So, we find God in a genuine and meaningful relationship with Moses and the people. What we learn is that God is a personal, relational being who has chosen to interact with his human creatures, whom he created. To understand the gracious character of God here, we need to keep in mind that God was going to completely destroy his people. Moses’s intercession prevented their destruction. This speaks of God’s inclination to be merciful and gracious, given a proper mediator. The relational dynamic between God and Moses cannot be overlooked. God tells Moses, “Now leave me alone, so that my anger can burn against them and I can destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.” (32:10) When God says, “Leave me alone” (CSB) or “Let me alone (ESV), it is as if Moses’s presence was keeping God from acting to destroy the people. After all, “the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” (33:11, ESV) If left alone, God would have destroyed his people. Moses was raised up by God himself to lead the people and will soon mediate again for them.
Even though God allowed Moses to alter God’s disposition and course of action with Israel, yet the text records that due to the golden calf incident “Moses’ anger burned hot” (32:19) and after breaking the tablets of the Law Moses said to the sons of Levi, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel…” (32:27) and he had the Levites slay three thousand men of Israel with the sword (32:28). Moses has performed an act of judgment upon Israel that is said to have been a command from God. It appears that upon this judgment, the people had repented. The text continues to record what amounts to the third reason for God not to destroy Israel – God’s own compassion! Moses desires God to forgive the Israelites based on God’s own character as gracious. Will he? We read that,
“The following day Moses said to the people, “You have committed a grave sin. Now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I will be able to atone for your sin.”
So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Oh, these people have committed a grave sin; they have made a god of gold for themselves. Now if you would only forgive their sin. But if not, please erase me from the book you have written.”
The Lord replied to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will erase from my book. Now go, lead the people to the place I told you about; see, my angel will go before you. But on the day I settle accounts, I will hold them accountable for their sin.” And the Lord inflicted a plague on the people for what they did with the calf Aaron had made.” (Ex. 32:30-35 CSB)
What is notable here is that Moses knows something about what God is like, such that he can make a plea for God to forgive the people. Moses understands atonement for sin and pleads for God to forgive the people’s sin. He dares to speak to God on behalf of the people, for he knows God to be forgiving. But it will be up to God, who knows the situation fully and acts out of the plenitude of His attributes, to respond appropriately. Moses also realizes this because he made no promise to the people that he would be able to atone for their sin before God. Again, we are struck by the close nature of the relationship between Moses and God. Moses requests, even pressures God, to forgive their sin. But God’s response is stern and severe. He inflicts Israel with a plague. But the corollary truth of God’s patience and grace must also be stressed. Here and elsewhere in Exodus, along with the accounts in Leviticus and Numbers, we have testimony to a people who try God’s patience, and yet what these accounts firmly establish is the great love and patience God has for his people, even though judgments are imperative.
In Exodus 33, God tells Moses to depart from Sinai with the people. But “an angel” will go before them (33:1,2), not God himself, lest he consume them. The incident with the golden calf was a serious matter in God’s sight. Yet Moses found favor in God’s sight. Again, this is a most remarkable section of Scripture because in 33:11 we read, “Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” This “one-on-one” relationship with God prompts Moses to ask God to teach him his ways so Moses can know more about God and continue in God’s favor. And Moses discourses with God about the importance of God’s continued presence with his people. That presence is what marks out Israel as special among all other peoples. It is what makes Israel the people of God.
“Moses said to the Lord, “Look, you have told me, ‘Lead this people up,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor with me.’ Now if I have indeed found favor with you, please teach me your ways, and I will know you, so that I may find favor with you. Now consider that this nation is your people.”
And he replied, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
“If your presence does not go,” Moses responded to him, “don’t make us go up from here. How will it be known that I and your people have found favor with you unless you go with us? I and your people will be distinguished by this from all the other people on the face of the earth.”
The Lord answered Moses, “I will do this very thing you have asked, for you have found favor with me, and I know you by name.”
Since God knows Moses “by name” (i.e., to be in a specially chosen relationship with God), Moses persists in wanting to know more about God. Upon Moses pressing God to show him his glory, we have the first of God’s declarations of his own nature, and he tells us he is gracious and compassionate.
