What's God Like

There are so many potential paradoxes about the God of Christianity to
navigate through. These can frustrate some and turn off others. But
those who desire to contemplate end up with a richer and deeper
experience of God.

One I want to muse on today is His sense of righteousness and mercy.
God simultaneously abhors sin and loves the sinner. His character
would cease to be the God He has described Himself as if He
accommodated sin or if He turned away the sinner. This much we know
from the Bible.

It can be easy to infer from this that God is one of two things,
neither of which is true. On the one hand, you can consider that God
hates sin but is somehow bound by a higher law to love the sinner, so
He begrudgingly makes a way for the sinner's sin to be pardoned so
that the sinner can be reconciled to Him. On the other hand, you can
consider that God loves the sinner but is somehow bound by a higher
law to hate sin, so He begrudingly makes a way for the sin to be
punished.

But God is not bound by a higher law, and He does nothing
begrudgingly. He can and does simultaneously hate sin and love the
sinner. There is a pleasure God derives -- the pleasure of a perfect
God, acting in character perfectly -- when He punishes sin. He feels
the same pleasure when He loves a sinner back into relationship with
Him.

If it is possible for a perfect God, who never acts begrudgingly but
takes pleasure in everything He does, to derive even more pleasure in
something, it is surely in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
For here is the nexus of holy hatred of sin and holy love for
mankind, the perfect representation of the perfect character of a
perfect God.

We who are finite can, however subtly, place upon God the limits we
face. Imperfect man would certainly have to choose between being a
hater of sin who begrudgingly loved sinners or a lover of sinners who
begrudingly hated sin. God is not imperfect man. He can -- not out
of insecurity or duty or impulse, but from the core of who He is -- be
both.