I’m about to make an admission that probably won’t shock anyone. And if I were a betting man, I’d be willing to bet that every parent who reads this article will know exactly where I’m coming from and would make the same admission. Are you ready? Here it is. When my kids were younger, there were times that I got angry over things that they said and did. There. I feel better now. Thanks for letting me unburden myself.
Seriously, every parent has been there at some time or another. Let’s face it, our kids can sometimes drive us nuts. And honestly, we drove our parents nuts sometimes too when we were kids. It’s part of life. Kids are going to make mistakes and do dumb things. It’s what we call the growing up process.
It’s because we often lose our cool in those moments when our kids mess up that I think we have a tendency to automatically assume that God gets angry with us when we – His children – do dumb things. It makes sense, doesn’t it? When our kids break our rules, we get angry, scold them, punish them, and send them to their rooms (or some other form of punishment). So when we break one of God’s rules (or most of them if we’re honest), He would do the same to us, right?
And that brings us back to the image of God as the abusive Father. Since we assume He gets angry with us for sinning against Him, and since He is a holy and just God who cannot let sin go unpunished, it can be easy for us to picture Him up in heaven waiting to lower the boom on us. It’s what many call His wrath.
Fortunately though, because of the scheme He and His son cooked up that we talked about in the previous article, God took out His wrath on Jesus rather than on us. Because His wrath has now been satisfied by Christ’s cruel death, (even though everyone still continues to sin), God is now finally able to relate to us with love. And that’s where the comparison to an abusive father comes into the picture. It’s similar to the parent who is so enraged by the offenses of their child that they beat them mercilessly, and only then, when their rage has subsided, are they able to treat their child with kindness and care. But in this case God didn’t take out His rage upon those who were guilty but upon His completely innocent son instead.
Is that the kind of father God is? I’m here to say, “No way!” Furthermore, I’m here to say that if that’s the way we’ve understood how God felt about mankind because of our sins, then we have completely misunderstood God’s disposition towards us from the very beginning. In fact, I believe that the Scriptures reveal to us a God that has loved us with all His heart from the very start and never stopped loving us and was never angry with us. What makes me say that? Let’s turn to Jesus.
As I have stated several times already in this series about who God is, the greatest and most complete revelation of God is provided to us by Jesus. He is the exact representation of God (Hebrews 1:3). All the fullness of God lived in Jesus (Colossians 2:9). As Jesus said himself, he and the Father are one (John 10:30). And as John further pointed out in his gospel, “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known (John 1:18).” Notice that John states that Jesus is not only in closest relationship with the Father and is God himself, but also came to this earth to make God known to us all. That is a very important aspect of Jesus’ earthly ministry that often gets overlooked. He not only came to free us from sin and to give us life, but he also came to reveal to a broken world who God really is and how He truly feels about us. So once again we see that who Jesus is, is who God the Father is.
So if we want to know if God is the abusive father that He is sometimes portrayed as, we need to observe how Jesus treated sinners. Did Jesus angrily punish those who sinned, or did he treat them in an entirely different way? However Jesus acted is exactly how God the Father acts towards us.
There are so many excellent examples to choose from. I will start with the story of Jesus talking to the Samaritan women at the well as recorded in John 4. Jesus is on his way back to Galilee from Judea and is traveling through Samaria. His disciples are not with him at the moment that he decides to stop at Jacob’s well for a drink of water. Also approaching the well is a Samaritan women. Jesus engages her in conversation and through it we learn that she has had five husbands and is currently having a man who is not her husband.
Now the story is not super clear here, but it seems as if her run of husbands and her current man is a result of a sinful life she has been living. If that is what is happening, how does Jesus respond? Does he berate her? Does he angrily chastise her? Does he threaten her with fire and brimstone? He does none of those things. Instead he lovingly reaches deep inside of her to reveal himself to her as the living water that leads to eternal life.
That story reminds me of the story of the woman caught in adultery. In a similar fashion as the Samaritan woman, we have another woman living in sin. And again Jesus is not condemning her or showing the slightest inclination towards an angry rebuke or punishment. And like he did with the Samaritan woman, he revealed the loving heart of God to her.
We see a similar response from Jesus toward his disciples. Here they were abandoning him in his greatest hour of need, running for their lives as Jesus was getting arrested and handed over to the authorities on the night before he was crucified. If ever there was a time for righteous retribution, this certainly was it. But is that how Jesus reacted? Not in the slightest. After he rose, he greeted his disciples warmly and expressed love and peace to them.
And how about Peter? The disciple who was arguably the closest to Jesus denied him three times. If the picture of God as an angry deity who is ready to smash all those who dare oppose or deny Him is true, surely Jesus should have denounced Peter in the harshest of terms. Peter should have been wiped off the face of the earth. But as we know, that’s not how Jesus treated him. Instead he restored him with a love that is beyond the world’s understanding.
We could say the same for Paul. As Saul he was totally opposed to Jesus and all his followers. He was bent on destroying the church. Shouldn’t God be enraged by this behavior? Shouldn’t he demand his life in return for this rebellious child’s arrogant and violent ways? We know how this story ended. Instead of experiencing God’s wrathful punishment, he was made alive by Jesus and became perhaps the greatest defender of the very faith he once sought to eliminate. He came face to face with the love of God and God’s love won.
In all these stories and so many more from the New Testament, we do not see a wrathful, abusive Father who is sternly determined to deliver harsh punishment on everyone who sins against Him. What we see rather through Jesus Christ is a God who is determined to touch the minds and hearts of His wayward children with His indescribable grace and love, and thereby changing their hearts and minds forever. He transforms sinners with grace, rather than with threats of lightning bolts from heaven. He exposes his heart to sinful man, rather than revealing a fist by which to pound them. He conquers them with self-sacrificial love, rather than demanding unyielding obedience and worship under the cloud of judgment and eternal torment. That’s why we find Jesus hanging out with tax collectors and dining with sinners on a regular basis. As he said on one occasion, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10).” That’s the heart of God that Jesus came to earth to reveal. He is not out to abuse you and treat you harshly. He’s out to love you with all that He is. That’s who God is.
Essential Grace 