Making sense of God’s anger and love (Jer 33:1-13)
Jer 33:1-13
A question hard to fathom for our human mind is the interplay between God’s love and judgment, His holiness that cannot tolerate sin and yet His faithfulness to sinful people. Whenever we try to resolve this tension in favour of one or the other side, we end up losing something of the truth. Yet, it is imperative that we grasp God’s true nature because if we don’t, one of two things will happen. Either we focus on God’s love in a sentimental kind of way so that we ignore sin or the need to obey God, or we are so conscious of His holiness that we desperately try to please Him from a fear of punishment. Judah believed the first option (God is with us, nothing can harm us no matter how we live). Jeremiah, on the other hand, ate, drank and breathed God’s coming judgment on His faithless people and seemingly struggled to make sense of any future hope despite faithfully proclaiming what God had told him to say.
God’s anger and discipline
The Lord, however, wants His servant to understand at a deeper level and so He patiently comes again and encourages Jeremiah to probe deeper (Jer 33:1-2 cf. Matt 7:7-8). Strangely, most of this chapter is a repetition of earlier promises. Nevertheless, when we struggle to understand a perspective new to us, we may need to hear it more than once. Here, God’s insistence on Judah’s wickedness and His anger over it are unequivocal. It is not that they were not so bad after all, nor that they repented or made amends and thereby pacified God. No, the Lord was angry with them for their utter corruptness and held them accountable by withdrawing His presence (Jer 33:4-5). This, however, is not final punishment and the breaking of all ties. Rather, its purpose is restorative (which is clear from God’s continuing engagement with them). In other words, the people had to realise through events that their trust (in human powers, other gods) was misplaced.
God’s mercy and love
The people’s utter evil is then contrasted with God’s surprising love. Renewal will be both inward (healing, cleansing, forgiveness; Jer 33:6-8), as well as outward (rebuilding and repopulation; Jer 33:10-13). Most astounding is God’s emotional reaction to Jerusalem as paraphrased by the NLT, ‘Then this city will bring me joy, glory, and honor before all the nations’ (Jer 33:9).[1] Compare how we respond when someone hurt us badly and we struggle to forgive. We want to make the offender ‘pay’ either by forcing them to make amends or by saying cutting things or hurting them in some other way. God’s response on the other hand carries no lingering resentment, it is an open-handed giving of good things.[2] Notice the effect of such generous grace: it leads to fear and trembling (v.9), or as the NLT phrases it ‘they will tremble with awe’.[3] When God’s love is fully understood, the response is no flippant thanks for cheap grace or irresponsible living, but a trembling at the astounding mercy received and a wonder of ‘who am I that I should be loved so much?’.
The cost of forgiveness
Forgiveness is costly because it involves relinquishing the right to make the other person pay for their sin. Sin is like a burden, if the sinner is relieved of having to carry it, the one who forgives ends up shouldering it. This metaphor appears in the Hebrew phrase ‘to bear or carry his sin/guilt’. When applied to human beings it means that the person in question is guilty of wrongdoing and will have to endure the appropriate punishment (Lev 5:1, 17; 20:17). However, when the phrase is used of God, it means that God forgives (lit. lifts off or carries sin; Mic 7:18). In other words, forgiveness means taking over or carrying the burden/cost of sin. This is true in a small way in human forgiveness as well. If we do not make the other person pay for their sin against us, we must absorb the cost and suffer the pain of harm caused. Ultimately, however, it is God who took over the burden of sin in Jesus Christ who died our death for us. What costly love!
[1] In the Hebrew, the subject is ‘she’ meaning the city (NASB ‘it’). In Hebrew the word for city is feminine and Jerusalem (also called Zion) is often represented by female figures in prophetic speech, like a daughter or wife or mother (e.g. Isa 52:1-2; 1:21; 49:14, 20-21).
[2] It should be noted that this pattern works because the people have been held accountable in what we might call restorative justice and came to see the fruit of their sin that destroyed them. Forgiveness does not mean that people are not held accountable. The whole point of this passage is that judgment and mercy belong together. This is especially true in the case of abusive people who particularly like to exploit the Christian principle of love. The Church and Christians have often been naïve in such cases and demanded forgiveness from victims while they did not hold perpetrators accountable by bringing them to justice and by creating boundaries to protect others from them. Letting someone continue in sinful patterns that are destructive for the person and for others is wrong and not loving.
[3] That this is not a fear or dread of God in a negative sense, but awe in the face of such mercy is clear from the reaction that follows, which extols God’s faithfulness and goodness (Jer 33:11).
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