Let’s face it. We don’t like to talk about things like wrath and judgment. People say, “The wrathful God of the Old Testament, that’s not the God I know.” To reconcile a God who dispenses harsh judgment with our God of love and mercy feels wrong, but this is where we enter what we may call a higher education in knowing God.
God’s attributes are like the prisms in a diamond. When seen through different views, the diamond reveals itself to be completely at odds with itself. It’s still, however, one rock. It doesn’t change. Certain industries depend on this; they use diamonds and diamond dust to polish and shape other substances because the diamond is one of the hardest natural materials on earth. This is our immutable, unchanging God. Every part, every facet, is different; yet all are needed to make up the whole.
We often say we live in a fallen world, a world that isn’t yet perfect and one in which Satan still has influence. This isn’t a world God wants. He longs for us to live fully in him and to depend upon him. He pulls us toward him with his Word and the Holy Spirit. Because he is wise and all-knowing, he sometimes uses discipline and judgment to bring us back to him.
People in ministry, parents and others in authority can pervert God’s Word and teach that God is only judgmental and a harsh disciplinarian. This completely upends the true wholeness of who he is. We must see and embrace all of his attributes in order to truly view his beauty and love as our heavenly father.
Paul said, “That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-21, ESV). Would you serve a God who possesses only some knowledge or some truth or a little bit of justice? I wouldn’t. We dilute his majesty when we pick and choose the traits we like.
Ask God today to show you all of his simplicity, love, wisdom, strength, truth, mercy, power, grace and goodness. It is there that you’ll find the peace that passes understanding.