One important difference non-Calvinists have with Calvinists has to do with the nature and character of God. This controversy ultimately involves how each side answers the question, “What is God like?” Does he, by simple fiat, assign some people to eternal salvation and all others to an eternity in hell? Is it merely by God willing one or the other that determines each person’s eternal destiny? Can God act arbitrarily simply by virtue of his will, declaring to be good, for instance, what we know to be evil? Or, rather, is what God wills according to God’s nature, and therefore what God does is always consistent with who God is, and we can count on him being consistent amidst changing circumstances? I contend that the latter is true. It is what is meant when Scripture says, “God never changes.” (Mal. 3:6) This means that he responds according to his nature, given the true nature of each circumstance. Therefore, God’s responses are not always the same, but they are always reflective of his unchanging nature. Since he is consistent in his nature and character, he will evaluate and act differently as each different situation warrants, but there is no change in God. If God is good, he can never do evil. If God is gracious, he remains so to all. In other words, he is never fickle, arbitrary, or capricious.
So, what is the nature and character of God? The scriptures unfold the answer to this question over time. God progressively reveals himself in what he says and does throughout history. The Bible records those words and acts of God for us. At times, we even have direct statements made by God about his own nature and character. Two such passages are found in Exodus 33:18-19 and 34:6-7. The former reads,
“Then Moses said, “Please, let me see your glory.”
He [God] said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the name ‘the Lord’ before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”” (CSB)
“Goodness” here refers to God’s character or nature. In the entry for the word “good” in the New Bible Dictionary, J. I. Packer writes,
“’Good’ in Scripture is not an abstract quality, nor is it a secular human ideal; ‘good’ means first and foremost what God is (‘he is good’, Ps 100:5, et al.), then what he does, creates, commands and gives, and finally what he approves in the lives of his creatures. It is not that the biblical writers assess God in terms of a prior concept of goodness, but rather that, contemplating the supreme glory of God’s perfections, they apply to him the ordinary word for acknowledging worth. By doing so, however, they give that word a new depth of meaning. They define good in terms of God; not vice versa. Accordingly, the biblical position is that God, and God alone, is good without qualification (Mk. 10:18 and parallels: on which see B. B. Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ, 1950, pp. 149ff.); and he is the arbiter and judge, as he is the norm and the standard of creaturely goodness. Man is good, and things are good, just so far as they conform to the will of God. Woe, then, to those who invert the divine scale of values, giving the name of good to what God calls evil, and vice versa (Isa. 5:20).”[6]
Packer is correct here when he points out that God is “the norm and the standard of creaturely goodness,” but he should take care when he says “Man is good, and things are good, just so far as they conform to the will of God.” The point is that God cannot will certain things given his nature, e.g., lie, condone murder, theft, deny himself, make square circles, etc. The Calvinist makes God’s will the means by which he can choose one person for salvation and not another. God just wills it. But if we speak about God’s will as integral with and reflective of his nature, we can see that He cannot will salvation for one sinner and not another. We can see that his grace is not doled out merely by his will, but what he wills is controlled by his essential nature. And that nature is gracious.
Ex. 34:6-7 provides a fuller explanation of God’s nature. It reads,
“The Lord passed in front of [Moses] and proclaimed:
The Lord—the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But he will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ iniquity on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.” (CSB)
So, Exodus 33 and 34, along with chapter 32, deal directly with the nature of God and are therefore informative for this controversy.
These chapters create a break in the flow of the Exodus narrative. They record a serious provocation of God by Israel. In chapter 32, the people had flagrantly disobeyed God’s command against idolatry (See Ex. 20:5-6). Israel willfully spurned their covenant relationship with God in making and worshipping a golden calf. In light of the Israelites’ powerful deliverance from Egypt, and the establishment of the specifics regarding the worship of God in the previous chapters, I submit that chapters 32–34 provide us with a more detailed and personal look into the nature and character of God brought about by Israel’s actions and the mediation of Moses on their behalf. As we begin to grapple with the interpretation of these texts, it is worth noting that the entry on “God” in the New Bible Dictionary reads,
“Attempts have been made to classify the divine attributes, i.e. character qualities, under such headings as ‘Mental and Moral’, ‘Communicable and Incommunicable’ or “Related and Unrelated’. Scripture would seem to give no support to any of these classifications. God’s names are to us the designation of his attributes, and it is significant that, historically, God’s names were given in the context of his people’s needs.
