gives
in. And in the course of playing he
breaks one of the tools. Then Dad walks
in and catches him. The shame, embarrassment,
and fear are overwhelming for the child.
While for the father it’s just another day in the life of a parent. But let’s suppose for a moment that the child
in our example is older; a teenager. And
he commits a crime that is of an exponentially larger magnitude; stealing his
dad’s car, losing control of it, crashing into another vehicle, and causing a
death. Unlike the tools, this sinful act
is of such a heinous nature that his Father has never encountered it before,
nor did it enter his mind that his son would ever do such a thing. As he arrives at the police station the
father experiences a feeling of shame that threatens to overwhelm him and he
averts his eyes from onlookers in embarrassment. Only this time, it isn’t on behalf of
himself; it’s for another. As we will
see when we begin to examine Habakkuk 1:13, this is a tiny fraction of what God
experiences on a daily basis when He observes the lives of His human
creations.
We briefly looked at
God’s holiness in the last chapter because Habakkuk references it in verse 12
of Habakkuk 1 when he says to the Lord “my
Holy One”. But at the time I only
mentioned it in passing. The reason is
that this issue, the holiness of God and the cause and effect of what happens
when His holiness comes up against a sinful and fallen world, is of such a
fundamental nature that it rightly deserves its own chapter. Let’s consider the text:
Your
eyes are too pure to approve evil;
And
You cannot look on wickedness with favor.
A short sentence; only
two lines long. It is a masterpiece of
simplicity. Yet the truth it contains
produces massive philosophical and theological ramifications. In an effort to think this through as fully
as possible we will consider two questions and four implications that arise
from this statement of Habakkuk’s.
The first question is this: Can God really not look on evil and is this truly what verse 13 is saying? To figure that out we need to study the translation. It is surprisingly difficult to properly interpret due to the vast disparities that occur between Hebrew and English. The original language uses grammatical constructs such as symbolism and figurative speech to convey its meaning. This necessitates the consideration of what we already know about God from other biblical locations where He has revealed things about Himself that are relevant to this passage.
For example, the first
phrase is “Your eyes are too pure”. This is the Hebrew ‘ayin. A technical definition
of this is simply eye. So why do the
translators add the bit about purity?
The reason is that the usage of ‘ayin
in scripture tells another tale. The
context of locations it is used denote aspects of mental and spiritual
faculties or a reasoned consideration of something. Thus when we see ‘ayin in the Bible it is used to describe how someone thought or
perceived. In 2 Chronicles 30 Hezekiah
summons all Israel to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. Verse 4 of that chapter says “Thus the thing was right in the sight of
the king and all the assembly.” It’s
the same word, meaning sight, but it conveys how the people thought and felt
about the idea. On the other hand, we
have a passage such as Proverbs 6:12-13: A
worthless person, a wicked man, is the one who walks with a perverse mouth, who
winks with his eyes, who signals with his feet, who points with his
fingers”. Here we have the exact
same word but it is describing something completely different; a man who
considers and reasons and comes to the conclusion that it is best to do
evil. The word ‘ayin itself is neutral. We
have to consider who it is being applied to so as to determine its
meaning. In the case of Habakkuk 1:13,
with the object being God, care must be given to determine what God has
revealed of His character and how it applies here.
Fortunately, verse 12
already laid the ground work for us with the reference to “my Holy One”. But to expand
upon that there is perhaps no better passage to underscore and define God’s
holiness than Isaiah 6:1-8. This is a
long passage but I am going to embed the entire thing here because it is
critically important for a proper understanding of what it means that God is
holy. In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne,
lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six
wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with
two he flew. And one called out to
another and said “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is
full of His glory.” And the foundations
of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple
was filling with smoke. Then I said,
“Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I
am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my
eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”
Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand,
which he had taken from the altar with tongs.
He touched my mouth with it and said, “Behold, this has touched your
lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven.”
This is a tremendous
scene, almost beyond imagining. There
are three themes I want to focus on.
