The Boundless Bible 64: God's Nature: Old Testament Wrath, New Testament Love, or Somewhere in Between?
The “Old Testament God is wrath and the New Testament God is love” claim sounds tidy until you actually read the Bible closely. We sit with the stories that make people flinch, the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, conquest language, venomous snakes in the wilderness, and Moses losing the promised land after striking a rock. Then we ask the real question behind all of it: if God says He does not change, are we seeing a different God, or are we seeing the same God through different lenses?
We work through context and consequences, including why Moses’s moment is less about a single slip and more about publicly misrepresenting God’s character. We also name how easy it is to “rubberneck” the harsh scenes while skipping the steady mercy: provision in the desert, patience in Genesis, and the repeated theme that God is slow to anger. Psalm 103 and the bigger biblical story keep pulling us back toward grace without pretending judgment is not there.
Then we turn to the New Testament and challenge the selective Jesus we often prefer. Jesus heals, yes, but He also confronts exploitation, warns about hell, and Revelation brings back terrifying imagery. We talk substitution, Jesus carrying the weight of sin, free will and suffering versus divine wrath, and the idea of revelation as humans gradually learning who God is over time. We finish where the Bible speaks most clearly about God’s character: Exodus 34:6-7.
If you found yourself nodding, disagreeing, or wrestling, that’s the point. Subscribe for more conversations like this, share it with someone who avoids the Old Testament, and leave a review with the hardest passage you want us to tackle next.
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