Then Moses said, “Please, let me see your glory.”
He 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.” (33:12-19 CSB)
Given their misinterpretation of Romans 9, Calvinists will be inclined to read these words (cf. Rom. 9:15) in the context of personal salvation to mean that God wills to be gracious and compassionate to a limited number of chosen individuals that he has predestined to salvation, with the corollary that all others he has not willed to show grace and compassion to he has predestined to eternal damnation. Therefore, that is the way they interpret Paul’s quotation of this verse in Rom. 9:15. But this is not correct, as I have discussed briefly in previous chapters and will show in the chapter on the biblical doctrine of election. Suffice it to say here that God’s words in Ex. 33:19 are teaching Moses and his people that in circumstances where we as humans refuse to and certainly fail to be gracious and compassionate or believe no grace or compassion has been earned and therefore is not warranted, God retains the prerogative to be gracious and compassionate because it is in his nature to do so. Again, this stands in contrast to the retribution that our fallen human nature might demand.
God is not capricious here but is working towards a just basis for the forgiveness of sin. He will send his Son to earth as “God with us” to bear our sins on the cross. His nature as compassionate and gracious will accomplish this for sinful humanity. We are witnessing this revelation of the nature and saving purposes of God throughout the Old Testament. This becomes especially applicable in the New Testament when the Jews became proud in their privileged position as the people of God and were convinced that, due to their special relationship with God, they alone could lay claim to his grace and compassion, while all others, that is, the Gentiles, could not. The Gentiles were not of Israel (i.e., children of Abraham) and therefore they did not have access to this grace and compassion. But Paul uses this verse to dismantle such thinking and show that God’s grace and compassion can extend to those outside Israel. It is also the Gentiles “to whom I will be gracious” and “on whom I will have compassion.” The point in Romans and elsewhere throughout the Old and New Testaments is that God chooses to be gracious to all people in contrast to human privileges, prejudices, and predilections. He does this because it is his nature to do so.
So, the phrase “sovereign grace” is misunderstood and misused by the Calvinists when they use the word “sovereign” to connote God’s grace being limited to only those God predestined to salvation. Rather, God’s grace is “sovereign” in the sense that it can transcend the boundaries placed on it by national Israel or other human conventions (e.g., the younger serves the older), and expectations. These expectations are rooted in a mistaken sense of national privilege and pride that demands exclusivity. God is their God, and they are his people. Period! But God’s grace and compassion are unlimited and unbounded. He can, due to his nature, show compassion, patience, and grace to the Gentiles when the Jews refused to believe God could and would do so. God’s nature as compassionate and gracious is not bound to Jewish conceptions of privilege or restricted by anyone’s claims to deserve or earn his grace, nor is it subject to anyone’s expectations or prejudices as to whom it should apply (see Mt. 20:1-16).
These qualities in God form the foundation of the planned universal salvation God is bringing to pass in the call of Abraham, the promised son Isaac, the establishment of a people through Jacob, their deliverance from Egyptian bondage, and, as the story continues, the arrival of their Messiah, Jesus Christ, who accomplishes that salvation for all mankind. We are reading about the beginnings, or the setting of the stage, for that salvation plan. This is what we mean when we say that salvation is all of grace! It does not preclude the response of faith, as I will demonstrate in the chapter on the biblical doctrine of faith. Our concern here is to show that God has established a people as part of this plan, and they have been a stiff-necked people who have now sinned grievously against God by disobeying his clear commands that “You shall have no other gods before me” and “You shall not make for yourself a carved image…” (Ex. 20:3-4 ESV) Interestingly, verse 4 continues, “You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” (Ex. 20:5-6 ESV) And although God is also just and must punish sin – a character trait already witnessed and soon to be revealed by himself of himself – he nevertheless reveals to Moses first and foremost that he is a God of grace and compassion. This leads Moses to ask God to show him his glory (33:18). God responds,
“I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy…The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 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, 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 fourth generations.” (Exodus 33:18,19; 34:5-7 ESV)