First is the Seraphim, or Seraphs. Isaiah records that they possessed six
wings. Two of the wings covered their
faces, two covered their feet, and with two they flew. The question that immediately jumps to mind
is this. What is the significance of the
wings covering their faces and feet?
Consider this, these Seraphs were obviously supernatural and angelic in
nature. The Hebrew literally means
“burning one”, perhaps indicating that they had some sort of fiery appearance. But their awe-inspiring appearance and
flaming demeanor paled in comparison to the majestic splendor and consuming
fire that is the Lord of Hosts. Because
of this vast disparity between the Seraphs and their maker, they covered their
faces both in reverence and to partially shield themselves from the brilliance
that is God. Remember Moses, who spent
weeks on Mount Sinai in the presence of the Lord. When he came down from the mountain it is
recorded that “the skin of his face
shone” (Exodus 34:29). Just being in
close proximity to God caused him to reflect a portion of divine radiance. Furthermore, of the Seraphs we also read that
they covered their feet with another pair of wings. The feet here probably symbolize the whole
lower half of their bodies. The idea is
that, again due to the unimaginable exposure to the glory of God, these
heavenly creatures wanted to cover themselves and their lower parts in a
gesture of humility. They recognized
their inferiority and this caused an instinctive response. Also notice that in verse 4 it states that
the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of the Seraphs. These creatures, full of a form of glory
themselves, were possessed of a power of speech that caused a trembling in the
materials that the throne room was made out of.
And these were just the servants!
Imagine when God Himself speaks!
Hebrews 12:26 informs us that: His
voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, “YET ONCE MORE I
WILL SHAKE NOT ONLY THE EARTH BUT ALSO THE HEAVEN.” When the Lord God Almighty opens His mouth
creation springs forth and the foundations of reality vibrate like a tuning
fork.
Now look at Isaiah’s
response. He is utterly flummoxed by
what he is seeing and hearing. It is
overwhelming his senses. He is probably
having difficulty breathing. His mind is
reeling. His legs turn to jelly and his
knees buckle. He probably desperately
wishes he could flee from the splendor on display before him. But since he can’t, he does the only thing he
can possibly think of to do in this situation; he falls flat on his face and
cries out in distress. He pronounces a
woe upon himself, which means grief, sorrow, misery, or a heavy calamity. In the Hebrew mindset this was just about as
strong of an expression of emotion as one could make. Then he says “I am undone”. This doesn’t just mean messed up or out of
sorts or any other casual modern descriptions we might casually assign to
it. It means literally to be destroyed,
to cease to exist, to be unmade. Why was
Isaiah’s reaction so strong? It was
because he became fully aware, perhaps for the first time in his life, of what
it means that God is holy. He is over
and above all else that exists. He is
better than everything else. He is more
intelligent than everything else. He is
more pure than everything else. He is
more just, and loving, and patient, and merciful, and every single other
attribute He possesses than everything else.
This is what it means that He is holy.
And Isaiah didn’t just “know” this.
He really got it! It went
from head knowledge to practical experience for him in the blink of an eye.
What was the solution to
Isaiah’s dilemma? One of the Seraphs
flew to him and placed a burning coal on his mouth. And the Seraph said “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away
and your sin is forgiven.” At this
point we have to stop and say hold on.
Isaiah was still the same man. He
was still sinful. He was still not even in
the same ballpark as God in terms of holiness.
Nor will he ever be, as demonstrated by the Seraphs. So how in the world does a burning coal do anything
to absolve sin? It doesn’t, and that’s
the point. The coal is merely a symbolic
representation, mostly for Isaiah’s benefit, to demonstrate to him that the
only way to become even remotely acceptable to God is to be purified by a
process that is difficult and painful.
We are so far below and removed from who God is that it is not a quick
and painless process to be restored to any form of harmony with Him. The real driver here in the forgiveness of
Isaiah’s sins is purely the grace and mercy of God. It is purely His whim, if you will, that
enables anyone to be cleansed of their iniquity. And in an amazing twist, the holiness of God
is demonstrated all the more even in this act of absolution of a creature whose
very presence is unacceptable to His holiness in the first place.
