Humanity: Loathsome Insects, or Royal Family? Part 2 of 4

Is it true that God “abhors” sinners, as Jonathan Edwards claimed (see Part 1)? Is He really just holding us like worms over the “pit of hell,” perennially finding Himself in a state of anger over these “loathsome insects”?

To find out God’s perspective on the matter (and if He is angry about it), let’s look at three examples of how God dealt with the worst of the worst: the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Nineveh.

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.”

Genesis 6:5-7 ESV

When God sent the Flood, “all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth” (Gen. 6:12). Noah was the only man who was “blameless in his generation” (v. 9). The world has never been as bad as it was prior to God sending the Flood. (See “The Corruption of the World” chapters in The Epic Gospel We’ve Forgotten.). But notice that God wasn’t angry at sinners when He decided to start over with the de-creation and recreation of earth. He was sad, grieved to His heart.

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the threatened destruction of Nineveh are narratives with similar beginnings but very different endings. In both, the sin of these cities is so great that an outcry has come up before God (Gen. 18:20; Jon. 2:1). In Sodom and Gomorrah’s case, the LORD destroys these cities, offering no opportunity for repentance. But not even in light of the perverse violence taking place in those cities was God described as angry. Rather, Abraham calls the LORD the “Judge of all the earth” (Gen. 18:25). God was doing what just judges do: rendering a verdict based on the evidence, which the LORD Himself had come down to see (Gen. 18:21).

In Nineveh’s case, the story begins the same, with an outcry of the oppressed rising before God. While God as Judge had also rendered a guilty verdict in this case, He provides an opportunity for Nineveh to repent. As the narrative reveals, the city’s destruction was on the horizon, but Nineveh listened to Jonah’s 1/3-hearted effort (Jon. 3:3-4) to “call out against it” (1:2). Nineveh repented, and God relented.

Interestingly, God is not angry in the book of Jonah, but Jonah is furious over God’s willingness to forgive Nineveh. And it is in Jonah’s anger about God’s forgiveness that we find something very interesting about the character of God and His feelings toward this city filled with “sinners.”

But [God’s relenting] displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.”

Jonah 4:1-2 ESV

Jonah quotes God’s own words back to Him. In Exodus 34:6, God passes before Moses and describes Himself—that He is “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…” Jonah then adds to this his own words, “relenting from disaster.”

Jonah knew God’s character, and he didn’t like it. It was great when God treated Israel this way and even Jonah himself, but Jonah certainly didn’t want “sinners” like Nineveh getting in on God’s mercy and grace.

Although these three narratives are a small sample size, they make the point. God does not “abhor” sinners, as Jonathan Edwards claimed. Quite the contrary. Nineveh’s story reveals the heart of God toward the ungodly—an attitude that the Apostle Peter would later summarize explicitly.

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise [about the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly] as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

2 Peter 3:9 ESV

God’s sparing of Nineveh and Peter’s declaration are not universalist claims. A day of judgment is coming. Nineveh later repented of its repentance (a phrase I am borrowing from Tim Mackie) and was destroyed. The city’s destruction was foretold by the prophet Nahum, whose Biblical book takes place after Jonah and is an “oracle concerning Nineveh” (Nah. 1:1), describing the destruction that would come to “that great city” (Jon. 1:2).

In Jonah’s anger, he neglected to include another phrase God used to describe Himself in Exodus 34:7, “[a God] who will by no means clear the guilty.” Nahum did not leave out this phrase, and he also recalled Exodus 34:6 that God is “slow to anger” (Nah. 1:3).

The Flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah are perhaps God’s most comprehensively destructive acts of judgment in the Old Testament, but He did not issue these acts of obliteration in anger. Contrary to the character portrayal by Jonathan Edwards of God as a perpetually angry tyrant holding us over the “pit of hell,” God is “slow to anger,” “not wishing that any should perish.”

This is not to say that God does not get angry. In the next post, we’ll explore some of the events where God seems to fly off the handle (at least to our modern eyes). But for now, it is fitting to end Part 2 with the closing remarks of the book of Jonah, where God’s heart is revealed not only for the “sinners” of Nineveh but also for the inhabitants of Nineveh who were less than human.

“Should I not also have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 people, who do not know the difference between their right hand and their left, as well as many animals?

Jonah 4:11 NASB