Teller44:
It was asked of me how one can reconcile the Old Testament God that looked for the stoning of adulterers and other sinners and who encouraged the Israelites to enter Canaan and kill their enemies with a forgiving Jesus who forgives sinners and tells us to love our enemies. Does anyone know where I can find a good response to this question? Thanks!
One possible answer, is that God was educating His people. Education can’t be rushed: people are not empty vessels waiting for knowledge to be poured in; but human beings, who live in specific cultures, who react to their surroundings in specific ways, because they have specific sets of ideas about their place in the world. To educate someone, affects the whole personality of the person being educated.
A baby with two teeth can’t be rushed and forced into having the complete set. It must grow organically, at a pace proper to its rate of development. Someone said being Christian is an education - St. Paul compares it to growing up from infancy to adulthood
Something similar happens with nations - such as Israel. Its spiritual growth couldn’t be forced; it had to grow at a pace proper to its rate of development. And just as parents want their children to grow up (growing is meant to end in being full-grown, after all), but put up with their far from mature behaviour in the meantime, so God does with ours, and did with Israel’s.
At the stage you mention, Israel knew God had made a covenant with it: God had entered into a relationship with Israel which was not shared with any other nation: IOW, Israel was special. But this meant that other nations were
not special - and a practical result of that, might be (and often was) attempting to destroy them.
Later on, Israel’s history taught it that there was more to being in a special relationship with God than killing those who weren’t: to have this covenant relationship, meant Israel had been chosen by God as His servant, to do His Will; which was, to share with others the good things God had given it. And the supreme example of such service, is in Jesus, Who came not to be served, but to serve - He is what Israel had been growing up to. He is Israel personified, in concentrated form; God’s Servant & Son, just as Israel was - as St. Matthew & St Luke hint, by applying to Him so much of what is said in the OT about Israel.
Because Israel was privileged, it had responsibilities too. The covenant is the same; what differs, is the lesson drawn from awareness of it. Because Israel has been growing up over the centuries, it was learning to know God better than it first did; knowing Him better, it behaves differently.
Because God is being faithful to His covenant, and because our ability to discern His Will is limited, the demands of His covenant may differ from one time to another. Some things do not change, such as the obligation to deal rightly with one another: what may well change, is our understanding of what this involves. As in the difference between slaughtering and serving others. God is consistent in what He requires - we are capable of knowing Him ever more deeply, & are limited in all sorts of ways: so we need to grow in knowing Him, and in knowing how to respond to Him. And Jesus shows us how to respond to God: with unlimited love & total, self-sacrificing obedience. ##
