OT, NT, immutability of God

[fineca]

Dear all,
it has been discussed quite often that the OT God seems different from the NT God, the OT God punishing harshly in this life, revenging to to many generations for sins their ancestors committed etc, while the NT God show unconditional love and mercy, although will punish the sinner in the afterlife if there is no repentance for sin.

There have been liberal attempts to explain away the OT atrocities by attributing them to human sources only although the God-breathed Scriptures plainly assert God commanded those things, it was really God’s wrath, not just the people’s attitude toward God. The atonement was a propitiatory sacrifice that appeased the wrath of God for sin… so maybe that explains some of it…God hated the wicked sinners…but because of Christ he loves them…and before the punishments were temporal just as the rewards were temporal…now punishments are eternal just as the reward is eternal…but then - how does this go together with the immutability of God? Wasn’t God love from all eternity? Why didn’t he then act in a similar way with sinners in the OT and the NT? How can God both hate and love the wicked sinner at the same time?

 

[Della]

St. Paul tells us that “in the fullness of time God sent his Son to be born of a woman…” That expression, “in the fullness of time” says it all, really. It is not that God changed but rather that humanity changed, or was on the verge of changing.

In the OT the world was totally pagan until God called Abraham to be set apart from the world in order to bring the Messiah to the world, “in the fullness of time.” Nations fought one another mercilessly, killing everyone or taking the conquered as slaves. Look at what happened to the children of Israel when they sought refuge in Egypt from the drought that hit the whole of the Middle East in their day. The next Pharaoh made them slaves when they had been free men living within his realm. And more, he had the firstborn males killed of a whole generation in an attempt to keep their numbers under control. There was no international law or diplomacy or advocates for the underdogs.

God dealt harshly because man was harsh in his dealings. God’s justice has not gone away, as you cited, it has been appeased, and yet man still kills the innocent and makes war. The regimes of the tyrants of our own times tells us that man has learned nothing even though God has deigned to come to us in the Person of his Son. It is man that is bloodthirsty, not God. His love is always the same, but now we have direct access to his love and mercy where we didn’t before. And any taming of the world can be directly attributed to the coming of Christ and the triumph of Christianity in Europe, which ushered in a new way of dealing with people and nations.