With that in mind, here
in Habakkuk 1:13 it is understood that ‘ayin
is used to denote God’s righteous, holy character and the conflict between that
character and the witnessing of evil.
Thus the translators of our modern English Bibles rightly say “Your eyes are too pure to approve evil”.
The second phrase in this
verse is “and You cannot look on
wickedness with favor.” This is an
oddity and one that applies even more specifically to our question. Namely, whether God is truly incapable of
anything. There is a host of evidence in
the Bible which seems to be contrary to this verse. In Genesis 18:14 God says to Abraham in
response to Sarah’s incredulity over bearing a child in her old age: “Is anything too difficult for the Lord?” Jeremiah continues this refrain in 32:17 of
his book: “Ah Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the
earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for You”. And Jesus picks up the same theme in Mark 10:27
when He responds to His disciples after they express concern over whether any
person can be saved: Looking at them,
Jesus said, “With people it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are
possible with God.” With these and
more passages which demonstrate God’s great power, how then can Habakkuk say “You cannot look on wickedness with favor.” The answer is actually quite simple. But first we need to define a better
question. If there is anything that God
cannot do, why can He not do it? Scripture
actually records in a couple of different places specific examples of this idea
of God being unable to do something.
Here in Habakkuk is one. A second
can be found in Titus 1:2 where Paul writes: God, who cannot lie… So
honestly the issue is not whether any action exists that God cannot do. It is a biblical fact that this is true. What we need to understand is why He cannot
do them.
Let’s think this through
for a minute. If you could stop being
you, for even an instant, then who would you be in that instant? Would you be a non-entity? Would you be a new person? If you are a non-entity what happened to the
original you? Was it destroyed? Was it placed in some sort of imaginary
holding tank? If you go back to being
you after the instant has passed, are you the original you or a new copy of
you? How about if, during that instant,
you were a new person? Where did that
person come from? Was it created? Who created it? Obviously, these questions have no answer
because they are philosophical black holes.
But they do serve one purpose; to demonstrate the sheer lunacy of going
down this path.
The point is this. God cannot stop being God any more than you
can stop being you. God’s quality of
being God is bound up in who He is, His attributes, His preferences, His
attitudes, His will, etc. God is the
only uncreated moral absolute in the universe.
All else is under the umbrella of His creative act. His existence is infinite, completely
unconstrained by the bounds of time and space.
If God could simply choose to stop being God then He would not be God
because Malachi 3:6 teaches us: “For I,
the Lord, do not change”. And a God
who has the potential to not be a God is not a real God. To be sure, man in his hubris has concocted
over the millennia ideas of humans attaining godhood, with the accompanying
potential to lose that godhood. But this
is a fantasy with no historical or philosophical basis in reality.
Elaborating further, we
have already looked at passages which demonstrate that God is holy. One aspect of His holiness is
perfection. Psalm 18:30 says it this
way: As for God, His way is
blameless. Hosea 14:9 presents a
variation of the same theme: For the
ways of the Lord are right. God is
perfectly good and pure and without flaw.
This is what it means for Him to be holy. If His character is perfect then it has no
need or capacity for change. Perfection
cannot be improved upon or it is not perfection.
Bringing this all
together, we are left with the following realization. If God’s character is perfect with no need
for change, and changing or altering His character would necessitate Him to
stop being who He is, and if God cannot stop being God without not being God in
the first place, then it follows logically that God cannot change who He
is. This is why He cannot go against His
own nature. And this is why He cannot
look on evil, or lie, or stop being just, or stop loving, etc.
The second question to
consider from Habakkuk 1:13 is this: Did God create evil? We know that evil exists. We know now that God cannot look on it,
condone it, approve of it, or countenance it.
But where did it come from? John
1:3 says: All things came into being
through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into
being. Isn’t evil considered “a
thing”? And if so, then according to
John didn’t it come from God? The short
answer is no. The long answer is as
follows.
First we need to define
evil. Evil is, quite simply, that which
is not God. The Hebrew word for evil means
to be unjust or injurious, to defraud.