It would seem, therefore, more true to the biblical revelation to treat each attribute as a manifestation of God in the human situation that called it forth, compassion in the presence of misery, long-suffering in the presence of ill-desert, grace in the presence of guilt, mercy in the presence of penitence, and so forth, suggesting that the attributes of God designate a relation which he establishes with those who feel their need of him. That bears with it the undoubted truth that God, in the full plenitude of his nature, is in each of his attributes, so that there is never more of one attribute than of another, never more love than justice, or more mercy than righteousness, but that God is unchanging, undiminished and wholly involved in all that he does. If there is one attribute of God that can be recognized as all-comprehensive and all-pervading it is his holiness, which must be predicated of all his attributes, holy love, holy compassion, holy wisdom, etc.” [7]
Let us see how our understanding of God, especially as it relates to his grace, can be informed by these situations, and how it differs from the Calvinist understanding as explained in the previous section of this chapter.
Prior to the golden calf event, the Israelites had witnessed the might and power of God in his contest with Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt. The God of Israel ultimately proved himself superior to Pharaoh and his gods. The final plague – the death of the firstborn throughout the land – brought about the deliverance of the Israelites from approximately 400 years of slavery and was the occasion to teach the people that God ordained their deliverance and salvation to be accomplished by the blood of a sacrificial lamb. The “destroyer” would pass over the homes of those who sprinkled the blood of the lamb on their doorposts. Those who did not have the blood of the lamb on their doorposts would suffer the death of their firstborn at the hand of the Lord. This event initiated the Passover festival for Israel, which finds fulfillment in Jesus. (See Jn. 1:29; Lu. 22:1-20; Mt. 26:26-28; 1 Cor. 11:23-26)
Here we have an example of God’s character of compassion and judgment at work in this human situation and these relationships. Pharaoh was given time and opportunity to recognize the one true God and obey his command to let the people of Israel go. God had compassion on his people and “many other people” (12:38 NIV) or “a mixed multitude” (12:38 ESV) that also left Egypt with the Israelites (see 9:20), and yet God had to bring judgment upon Pharaoh and the other Egyptians (9:21) due to Pharaoh’s stubborn refusal to let the people go (Ex. 13:15). The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart at certain times by God was a form of judgment upon him for his stubborn rebellion against the mighty signs God showed him and the Egyptians.
But even having experienced a mighty deliverance from Egypt, their wilderness wanderings proved Israel to be a “stiff-necked people.” In Ex. 32 we have the crafting and worship of the golden calf after which God was going to destroy the people of Israel (32:10). Moses intervenes for the people by imploring God to, “Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people” (32:12). Moses presents his case to God by raising “Why?” questions in light of all God had done to deliver Israel from Egypt “with great power and with a mighty hand.” (32:11, ESV) The crucial “Why?” question Moses presented to God was, in effect, “Why allow the Egyptians to conclude that your intentions were evil regarding Israel? Why allow them to conclude that you intended to kill them, indeed, wipe them off the face of the earth? Surely such a conclusion could not be further from the truth because (and here is the culminating argument Moses presents), you swore by your own self to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that you would make their offspring “as numerous as the stars of the sky” and would give their offspring “all this land that [you] have promised, and they will inherit it forever.’” In an amazingly relational account, in which God allows Moses to present reasons to him as to why he should not do what he has a mind to do with Israel, God relents! God’s mind and course of action are changed. The text is clear. “And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.” (32:14). Theologian Walter C. Kaiser Jr. writes,
“God’s repentance or “relenting” is an anthropomorphism (a description of God in human forms) that aims at showing us that he can and does change in his actions and emotions to men when given proper grounds for doing so, and thereby he does not change in his basic integrity or character (cf. Pss 99:6; 106:45; Jer 18:8; Amos 7:3, 6; Jonah 3:10; James 5:16). The grounds for the Lord’s repenting are three: (1) intercession (cf. Amos 7:1-6); (2) repentance of the people (Jer 18:3-11; Jonah 3:9-10); (3) compassion (Deut 32:36; Judg 2:18; 2 Sam 24:16).”[8]
Kaiser makes an important point here about the character of God. God does not act arbitrarily in disregard for those legitimate grounds upon which he may take a different course of action. Indeed, God requires legitimate grounds for him to stay his hand when there are also good grounds for meting out justice and wrath. God is in a meaningful and genuine relationship with people.
Go to the next section: God’s Relational and Self-Disclosure as Gracious
Chapter 14 – The Nature of Grace in Scripture
The Truth of the Gospel 