About this passage, especially Exodus 34:6-7, theologian Walter Brueggemann says that we have here,
“…Yahweh’s self-disclosure, revealing to Moses God’s character and intentionality. Nowhere before this speech has anyone been privileged to hear directly a disclosure of what is most powerful and definitional for God’s own life.”[9]
Brueggemann observes that,
“This is an astonishing disclosure of God, which tells Moses (and us) as much about the God of the Bible as any verse can.”[10]
He adds,
“Taking it as we do as God’s self-disclosure, this formulation … provides an enduring reference point in Israel’s life with God. This characterization of God is always and everywhere about God in relation. No “attribute” of God is given here concerning God’s own character in itself – e.g., omnipotence, omniscience – because Israel characteristically is unconcerned with such categories. God is by character and definition in Israel a God who always stands in relation toward the people.”[11]
Indeed, if grace is always characteristic of God in relation, we have good grounds to conclude that he is consistently gracious to all those he tells us he wishes to be in relationship with. And if the Bible is clear about anything, it is that God wants to be in relationship with his human creation, especially as sinners to redeem us from our sin (e.g., Jn. 3:16; 1 Tim. 2:3-6, 4:2, et al.). And the whole point of the seven elements of the divine character revealed to us in Ex. 34:6,7, i.e., merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, faithfulness, keeping steadfast love, and forgiving, is to assure us of God’s grace to us. Each of these characteristics overlaps in its meaning and should be seen cumulatively to teach us that God does “put up with” us and is intentionally gratuitous in forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. God is merciful and gracious to helpless, hopeless sinners.
Of course, this is not cheap grace because God, who is completely holy and just, cannot by mere fiat declare that all sins are forgiven. He cannot flippantly or arbitrarily forgive sin. Rather, who God is as holy, righteous, and just is required to properly ground and justify extending grace to us who are completely unholy. He does precisely this in the death and resurrection of Christ. In addition, this is not cheap grace because in the very next verses we are warned that God “will by no means clear the guilty.” (v. 7) That is not to contradict what was just said above, but to reinforce it. God does not forgive sin in disregard of his other attributes of justice and holiness. He cannot violate his character as just and holy as if simply by an act of his will he could forgive all sin – “brushing it under the rug” so to speak. Paul reflects upon this in Romans 3:21-31. But secondly, not only does the Exodus passage refer to the unchanging, consistent character of God’s mercy, grace, and steadfast love, but also his unchanging, consistent character as just and fair. Contrary to Brueggemann, there is no contradiction here with verse 7. There is no contradiction here because God does take care of our guilt, but only in terms of dealing in relation with people as they choose to be in relation with God – that is, either as believing or remaining in rebellious unbelief. Scripture is clear about this in both the Old and New Testaments. This takes us into a discussion of the nature of faith in the work of God in Christ to remedy the problem of our sin and guilt. Faith is the God-established means by which the sinner enters and remains in a saving relationship with him. God “will by no means clear the guilty” because he cannot declare a sinner “not guilty” if the sinner chooses to remain in unbelief regarding the means by which God deals with our sin in Christ. In refusing to believe, their sin and guilt remain (see Jn. 3:36; 9:39-41). Faith is the response God seeks from individuals throughout the Old and New Testaments. More on this in the chapter on faith. But with respect to those who remain in faithless rebellion, outside the remedy God has revealed to take away iniquity and guilt, God, of course, “will by no means clear the guilty.” Again, this is to say that God cannot be fickle or arbitrary regarding our sin. There must be a just ground, an atonement, a sacrifice upon which sin can be forgiven, and God’s wrath averted. God’s words and acts are consistent and reflective of his inner, unchanging nature. He is consistent in his words and deeds, and therefore he does not, and indeed cannot, condemn those who love him nor acquit those who despise him. Either of these actions would not be in accord with his nature as righteous, just, and fair. And yet, there are those who will not receive his grace and stubbornly remain in their sin. To them, too, God will do what is right, just, and fair. God will not be mocked. His grace is not cheap. They will reap what they sow. The lesson here is that we should humble ourselves before God and be responsive to his undeserved grace to us in Christ Jesus.
Go to the next section: A Word About “Free” Grace
Chapter 14 – The Nature of Grace in Scripture
The Truth of the Gospel 