“O Lord our God, you answered them;
you were a forgiving God to them,
but an avenger of their wrongdoings.
Exalt the Lord our God,
and worship at his holy mountain;
for the Lord our God is holy!”
– Psalm 99:8-9
We humans tend to want things simple. We want a single explanation or description for things so we can easily understand them. We do that with God, often reducing God in our mind to a single attribute. He is loving OR He is forgiving OR He is just OR He is holy. He’s all those things and many more! God must never be reduced to a single attribute for your convenience. God is infinitely beyond us. Each of His attributes are without limit. Though God is “simple” and indivisible in His nature, He can’t be reduced to a single one of His attributes.
These verses remind us of this truth. God is truly a forgiving God. His ability to forgive is infinitely beyond our ability to even imagine forgiving. When God forgives, He forgives totally and completely. Our sins and failures are utterly gone, never to be brought to God’s mind again. His forgiveness is never transactional or temporary. Once He’s forgiven, He never holds your past mistakes over your head or throws them in your face. Because of the work Christ did on the cross, you are guaranteed that as a follower of Jesus, God will always forgive you when you ask Him for forgiveness.
However, God must never be reduced in our mind to a simple forgiving machine. When we do that, we don’t take sin seriously, we don’t take God seriously, and we don’t take forgiveness seriously. While God will always forgive His children when we truly repent of our sin, He’s also infinitely just. He will avenge our wrongdoings. All sin is rebellion against Him. All sin separates us from Him. All sin carries the penalty of death. The good news is that Jesus paid that penalty for us through His death on the cross. It was His sacrificial death and resurrection that satisfied God’s perfect, infinite justice. It was upon Jesus that the just punishment for our sins fell. This is why we must take sin so seriously in our own lives, because Jesus died to deal with it. We only receive the benefit of His death if we’ve trusted in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Apart from Christ, everyone still faces the justice of God’s wrath for their sins and we need to take that seriously as well.
God is also perfectly, infinitely holy. He’s utterly without sin, set apart from sin, and worthy of all worship. He’s holy and faith in Jesus makes us holy in His eyes. Such faith is the only thing that can truly make us holy and reconcile us with God in His holiness. We’re utterly dependent on Christ to bring us into relationship with God. Now, we’re called to live in holiness because He is holy. We’re commanded to imitate Jesus because He has made us holy. Don’t try to reduce God. He’s gloriously worthy of worship precisely because of His many attributes, all of which find their ultimate expression at the cross. Don’t reduced Him. Worship Him! #FollowJesus