Who Is God? (Progressive Revelation I)

Given the nature of the topic and how much there is to say about it, I’ve decided to dispense with the usual introductory comments and go straight into it. As promised in last week’s article, let’s talk about progressive revelation.

I believe this may be the most important article in this entire series. Understanding progressive revelation goes a long way toward making sense of all those angry, wrathful, violent images of God that we’ve been exploring over the past three months. It also brings to light His true nature even more clearly as we discover a God who is full of love and grace.

Progressive Revelation is the idea that God did not immediately reveal everything about Himself to mankind but instead did so progressively over time as mankind was ready and able to accept it. It’s very similar to how parents increasingly teach their children more as they mature and are able to learn it, comprehend it, and live it. For example, what parent would teach the intricacies of preparing and cooking a meal or the complexities of fixing a car engine to their 2-year old child? It wouldn’t make sense, would it? A 2-year old is in absolutely no position to understand any of it and could get seriously hurt if they tried using sharp utensils, a hot stove, or dangerous power tools. You would be doing them more harm than good. Instead, a loving parent understands their child’s limitations and teaches them things at a level in which they can learn and grow from it.

That is the picture we get of the relationship between God and humanity throughout history. Once Adam and Eve made their choice to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and sin entered the world, mankind’s understanding became darkened by the ravaging effects of sin. From that time until Christ, God began gradually revealing Himself to the world, giving them bite sizes they could consume so that they could grow and learn even more about Him as time progressed.

We see an unmistakable statement of progressive revelation in Moses’ encounter with God in the burning bush. As God is beginning to reveal Himself to Moses, He says, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself fully known to them (Exodus 6:2-3).” And there it is right out of God’s own mouth; He did not make Himself fully known to Moses’ ancestors! So now through Moses He would make more of Himself known to the world. That is progressive revelation.

There are other ways we see signs of progressive revelation in the story of Moses. The ancient cultures of the world at that time commonly held the belief that the gods they worshiped were often angry and spiteful. It didn’t take much to upset them, and these largely agrarian people certainly knew that their gods were displeased whenever they withheld rain and the crops wouldn’t grow, or whenever they sent plagues or war or natural disasters to their land. As a result, the people would offer sacrifices to their gods to make them happy again. If their affliction was severe enough, the sacrifice may have included blood, such as animal or human sacrifices.

We see echoes of this in the Mosaic Law. The first seven chapters of Leviticus spells out the sacrifices the Israelites should make on different occasions. The book even starts by declaring that it was the Lord who told Moses about all these sacrifices. Yet later in the Old Testament, we find God declaring that He didn’t want sacrifices.  For example, the prophet Isaiah stated, “‘The multitude of your sacrifices—what are they to me?’ says the Lord. ‘I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats (Isaiah 1:11).’” David had a similar revelation of God.  In Psalm 51:16,  he announced, “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.” Hosea took it even one step further, letting us know that God didn’t even want sacrifices. “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings (Hosea 6:6).” And Micah records the same sentiment and declares that God requires justice, mercy, and a relationship with Him rather than sacrifices and burnt offerings (Micah 6:6-8).

Why the change of heart? Perhaps it wasn’t a change of heart at all. Perhaps God never even desired a sacrificial system but permitted it under the Old Covenant because He knew that at that stage of Israel’s development, a stage that had been forged by the guilt and shame of sin and the natural thinking that God must be angry with them because of their sins, that that would be the only way He could relate to them in a manner that they could understand. But as time went on, as God progressively revealed more about Himself and Israel gradually grew in understanding, He began to unveil the truth about what He thought of sacrifices. It seems clear from these Old Testament passages that God had no desire for blood sacrifices of any kind and most likely never did.

How can we tell that He never did? By looking at Jesus. As I mentioned in an earlier article in this series, Matthew twice records in his gospel Jesus challenging the Pharisees to learn the meaning of Hosea 6:6, that God desired mercy, not sacrifice. But more than that, we see it even more clearly in how he lived. Not once do we see Jesus suggesting, requiring, or even demanding that people sacrifice to him. Instead what we see is Jesus sacrificing for others. We see it in the countless times that he healed people. We see it in all the moments he brought comfort to those who were in grief or despair. We see it on the night he was betrayed when he washed the disciples feet. And we especially see it on the cross. If ever there was time for God to be angry over humanity’s sins, surely the murder of His son would have been it. But that was not God’s response. Instead, through Jesus, God gave the world the ultimate sacrifice-Himself! And the true nature of God was evident as Jesus cried out through the midst of his suffering and agony, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” This was not the cry of an angry, vengeful, wrathful God but the cry of pure love, the cry of a God who wanted nothing more than to rescue His children from the ravages of sin and restore them with His love, truth, and grace.

Even the apostles saw the truth of God’s progressive revelation. Paul wrote of us being a “living sacrifice” that was pleasing to God (Romans 12:1). Think of what Paul is saying. Sacrifices were almost always something that required the death of something else, whether it was grains or animals. But as we’ve seen, God was not pleased with those. What He is pleased with is us being alive in Jesus and being renewed in him.

Even the writer of Hebrews goes to great lengths to demonstrate that God did not want blood sacrifices. In Hebrews 10, he makes the argument that the sacrifices of the Old Covenant were only a shadow of what was to come and were ineffective in cleansing us from the damage of sin. Instead, those sacrifices only reminded us of our sins. So what was the solution? As the writer explains, “Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—I have come to do your will, my God (Hebrews 10:5-7).’” The author attributed what was written in Psalm 40:6-8 to Jesus. It’s a beautiful picture that shows us that it was not God who required sacrifices from humanity. It was humanity that needed a sacrifice from God. Sacrifices only reminded us of our sins and filled us with fear, regrets, guilt, and shame. In that state, we could never draw near to God. We were incapable of accepting His love and learning to love Him in return. On the other hand, Jesus’ sacrifice showed us the purest form of love, and only love can reverse the damage caused by sin. We needed his sacrifice so that we could know that God is not angry with us but loves us deeply from His heart.

In all this, I’ve left out a famous story from Genesis 22. In it, God calls Abraham to go and sacrifice his one and only son. The story never even gives so much as a hint that Abraham was shocked by what God was telling him to do. He doesn’t seem to wrestle with it or anguish over it at all. Instead, he just sets out with Isaac to do it. Why? Because like Moses, Abraham lived in a time and place where gods regularly demanded sacrifices to appease them. In Abraham’s mind this was probably not an unusual request at all.  Why would God tell him to do such a thing in the first place? In light of what we’ve learned here, I believe it was because God wanted to reveal something about Himself to Abraham that would correct an erroneous view he held about God. He wanted to show Abraham that He was not a God who required blood and sacrifices. Instead, He was a God of infinite love and grace.

That is an excellent example of progressive revelation. God revealed something more about Himself to Abraham that he did not know before. He did the same with Moses. He did so even more with David and the prophets. But His greatest revelation is in Jesus Christ. As John expressed so well, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17).” What he revealed to Moses and the other Old Testament saints was but a shadow of what He revealed through His son.

So what should we take away from all this?  That to truly understand who God is, we need to continue to look at Jesus Christ. We’ll see more of God’s progressive revelation in Christ in next week’s article. So come back then and grow even more in God’s progressive revelation.