Words To The Wise: A Beautiful Portrait
“And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” -Exodus 34:6-7 NIV
This short passage is saturated with descriptions of God’s love for us.
When I was a senior in college, I read pastor John Mark Comer’s book God Has a Name, in which he engages in an encouraging exegesis of this passage. He explores the meaning of the goodness of God line by line that makes reading the book comforting and wonderful (get it if you can). Suffice it to say that while we don’t have the space to do what he did, I too, want to show you just how this passage reveals who God is.
First, this passage is a self-revelation of who God is. Two reactions come into my mind as I ponder that. First, awe. Can you believe that God, the one full of glory, self-existent, and perfect, would reveal Himself to Moses? In an earlier verse (Exodus 33:18), Moses boldly asks God to show him his glory. God replies by saying that He will “make all His goodness pass before [Moses]” and proclaim the name of the LORD before him (33:19). However, Moses cannot see God’s face, because no one can do that and live.
Sure enough, God - Moses’ Father and all of ours (Hebrews 12:9) reveals his goodness to the man who heard God speak in a burning bush. Who would stoop so low? Only a God who loved Moses, and by extension us since Moses wrote it down - would. Even in other religions like Islam, there is no such intimate self-revelation - you learn about Mohammed’s god, Allah, through Mohammed who serves as a mediator.
Moreover, the fact that this is a self-revelation of who God is means immediately that we can trust it. This is God, proclaiming who He is. God, being holy, cannot lie. That means that all of His words are trustworthy, and this produces comfort in our souls.
So who does God proclaim Himself to be? I said earlier that this passage is saturated with rich descriptions of God’s love for us, and this is true from all sides.
First, God declares Himself to be merciful. According to Jewish hermeneutics, the order of things in a sentence is extremely important such that the first thing is the most important. So this is what God wants us to know from the outset - that He is merciful.
For God to be merciful means that He is compassionate; literally, He suffers with us. In a fallen world, I am glad that God cares for you and me in such a tender way. In Hebrew, the term for merciful is also used to describe the womb of a mother. God, like a mother, although in identity a Father (one who begets), is compassionate towards us. He cares for us!
So what we learn about God includes this: God cares about us and He is for us (1 Peter 5:7, Romans 8:31). He listens to our cries for help, does not afflict us from His heart, and does not laugh at our pain - He is not a schadenfreude. Indeed, in the person of Jesus, God is able to sympathize with us in our suffering and in our temptation to sin because He has gone through those things that we go through.
This is a God whose love is not superficial. It is kind, willing and able to provide our good. Lamentations 3:23 says that God’s compassions do not fail, and His mercies are new every morning - they never run dry.
If that’s not beautiful, tender love, I don’t know what is.
In closing, knowing that God’s mercy is a self-revelation of His character gives us a stable foundation for hoping in Him (Romans 5:5). Today, as you walk through life with God, lean on Him. Remember His omnipresence and His ear which listens, and let your soul cling to Him (Psalm 63:8).
Also, I would encourage you to study the other characteristics of God listed in this passage. The Bible Project (bibleproject.com) has released an excellent series on the character of God which goes over every characteristic in this passage in brilliant detail.
Discussion Questions
How did this exploration of God’s revelation change or deepen your view of God?
How does it make you feel that God cares about you like a mother cares for her child (Isaiah 49:15-16)? I ask this question because emotions help us value things, and this valuation help us make decisions - including good ones.
In view of God’s mercy, what is one thing you want to think about or do differently this week?
Share your answers in the comments and on social media!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ozi Ojukwu is a girl wildly in love with Jesus. A recent graduate of Cedarville University, she is a Colson-Fellow-In Training, learning about the fundamentals of a Christian worldview and how it connects to all of public life. She recently completed an internship at the Borgen Project, a nonprofit that makes global poverty a focus of US foreign policy. A bookworm to the core, she loves reading both historical fiction and memoirs. Her favorite verse is Romans 1:16.