Noah Webster defined evil in two flavors, natural and moral. Of the first he said “Natural evil is
anything which produces pain, distress, loss or calamity, or which in any way
disturbs the peace, impairs the happiness, or destroys the perfection of
natural beings.” When God surveyed His
work of creation in Genesis 1:31 He proclaimed that it “was very good.” It was
without flaw in its original state. So
according to Webster’s definition a thing which interrupts or damages that
original state is evil. Of his second
variety of evil he said the following: “Moral evil is any deviation of a moral
agent from the rules of conduct prescribed to him by God, or by legitimate human
authority; or it is any violation of the plain principles of justice and
rectitude. This last portion of
Webster’s definition is significant. He
says that these principles of justice and rectitude are “plain”. The Apostle Paul would agree with him. For Romans 1:19 reveals: that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it
evident to them. He made it known to
them through what has been made, meaning creation, which displays God’s
“eternal power and divine nature” (verse 20).
And if by chance someone could escape the revelation of God in nature,
they can by no means escape the revelation of God within their own souls. Romans 2:14-15 makes this clear: For when the Gentiles who do not have the
Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a
law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their
hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately
accusing or else defending them.
When someone commits a crime, in spite of any protestations of innocence
on their part, regardless of any lack of evidence against them, they know their
guilt because their own heart condemns them.
No matter how suppressed a person’s conscience is through repeated
disuse and sin, on some foundational level, they feel the weight of their
infraction. It is not necessary to have
a degree in Psychology to be sure of this quintessential fact. The one who designed the human brain says it
is so. Therefore it is so.
This then, is evil. It is either the physical damaging of that
which God has created or the moral violation of that which God has decreed.
Now, having defined evil,
it is necessary to state emphatically: God did not create it. We have already seen that He is perfectly
good and without flaw. Flaws cannot come
from flawlessness. However, God did
create something completely unique in the universe; an image of Himself. And it is this image, called man, which
presents a conundrum. Let us consider
the first man, Adam. Adam is a
representation of God but he is not God.
He has some of God’s attributes without God’s infinity. He has a form of God’s ability to reason and
think without God’s perfected version which we call omniscience. He has a form of God’s ability to exist
without God’s perfected version which we call omnipresence. He has a form of God’s ability to exert power
and force without God’s perfected version which we call omnipotence. So what do we have in this first man? We have a semi-autonomous, or partially
self-willed, moral agent. This agent is
an image of God but due to his lack of perfected being is capable of expression
that is not consistent with God’s character.
God created this agent who possesses sentience and who can reason and
emote in imitation of God. And in so
doing He introduced the possibility into the universe of something that looks
similar to Himself yet acts contrary to His nature. If this created moral agent does in fact move
in a direction opposite God then evil is born.
So what we can say is
this; God did not create evil. He
created the possibility that evil could exist by introducing something that
could potentially contradict who He is.
God did create all things.
However, evil is not a thing. It
is the absence of a thing; namely, the nature of God.
But here’s the rub and it
is the first implication from what we have considered above. Although God did not create evil and is so
completely opposed to it that He cannot even look upon it; we most definitely
can look upon it. Not only do we look at
it, but we flirt with it, fantasize about it, and wallow in it. This is because our natures, unlike God, are
contaminated with that which is opposite to God’s nature. So we are saddled with a fundamental
inability to ascribe to the issue of God’s holiness the weight and gravity that
it is due. No matter the magnitude of
the evil that we gaze upon it is impossible for us to put it in the proper perspective
or to accurately consider the contrast between that which we are seeing (or
doing) and how God sees it. Our tendency
is to marginalize the issue in our own minds and suppress it in our choices. Here is an example. In Genesis 6:5 we read a condemning and
ultimately damning description of mankind: Then
the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every
intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Think about that for a minute. Every intent of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually. Not some of man’s
intentions. Not part of the time. All of his thoughts and intentions all of the
time. I think when most people read that
verse the thoughts that come to mind are of crimes which seem particularly
heinous to us: rape, murder, theft, slavery, extortion, prostitution,
corruption, etc. But wait a moment. Recall to mind our definition of evil. Evil is not limited to a list of crimes such
as the one you just read. Evil is simply
defined as that which is not God. As we
stated above, evil is the natural destruction of that which He has created or
the moral violation of that which He has decreed. That includes anger, jealousy, impatience,
lust, laziness, and gluttony. It
includes every conceivable thought and action that is in any way, shape, or
form contrary to the Bible. In Romans
1:28-31 Paul gives us a list of things that match the definition of evil that
is so comprehensive in its scope that none of us can claim exemption: And just as they did not see fit to
acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those
things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness,
greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers,
haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to
parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful;
The reason we tend to
treat lightly this subject of evil and assign it to those things most of us do
not engage in is because our pride drives us to view our own hearts are more
righteous than they truly are. So we, in
our subconscious minds, ascribe greater significance to those types of sins we
don’t think we will ever commit. Now to
be sure, murder as a destruction of one of God’s image bearers and a violation
of the sanctity of the life He breathed out is a greater degree of evil than,
say, impatience. But in terms of guilt
before God and separation from His holiness there is no distinction between the
two.
