When I was young, before I became a follower of Christ, my mental picture of God wasn’t particularly appealing.

Imagine a cross between the strictest auditor you’ve ever met and a mean old grouch who complains about every little thing you do wrong.

That was pretty much Him.

I pictured someone watching my every move, recording every failure, and compiling a growing list of reasons to keep me out of heaven.

And if you wanted to support that picture with selected passages from the Old Testament, you wouldn’t have much trouble.

There’s the flood.

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

The plagues of Egypt.

There are laws with severe penalties, prophets announcing judgment, and accounts like the death of Uzzah after he reached out to steady the ark of the covenant.

Then there’s that familiar declaration: “Vengeance is Mine” (Deuteronomy 32:35, NASB).

God didn’t seem very nice, let alone loving.

That certainly didn’t sound like someone I wanted to get close to.

Someone I needed to avoid upsetting?

Absolutely.

Someone who loved me?

That was harder to imagine.

I suspect I wasn’t alone.

Then Along Came Jesus

After the centuries between the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament—often described as roughly 400 years of silence—Jesus arrives.

And suddenly, the picture looks very different.

People who weren’t known for their religious respectability wanted to be around Him.

Tax collectors.

People with embarrassing histories.

People whose reputations made respectable neighbors whisper.

People who would undoubtedly fail the audit.

Jesus sat down and ate with them.

When He called Levi (also known as Matthew), a tax collector, to follow Him, the gathering that followed included plenty of people that the religious leaders considered unacceptable company. Their objection was precisely that Jesus was sharing a table with them. (Mark 2:13–17)

Apparently, these people found something in Him that made them want to come closer.

Then there’s the woman who approached Him during dinner at a Pharisee’s house.

She had a reputation. His host knew it.

But as she wept at Jesus’ feet, Jesus saw more than the history everyone else associated with her. He received her expression of love, assured her of forgiveness, and sent her away in peace. (Luke 7:36–50)

Imagine what that must have meant to her.

To be fully known and still welcomed.

To come carrying shame and leave carrying hope.

Reading stories like these, my younger self might have thought:

Now, this is more like it.

Goodbye, angry judgments.

Hello, grace.

But that raises some fairly important questions.

Which God is He?
The One I thought I saw in the Old Testament?
Or the One Jesus reveals?

Did God Change?

Here’s where I have to be careful.

Because if I say the Old Testament gives us an angry God and the New Testament gives us a loving one, I’m leaving out quite a bit of both.

Long before Jesus walked the earth, God described Himself to Moses as compassionate, gracious, patient, loving, and faithful. He also made clear that guilt matters. Mercy and justice appear together in His own description of Himself. (Exodus 34:6–7)

And that declaration about vengeance?

Paul repeats it in the New Testament.

Interestingly, he uses it to explain why we should leave judgment to God instead of taking revenge ourselves. (Romans 12:19)

Jesus, meanwhile, speaks seriously about judgment and calls people to repentance.

His grace doesn’t mean that cruelty, dishonesty, or the damage we do to one another suddenly stops mattering.

So perhaps the problem was with the picture I had assembled.

I had noticed God’s judgments without understanding His patience.

I had seen His standards without recognizing His heart.

And I had mistaken His opposition to sin for a desire to keep sinners away.

Jesus gives me reason to reconsider that last part especially.

God sent His Son to save the world, rather than arriving on a mission to condemn it. (John 3:17)
That’s a very different purpose from the one I had imagined.

The Mirror I’d Rather Avoid

One way I’ve come to understand God’s law is as a mirror.

A mirror can show me that something needs attention.

It can’t fix what it reveals.

God’s commands expose things I would prefer to explain away.

My selfishness.

My resentment or jealousy.

My ability to excuse behavior in myself that I readily condemn in someone else.

The Old Testament contains far more than this mirror, of course. It’s also filled with promises, rescue, forgiveness, and God’s persistent pursuit of His people.

But its accounts of human failure make uncomfortable reading partly because I recognize the people involved.

They receive help and soon forget where it came from.

They promise faithfulness and then follow whatever seems more attractive.

They trust God until trusting Him becomes inconvenient.

I’d like to think I’m different.

Sometimes I’m not sure I am.

The mirror becomes useful when I stop using it to inspect everybody else.

When I’m willing to say, Yes, that includes me.

Who Needs a Doctor?

When people objected to the company Jesus kept, He answered:

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Jesus, in Mark 2:17 (NIV)

I hear an uncomfortable challenge in that illustration.

Who, exactly, is healthy enough to have no need of Him?

Certainly not me.

The difference isn’t that some of us need healing while others have managed to become spiritually healthy on our own.

The difference is whether we’re willing to acknowledge our need.

A person who insists nothing is wrong is unlikely to welcome treatment.

And I can do that spiritually with remarkable ease.

I’m a decent person.

I haven’t done anything that bad.

At least I’m better than some people.

Every one of those statements allows me to avoid a more honest question:

What’s happening in my heart?

Recognizing my need doesn’t earn God’s mercy. Even the willingness to face myself honestly is something I need His help with.

But it does mean I can finally stop arguing with the diagnosis and begin trusting the Doctor.

Jesus was ready to receive the people others dismissed.

Their need didn’t disqualify them from approaching Him.
It was the very reason to come.

The Father Who Runs Toward Us

Of all the pictures Jesus gives us of God’s heart, I keep returning to the father in the story of the prodigal son.

The son has demanded his inheritance—an act Timothy Keller explains as effectively saying, “I wish you were dead”—left home, and wasted what he was given.

Eventually, hungry and desperate, he begins the journey back.

He has a confession ready. He hopes there might still be a place for him among his father’s hired workers.

But while he is still far away, his father sees him.

And runs.

Not away from him, but toward him.

He embraces his son before the young man can finish explaining the arrangement he hopes to negotiate. The welcome becomes a celebration. (Luke 15:11–32)

The son’s choices mattered. They had caused real damage.

But the father had never stopped loving him.

That picture challenges almost everything I once assumed about God.

The God I imagined would have been standing at the door with a clipboard.

The father Jesus describes runs down the road to meet his returning child.

Same God

I don’t pretend this resolves every difficult passage in the Old Testament.

Some still trouble me. Some require more study than a short blog post can provide.

But I no longer believe I have to choose between a holy God and a loving one.

The cross brings both into focus.

Sin is serious enough that rescuing us costs far more than I can comprehend.

And God loves us enough to bear that cost Himself in Christ.

Jesus reveals the heart of the God who had been pursuing His people all along.

The same God who sees what’s wrong with us.

The same God who knows we cannot heal ourselves.

The same God who invites us to recognize our need for Him and come home.

For years, I thought He was compiling reasons to keep me out.

Now I see how far He has gone to bring me in.