not so with God

How do you describe yourself? When you introduce yourself, what sort of things do you say? I might say, “I’m Dan; I’m a blogger and I teach English at UAB.” or “I’m Dan, the husband of Teddie and the father of three children.”

Note that our introductions are typically what we do or who we are related to–not qualities. I don’t say, “I’m Dan, generally nice but also easily irritated.” Look how God identifies Himself to Moses:

Then the LORD came down in the cloud and stood there with Moses and proclaimed his name, the LORD. 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. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

This description, “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love,” is repeated throughout the Old Testament; God says it of Himself, and it’s repeated by David, Hezekiah, Nehemiah, Joel, and Jonah. In fact, compassionate and gracious almost always appear together, and this is what caught my attention. Though we don’t have this phrase repeated in the New Testament, it’s clear from His actions that Jesus was gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.

You may be thinking, “So what?” or “this is an interesting fact, but–” As someone who is trained to pay attention to language (and teaches others to do the same), I often have to force myself to move beyond the interesting Bible fact to find its significance. In this case, that was a bit more of a challenge. I grew up hearing that God was loving and kind, and so my first response was “Yeah, yeah; tell me something I don’t know.” The Holy Spirit was trying to do just that, but it took a while for me to get past what I thought I knew so that I could see and hear with my spirit. (So long, in fact, that I started this post yesterday and only got to the passage from Exodus.)

The revelation came for me as I tried to describe myself in terms of qualities. I thought I would write, “I’m Dan, and I’m generally nice”–but then I thought, “well, except for when I’m not. I can be pretty irritable, and I’m easily offended when I’m tired.” For every positive I thought of for myself, I thought of a “Yes, but…” The only consistent thing I can say about myself is that I’m inconsistent.

Not so with God.

When God describes Himself for us, the description is uncomplicated because He is unchanging. God is consistent–and more to the point of this discussion, He’s consistently compassionate and gracious. No wonder David declares it in the psalms. No wonder Hezekiah and Nehemiah include this in their prayers. And no wonder it’s part of Jonah’s explanation for why he ran away:

When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.

But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the LORD, “O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.

Jonah knew that God is unchanging and consistent. He knew there was no chance that God would strike down the Ninevites if they repented; such an action was outside God’s character.

A friend said to me once, “I don’t know why God keeps blessing me when I don’t always act the way I know I should.” This person probably knew that Scripture says He’s “the same yesterday, today, and forever,” but he expected God to be inconsistent–human. My kids may wonder sometimes, “What’s Dad going to be like today?” but we don’t ever have to wonder about that with God.