God's Consistency
Good morning Immanuel. God acts in conformity with all of his attributes at all times.
“The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation’” (Exodus 34:6-7).
British pastor John Stott wrote in his wonderful book The Cross of Christ, “We must picture [God] neither as an indulgent God who compromises his holiness in order to spare and spoil us, nor as a harsh, vindictive God who suppresses his love in order to crush and destroy us.” This is such an easy error to fall into. We see God as what we want him to be: indulgent and always ready to bend his will to serve us. Or we see him as we fear him to be: angry, wrathful, and ready to drop the hammer on us.
Both are false. In the words of Scottish minister TJ Crawford, “[God] acts in conformity with all of [his attributes] at all times.” So God is always loving and always just. He is always holy, unable to abide sin even while he is always “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” (Exodus 34:6)
This should comfort us even as it blows our minds and moves us to worship. God is never incomplete, never lacking, never shallow or incorrect. So he is always trustworthy. He won’t bend to what we want him to be, but he will always be infinitely better than that. And he will never be what we fear him to be because he is not capricious or whimsical but always consistent in his goodness.
I'm truly thankful for the pulse and these truths, thank you everyone