Here is a simple graphic
that might help to illustrate these principles.
- God cannot look upon sin
- Man’s relation to sin flows unrestricted both ways
- Because of this, man can look upon God only imperfectly and brokenly without a full understanding of His holiness
This brings us to our
second implication. We in our
self-righteous hubris need to understand that the only reason we “civilized”
folks don’t engage in some of the aforementioned sins which are a greater
degree of evil is that God restrains us.
Don’t believe me? In Genesis 20
we find the account of Abraham, Sarah, and Abimilech. Abraham, because of Sarah’s beauty, was
afraid of being killed by someone more powerful than he in order to take Sarah
as a wife. So he let the lie be known
that she was his sister rather than his spouse.
Abimilech, the King of Gerar, does in fact have Sarah brought to his
harem. But before he can have sexual
relations with her God comes to him in a dream and advises him that he is a
dead man because of taking Sarah.
Abimilech professes his innocence of wrongdoing. And it is at this point that God tells him: “Yes, I know that in the integrity of your
heart you have done this, and I also kept you from sinning against Me;
therefore I did not let you touch her.
It was God who restrained Abimilech from the personal disaster that his
unwitting sin would have brought him.
Solomon underscores this point when he says in Proverbs 21:1: The king’s heart is like channels of water
in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes. So before you congratulate yourself that you
are not like other men as the Pharisee did in Luke 18:11, remember that it is
purely by God’s grace that you have only gone as far as you already have down
the rabbit hole of evil.
And now for our third
implication. This will quite possibly be
the most difficult to come to terms with.
As Habakkuk stated in verse 13, God is so pure that He cannot even look
upon evil, let alone condone it. But it
gets even worse than that. God is so
horrified by sin that it disgusts Him.
It sickens Him. It angers
Him. And as we began this chapter with
the father and son example, it shames Him.
The Lord uses extremely graphic and obscene language to describe the
depths of His loathing of sin and evil.
One of the most shocking examples of this can be found in Ezekiel
chapter 23. There He tells an
allegorical tale of two sisters, named Oholah and Oholibah. These sisters represent Samaria, or the north
kingdom of Israel, and Jerusalem, or the south kingdom of Judah,
respectively. God says that Oholah acted
like a whore while she was supposed to belong to Him. He says that she lusted after her lovers, the
Assyrians. The tale goes on to say that
Oholah defiled herself with their idols, allowed men to have sex with her,
handle her breasts, and ravish her. As a
result, God continues, He gave Oholah into the hands of her lovers, the
Assyrians. They proceeded to strip her
naked, capture her sons and daughters, and kill her with the sword.
The story is sickening
enough already. And all bonds of decency
and decorum shout at us to stop reading.
But the sordid tale gets worse. You
see, Oholibah, the sister of Oholah, saw what had happened to her sister. Yet in spite of that she became more corrupt
in her lust than her sister was. And her
whorings were worse than the whorings of her sister. Not only did Oholibah lust after the
Assyrians but she longed for the Chaldeans as well. God says that the Babylonians came to
Oholibah’s bed and defiled her sexually.
