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That Time I Was So Wrong about God


Actually, if I started writing about all the times I’ve been wrong about God, I would never finish writing. 

But this time was recent, and it was public. For our staff devotions, we have been reading Dane Ortlund’s masterful Gentle and Lowly; The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers. Ortlund mines both Scripture and the writings of the Puritans to show that Christ’s deepest motivation is his love for sinners and sufferers.

Here’s what Ortlund wrote:

The wrath of Christ and the mercy of Christ are not at odds with one another…. The more robust one’s felt understanding of the just wrath of Christ against all that is evil… the more robust our felt understanding of his mercy….

When we speak of Christ’s heart, we are not so much speaking of one attribute alongside others. We are asking who he most deeply is. What pours out of him most naturally?

I have long believed that we always underestimate both God’s hatred for sin and his love for sinners. In fact, we often get into trouble theologically because we underestimate one or the other. 

We underestimate His hatred for sin and imagine Him to be genial and tolerant of our rebellion like a favorite uncle: “Boys will be boys…” Or we underestimate His love for sinners and see Him as not just vengeful but vindictive and petty.

Since we can never quite get to the bottom of either His hatred for sin or His love for sinners, we have to live with that tension. And we must be careful not to allow ourselves to swing too wildly in one direction or the other.

So I thought Ortlund was wrong. And I said so, right out loud in the staff meeting. 

But then I began to think about it, and I realized that he was right. To imagine that God’s hatred for sin somehow counterbalances His love for sinners is a deadly error, and it is not in accordance with Scripture.

Ortlund was right that the love of Christ really is the mainspring. Everything else he is and says and does springs out of his love. There is no tension, only cause-and-effect. God’s love lies behind everything else He is and does: why He wants us to obey Him, why He wants us to worship Him, even why He hates sin so vehemently.

God wants us to obey Him because He loves us. 

This isn’t hard to see. Just think of the Ten Commandments. Those ten mandates describe a quiet life of contentment and flourishing.  If I obey the Commandments, I don’t set my heart on idols, which are sure to betray me; I set aside time to rest and reconnect with God and His people; I live in harmony with my family and my neighbors; and I am content with what God has given me. 

Obedience to the Law isn’t the path to salvation, but it is a compass pointing in the direction of a life well lived. This is why the Hebrew people regarded God’s Law as a gift. And it is a gift that springs out of God’s heart of love.

God wants us to worship Him because He loves us. 

For a long, long time, I had trouble with this. What kind of cosmic insecurity does it take for a Deity to create beings so that they would worship Him? 

But that’s because I underestimated the love of God. 

God knows things that are not so clear to us: He knows that our being in relationship with Him is the best thing for us. He knows, as Augustine so famously put it, that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him. So He wants us to know Him and be in relationship with Him because He loves us.

But He also knows that the only way mortals can converse with the Almighty is to speak the language of heaven; we can approach Him only in worship because of who He is and who we are. Because He knows that we need to be with Him and we can be with Him only in a posture of adoration, His love for us drives Him to seek our worship. 

God hates sin because He loves us.

Here again, it is obvious now, even though it wasn’t when I first read those words in Ortlund. 

Now that I think about it, I should have seen it: God loves us and hates our sin the way we might love someone precious who was addicted to drugs. Your love for the person and hatred for their addiction isn’t a tension; your love for the person is what drives your hatred for the addiction. 

So it is with God. Ortlund was right. “When we speak of Christ’s heart, we are not so much speaking of one attribute alongside others. We are asking who he most deeply is. What pours out of him most naturally?”

What pours out of God’s heart of love is not just affection for the sinner and the sufferer but also hatred for whatever contaminates the sinner’s heart. 

So, in case you’re wondering, yes, I did admit my error in another staff meeting a week later. I told everyone I was wrong about Ortlund, and I was certainly wrong about God.

“God is love,” says John.  

And thank God, everything else is details.


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