It is not unusual for people with a second-hand knowledge of the Bible to believe that the Old and New Testaments portray two very different sides of God. From their point of view, the God of the Old Testament is wrathful and angry and the God of the New Testament is loving and gracious, almost as if they were two separate beings.
One can understand where the confusion comes from, especially given that the most famous Old Testament stories in popular culture involve bloodshed, judgement and war (e.g. the Flood, the Ten Plagues on Egypt, Samson and Delilah). Meanwhile, the New Testament revolves around the person of Christ who is best known for saying things like “blessed are the meek” and “love your enemies”. While on the surface this claim may seem plausible, a closer look at the Bible shows it is profoundly mistaken.
One of the most helpful things any serious reader of the Bible can do is to tear out the page in the middle that divides the Old and New Testaments. The Bible was always intended to be read as one story, and nowhere does it make the claim that it is describing two different Gods or even that the God of Noah, Moses and Samson has somehow changed or matured when we reach Matthew chapter 1. Indeed, Jesus’ brother, James, tells us that God is “the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17; see also Malachi 3:6 and Psalm 102:25–27). The God of the Bible is everlasting, eternal and unchanging.
As a result, it is no surprise that God’s wrath which was poured out on various people in the Old Testament hasn’t dissipated when we reach the New Testament! The following verses may not appear on inspirational coffee mugs but they’re just as much a part of God-breathed Scripture as John 3:16 -
“This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might…” (2 Thessalonians 1:7-9)
“But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.” (Romans 2:5)
“Then the Father will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’” (Matthew 25:41)
The God who pours out his wrath against sin in the Old Testament is the same God who promises eternal punishment to those who do not accept his Son Jesus.
Similarly, though the love of God as described in such New Testament passages as John 3:16 (“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”) is more commonly acknowledged, is it true that the Old Testament does not describe God in this way?
One of the most important passages in the Old Testament for understanding God’s character is God’s revelation of himself to Moses in Exodus 34:
“And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.’”
Moreover, the psalms are full of praise to God for his love. Take Psalm 118, for example, in which the whole psalm revolves around the refrain, “His love endures forever.”
Read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and it will become clear that there is one God who is eternal and unchanging and whose glorious attributes include his unfailing love and his terrifying wrath which stand alongside one another from beginning to end. Indeed, it could not be any other way. As Don Carson has said:
““God’s wrath is not an implacable blind rage. However emotional it may be, it is an entirely reasonable and willed response to offenses against His holiness. At the same time His love wells up amidst His perfections and is not generated by the loveliness of the loved. Thus there is nothing intrinsically impossible about wrath and love being directed toward the same individual or people at once. God in His perfections must be wrathful against His rebel image-bearers, for they have offended Him; God in His perfections must be loving toward His rebel image-bearers, for He is that kind of God.””
Still confused? The New Testament teaches that the Jesus Christ is the perfect and final revelation of Almighty God. In the Prologue to John’s gospel, he writes:
“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)
John wanted readers of his gospel to know that the God they had read about in the Old Testament had taken on flesh on walked among them so if they wanted to know what God was like, all they had to do was look at Jesus. If we’re struggling to see how God can be both loving and wrathful, or what the God of the Old Testament has to do with the God of the New Testament, there’s no better place to look for answers than the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as recorded in the gospels.
And nowhere in history have the love and wrath of God been more clearly on display than at the cross. At the cross, the wrath of God for the sin of the whole world was poured out on our substitute, Jesus. At the same time, God’s love had led him to give his only, beloved Son to die in our place that we might be forgiven and restored to him.