Eventually she became disgusted with her lovers. Yet she still, against all wisdom, continued
to increase her abominations. She
continued to lust after her paramours who, the Lord says, had genitals as large
as donkeys and whose emissions were as strong as that of stallions.
And it is in verse 18
that God makes an utterly chilling judgment.
He says: “then I became disgusted
with her, as I had become disgusted with her sister.” It made God sick, figuratively speaking, to
look at what Israel and Judah had done.
This was His chosen people, who He had specifically called out from the
nations of the world, cared for, guarded, and loved. He raised them from infants into a strong and
mighty nation. And they repaid His
loving kindness by spitting in His face and stealing His glory from what they
thought was “behind His back”.
God is repulsed and
nauseated by sin. Proverbs 6:16-19 says
that the Lord hates sin, that it is an abomination to Him. But wait, our sanctimonious hearts cry out,
that passage says there are only seven sins which fall under this special
category of God’s hatred. So if I can
just stay off that list then I’ll be ok, right?
Not so fast. Verse 18 adds this
to the list: feet that run rapidly to
evil. With that one phrase God just
neatly eviscerated the pious arrogance of every person who has ever lived, from
Adam on down. Because we have already
clarified quite conclusively that all you have to do in order to qualify as
committing evil is to do anything at all that is contrary to God. Bingo!
That means all of us. So to bring
it full circle and hopefully deliver a sucker punch to the sinful gut of us
all; God is disgusted, sickened, repulsed, and nauseated by your
sinfulness. That is exactly why He used
such crude and profane language to describe Israel and Judah. He knows perfectly well that we tend to white
wash our sin. And he wanted us to be
shocked into stillness so that, perchance, we might be able to hear His Holy
Spirit convicting us of sin.
And it is in the
stillness of our discomfort, our dismay, our depression, that we come to our
fourth and final implication. When we
begin to understand the crushing depth of despair we should rightfully be
driven to by the terrible realization of the full weight of God’s holiness and
our un-holiness, then there is a corresponding emotion that must accompany that
unhappiness. Namely, the purest,
sweetest, most sublime joy it is humanly possible to experience. Why?
Because even in the face of the awful reality of how much God is
disgusted with us on a regular basis, He loves us still. He loves us so much, in fact, that He went to
such lengths to get us back that it literally took thousands of years for His
plans to come to fruition. The Bible is
absolutely loaded with professions of God’s love for us. It’s a bit like throwing a dart at a
dartboard. You can’t help but land
somewhere that communicates the love of God for His creations. Here is a partial list:
- John 3:16 – God loved the world so much that he gave His only Son
- Romans 5:8 – God shows His love for us in that Christ died for us while we were still sinners
- Galatians 2:20 – The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for me
- Ephesians 2:4-5 – God made us alive with Christ because of His great love
- 1 John 4:9-11 – Because God loved us enough to make His son the scapegoat for our sins, we ought also to love one another
- Zephaniah 3:17 – God will quiet us (calm us) with His love
- 1 John 4:7-8 – God is love
- 1 Peter 5:6-7 – Cast all anxieties on God because He cares for you
- Job 34:19 – God regards all people equally regardless of their station in life
- Psalm 86:15 – God abounds in steadfast love and faithfulness
This list could
have extended off the bottom of the page.
But I think the point has been made.
God’s love for us is unbelievable because it is in spite of how much He
despises the sins that we commit and how much He is disgusted by us when we
give in to temptation. Again, as in the
last chapter, we are obligated to cry out “Who. Is. This. God?” How can He possibly retain such unfathomable
love for us while at the same time possessing such unfathomable hatred for
sin? The answer eludes us because it is
wrapped up in that which makes God, God, and us not. At the end of the day we simply have to fall
on our knees in thankfulness for His loving kindness. With the Psalmist in 136:26 we should cry
out: “Give thanks to the God of Heaven,
for His loving-kindness is everlasting.”
And with Paul in Colossians 2:6-7 we should be “overflowing with gratitude”.
May it ever be so.
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