A precis of chapter 7.

Often, what we think we see in other people, or God, is simply a projection of our own character and attitudes.

The Pharisees studies the Scriptures diligently.  But they failed to see Christ in them, because ‘they did not have the love of God in their hearts’ (Jn 5:39-42).  When our hearts are not right, misunderstanding abounds (Jn 2:19-22; 8:43; Mt 13:15).

Many (including Jesus’ disciples) expected a Messiah who brought military victory.  When Jesus started talking about going to Jerusalem to die, his message fell on deaf ears (Mt 16:21f).  What we think we see and hear is conditioned by what we expect to see and hear.  It is only when we are finally ‘like Christ’ that we shall see him as he really is (1 Jn 3:2).

God repeatedly complains that Israel was an obstinate, unbelieving people, who constantly broke God’s heart. Unsurprising, then, that their concept of God was so partial and imperfect.  2 Sam 22:26–27 teaches that to the faithful God appears faithful, but to the devious he appears in twisted ways.  Oftentimes, the way God appears to people says more about them than it does about him.

We have a deep-seated tendency to create God in our own image.  We crave power, and invoke a coercively powerful God to be on our side.  But when Paul define’s God’s power as the self-sacrificing love revealed on the cross, it runs so counter to our own inclinations that we know this comes by divine revelation.

We should not be surprised to find that God’s people in the OT sometimes depicted him in twisted ways, in their own image.  In fact, we should be surprised at the glimpses of the true God – finally revealed in the cross – that we see in the OT.  See Ex 5:3 as an example.

But we can be thankful that God has permitted such twisted perceptions of himself to remain as part of inspired Scripture, because they show just how far he was willing to stoop in order to further his gracious purposes for these people.

Looking at this from another angle, God did not reveal more of himself than his people could bear at the time (see Ex 33:18-23).

Only when God’s glory became fully embodied in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the very “radiance of God’s glory,” could humans behold God’s glory and live. And, as we have seen, this glory turned out to be nothing other than the radiance of God’s self-sacrificial love that was most perfectly displayed on the cross (John 12:27–33).

God’s limiting, for a while, his revelation of himself is also seen in Jn 16:12,16; Mk 4:33f; 1 Cor 3:1f and Heb 5:11-14.

Reflections of the anti-violent God

The OT contains abundant evidence of a God who accommodates himself to the limitations of his fallen and culturally-conditioned people.  Thus he tolerates for a while, but by no means endorses, the portrait of a violent God.  But the OT also presents a breaking-through of the nonviolent character of God that is finally and fully revealed in the cross of Christ.  Isa 11 represents God as dreaming of a time when the entire creation will be free from violence.  Thus God’s original intention, where no animal would be food for another animal, would be restored (Gen 1:29f). Isa 11:9 implies that whenever there is any kind of violance, the knowledge of the Lord is lacking.

Other passages where we see the Spirit of Christ breaking through to reveal God’s true, nonviolent, character include Mic 4:3; Psa 46:9.  The Lord urges his people not to rely on the machinery of warfare, but on him (Hos 1:7; Psa  20:7; 146:3,5).  It follows that if Israel had completely trust in the Lord, they would never had needed to lift a sword.  Violence arises from our own sinful passions; never from the heart of God (cf. James 4:1).

The Israelites should have known that ‘man is not the enemy’ (cf. Eph 6:12) and that God did not want them to fight.  A glimpse of God’s way is seen in 2 Kings 6, in which Elisha overcomes evil with good (cf. Rom 12:17,21).

In Ex 23:28-30, represents God’s way of conquest as driving Israel’s enemies out ‘little by little’, as if by voluntary migration.

In Lev 18:24f there is a rather similar prospect of the land itself driving out the Canaanites by its own unfruitfulness.

In both cases, the scene is very different from a ‘massacre them all’ strategy.

What happened to these nonviolent strategies?  We must assume that the change was not in God, but in his fallen and culturally-conditioned people.

Yoder writes:

‘If only the Israelites had been able to place their complete trust in Yahweh, [the Canaanites] would have withdrawn without violence.’

What God said, and what Moses heard (and then commanded Joshua to do), then, were two completely different things.  It was true that God wanted the Israelites to occupy the Promised Land.  But it was not true that he wanted them to achieve this by violent means.

It is not possible for us to follow the non-violent Jesus Christ while believing that the Spirit of Christ would have mandated the wholesale massacre of foreign peoples.

Paul’s message was the message of the cross (1 Cor 1:18).  And nobody and nothing – not even an angel from heaven – may preach a different gospel (Gal 1:8).  To mercilessly slaughter anything that breathes is a blatant contradiction of the gospel.  The message of Moses was, at this point ‘under a curse.’

Once again, we see how low God was willing to stoop in order to further his gracious purposes for his people and, through them, for the world.