The Background
I wrote on Psalm 129 that God’s sovereignty means He controls and dictates when both good and evil occur. I find this view to be consistent with scripture in both the Old and New Testaments. I think many will try to unrightly skew this fact of God’s character and power into a debate of Calvinism and Arminianism. I don’t think there’s a debate.
If you are Calvinist and find this to somehow stray too far towards the Arminian view for your liking, know that this is purely scripture. If you are Arminian and find this to be too close to Calvinism for your liking, know that this is purely scripture. You may argue with what I say about the scripture, but the idea of God’s sovereign control, of His vengeance that kills kings, and His love and compassion that slaughters civilizations, is evident throughout His Word. There is no mistaking that.
Paul writes in Romans 9:21-22, “Or has the potter no right over the clay, to make from the same lump one piece of pottery for honor and another for dishonor? And what if God, desiring to display His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience objects of wrath ready for destruction?”
Through this chapter of Romans, Paul frequently calls back to an OT God (who, I might add, did not change from then to the NT times to now) has mercy on whoever He wants and who raises up people for a display of His power. Elsewhere, we find Jesus claiming the same thing: a man who cannot walk is kept lame, not for his sin, but for God’s glory, to be healed by Christ in His mission to save His people and reveal the glory of the Father.
God is Great
Psalm 135:3-4 “Praise Yahweh, for Yahweh is good; sing praise to His name, for it is delightful. For Yahweh has chosen Jacob for Himself, Israel as His treasured possession.
Psalm 135:3-4 “Praise Yahweh, for Yahweh is good; sing praise to His name, for it is delightful. For Yahweh has chosen Jacob for Himself, Israel as His treasured possession.” Encapsulated here is a non-exhaustive list containing why God is great. He is great because He is good; He is great because His name is delightful; He is great because He has chosen for Himself His own people. This is the easy part to understand. All believers know God is good because of who He is and the good He does.
The hard part is recognizing that God is good when the act does not quite compute in our brains to being good. Or perhaps delightful is the better word here. In light of my post on Psalm 129, we know that good sometimes involves evil. That doesn’t mean that good turned from evil appears delightful to us, and it is at these things we cringe back saying, “Who is this God?”
But the psalmist says, “For I know that Yahweh is great; our Lord is greater than all gods. Yahweh does whatever He pleases in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the depths” (Psalm 135:5-6).
But the psalmist says, “For I know that Yahweh is great; our Lord is greater than all gods. Yahweh does whatever He pleases in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the depths” (Psalm 135:5-6). What follows is a description of the plagues, of the slaughtering of kings and the destruction of many nations (verses 8-12).
So Who is God?
Let’s be plain. There is no hiding the fact that our God is one who slaughters kings and destroys nations. He wipes out bloodlines and ends entire cultures. We cannot look at the scriptures and claim He does not do these things. There is no dodging or ducking conversations about this. God is the Author of salvation, the Creator of all things good. But He is also the God who told the Ninevites “repent or be destroyed.” He is the One who looked on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and destroyed them. And even Lot’s wife, who looked back on those cities, went with them.
Paul writes, “But who are you, a mere man, to talk back to God? Will what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” (Romans 9:20).
So let’s not hide from it. Let’s take it head on. Undoubtedly, our God is a good God, and undoubtedly, He commits acts that humanity would claim as devastating atrocity. But why do we get to make the claim of what is and isn’t atrocity? Paul writes, “But who are you, a mere man, to talk back to God? Will what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” (Romans 9:20). Half of Job includes Job questioning why things are as they are. It ends with God asking Job, “Who are you to ask me these things? Were you there when I set the world in place, when I defined all of reality as you know it and even the things you could not even comprehend?”
I just finished reading Paul Washer’s Narrow Gate Narrow Way. It’s a brilliant little sermon book. In it, he says this idea that pervades Christianity, and even the world at large, today: God is love, so He cannot be hate. But Paul and I both tell you, God is indeed both. God loves, and because God loves, He hates. God loves righteousness, so He hates unrighteousness. God loves children, so He hates those who kill and assault them. God loves His people, so He hates what harms them. To love intensely, you must hate the opposite of what you love with the same intensity. This is God.
The Matter of Compassion
Psalm 135:14 says, “For Yahweh will vindicate His people and have compassion on His servants.”
Psalm 135:14 says, “For Yahweh will vindicate His people and have compassion on His servants.” In line with what I said moments ago, we see there is no strange dichotomy between compassion and vengeance. If you love strongly, you hate just as strongly. God loves His people strongly; His compassion on them is beyond our understanding, even though it is written numerous times. Because His compassion is on His people, and He vindicates them, or justifies them, He commits acts of what we would call atrocity on those who harm them.
The demons, those following Satan, who attempt to inflict themselves on God’s creation in a manner of ways for evil and chaos seek nothing but to harm. They will influence the world and attack God’s chosen ones, whether we speak of Israelites or professing believers. God strikes down the nations of these people. He tears kings from their thrones. He annihilates entire generations because He hates them for their evil against His people. He hates their attacks on His chosen ones as the enemy seeks to pull them from His grasp.
The demons are bound for the lake of fire already. The people who reject God will go there as well. This is a matter of compassion just as much as it is vindication just as much as it is hate. They all go hand in hand. God loves His people and holds them close to justify their place as His creation; He has compassion on them in His hatred against the demons and those who take the broad way, and in this compassion towards His people and hatred of those who hate Him and seek to harm His people, He will slaughter and annihilate and turn them toward the lake of fire.
They go hand in hand. They are inseparable. For God to love us as greatly as He does, there is a necessity of hate against those who oppose Him, and, by proxy, us. For God to have compassion at all, He must have a hate that makes that compassion required. You can’t rightfully claim God does not hate evil, but you also can’t rightfully claim that God does not love, and have compassion on, those who come to Him.