Revisiting Wrath

The Lord passed before him and said, '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 trangression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.' Exodus 34:6,7

I was listening to a message recently by Mark Dever and he called this verse the most important verse of the Old Testament.

How can this verse make sense? How can God call himself so merciful and gracious, abounding in steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and trangression and sin and then in the very same sentence say that he will no means clear the guilty and and visit the iniquity of fathers on their children? Mark Dever points out that this only makes sense if you truly understand Christ. Christ's sacrifice for us does not remove an aspect of God's character, his hatred and justice towards sin, but rather satisfies it so that we do not experience any trace of it.

This is very sobering for me. My tendency when going through the motions of forgiveness is to accept the forgiveness with a token amount of emotion and remorse while eager to simply be free from this nagging guilt that is like a fly buzzing in my ear. When approaching the true God as described in this verse, forgiveness should be very emotional and humbling. The greatest wrath of all that was indeed poured out on children's children was all poured out on Christ on my behalf. In some cases it is right to hold back emotions but this is certainly not one of them. Tears should be welcomed as we ponder God's wrath poured out in its fullness because of our black and putrid sin. Forgiveness was not bought at a cheap price and how cold and unfeeling of us to ever treat it as so.

May we embrace such a view of God as described here in Exodus. May we ponder deeply on God's wrath so that we can in turn, fully understand his forgiveness and love. Long before Christ came, these words were preparing people to understand Christ's sacrifice for us. Thousands of unblemished lambs were slaughtered so that Israel would understand the sacrifice of Christ who was also unblemished and slaughtered for the forgiveness of sins, this time once and for all.

Let us not be fooled by the fact that God's gift is free. Though it is free, it was bought at a price, a price more costly that we could ever imagine. Let us then experience God's forgiveness with eagerness but not without understanding the weight of its' cost. To do so would not only rob us of the fullness of joy offered to us but would also be to worship God in part and ignore the aspect of his character that required Christ to drink the cup of wrath for us.