WHO DO YOU SAY I AM?

“Therefore, make peace with you God, whatever you conceive Him to be – hairy thunderer or cosmic muffin.”

-- The Deteriorata

In its 1972 send-up of the Desiderata, the National Lampoon stumbled upon a Truth: everyone conceives of (or perceives) God differently. For some, He is the ultimate authority figure – stern, unyielding, ready to mete out punishment to any who break His rules. For others, He is a nebulous something out there – permeating every tree and flower, flowing like water through all space and time, somehow above everything, yet at the same time in everything. For some, He’s their buddy, for others, He’s daddy. Almost as many different perceptions of God exist, as there are people to perceive Him. And how we relate to Him – and to each other – is directly related to that perception.

One of the most jarring sections of the Bible is the Psalms. These have been a source of comfort and encouragement for Christians, Jews, and others for thousands of years. Yet anyone who studies them will quickly notice the disconcerting shift in the Psalmists’ views of and relationship to God. There are psalms of despair and pain (Psalm 38), and psalms of comfort (Psalm 23); psalms of unrelieved complaint against God’s treatment of the psalmist (Psalm 88), and psalms of unrestrained praise for God’s works (Psalm 104); psalms of wrath against the psalmist’s enemies (Psalm 59), and psalms begging for mercy for sins (Psalm 51).

Even within the individual psalms, the writer’s view of God changes with an almost dizzying abruptness. Take, for example, Psalm 68, a song that most likely celebrates the transfer of the ark from Obed-edom’s house to the new Tabernacle in Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:12-19). In this psalm, David has written some astounding extremes. In verses 5 and 6, he calls God “a father to the fatherless” and a “defender of widows”, and describes Him as setting “the lonely in families”. In verses 7-10, he describes how God has given “abundant showers” and “refreshed your weary inheritance”, and how He has “provided for the poor”. Finally, in verses 19 and 20, David praises God “Who daily bears our burdens”, calling Him “a God Who saves”, and stating that “from the Sovereign LORD comes escape from death”. Then, after identify9ng God’s love and compassion and praising Him for His mercy, David turns right around in verses 21-23 and says that God “will crush the heads of His enemies”, and that He will bring those enemies to the Jews “that you may plunge your feet in the blood of your foes, while the tongues of your dogs have their share”! David goes from extolling God’s goodness to calling for His vengeance in the most bloodthirsty of terms, almost in a single breath! No wonder one person at a small group I once attended wondered aloud if the psalmist was somewhat schizophrenic!

The Psalms highlight a complaint of many, especially non-Christians: How can a loving God be so cruel? What kind of God is He, anyway? This problem has occupied the finest theological and philosophical minds for centuries, and I certainly won’t pretend to be able to solve it by myself in the space of a few paragraphs. But I believe a clue to its solution can be found not only in the character of God, but also in how we view Him.

King David was closer to God in many ways than most of us ever hope to be. God Himself identified him as “a man after His own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22; see also Psalm 89:19-29). David saw almost every side of a many-faceted God. He saw His wrath (2 Samuel 12:1-12) and His forgiveness (2 Samuel 12:13, 24, 25); he saw His holiness (2 Samuel 6:6, 7) and His mercy (2 Samuel 24:10-16); he saw His deliverance (1 Samuel 17:48, 49) and His righteousness and compassion (1 Chronicles 22:7-10). He, of course, never knew of Jesus and the coming sacrifice in his own city of Jerusalem, although he was given prophetic words (for example, Psalms 69 and 22) that pointed to the future Saviour and His crucifixion. But he did know that the God Whom he worshipped was at the same time the simplest and the most complex being in creation.

God is holy. We are not only told this time and again in Scripture, but logic tells us this must be so, for a God Who commands the worship and veneration that He does, and Who claims for Himself the ultimate authority in matters of justice, must be holy. If He were anything less than holy, His claims and demands would be only the megalomaniac ranting of a petty tyrant. And it is because God is holy that He could not abide the existence of the foul and depraved practices of many of the nations around Israel. And because His holiness gives Him the right to demand exclusive worship, any worship of any other god or goddess – whether demon, creature, or man – is rightly identified as rebellion and punishable by whatever means are necessary. If a light punishment will be sufficient to correct the offense, then a light punishment is given. If no amount of punishment will correct the offense, then it becomes necessary to remove the offender entirely. And if the offense permeates the entire structure of a society, much the way a cancer can permeate the entire body, then every portion of that society has been tainted and has to be cut out, from the oldest man or woman to the newborn infant. This concept is difficult (at best) to grasp, but it is the reason behind the complete annihilation of cities and nations in the Old Testament, right down to the animals; and it is the understanding of God’s holiness, the all-pervasive unholiness in certain societies, and the often necessary exercise of perfect, emotionless justice that enables the psalmist to sometimes go so far as to cold-bloodedly demand that the enemy’s infant children be dashed to pieces (see Psalm 137:9).

God is a loving God. Again, this concept permeates the Scriptures, and again it’s borne out by logic. A God that created Man simply as a mindless slave, or on a whim, would never have put up with the rebellions that Man has spawned. He would have wiped out the species the first time it crossed Him. There has to be a reason that He puts up with us, and one that goes beyond self-centeredness on His part; after all, if He were thinking only of Himself, He could just as easily have created something a little more agreeable than humanity. And since it’s doubtful that He keeps us around just to be the playthings of the angels, He must have some concern for our well-being. To put it simply, He loves us.

God is holy; He cannot abide sin in His presence. God loves us; He wants the best for us. The two concepts of perfect justice and love cannot be reconciled without the concept of mercy. It is a merciful God Who chooses not to punish us as we deserve, but chooses instead to lighten the punishment to bring us to repentance without destroying us or to provide a means of circumventing the judgment inherent in our rebellion. That latter choice first resulted in the animal sacrifices of the Mosaic Law – the innocent bull, lamb, goat, dove, etc. took the place of the guilty human, and the judgment fell on it instead of on the offender. David grew up with that concept firmly embedded in his mind. Yet he recognized the intent behind the Law and saw that God wasn’t interested in a lot of animal blood; He wanted obedience so that Blood would never have to be spilled at all.

From these three major concepts – holiness, love, and mercy – spring most, if not all, of our other concepts of God: Purity, forgiveness, compassion, justice, and on and on. Yet they remain little more than concepts, exercises in philosophy, as long as they remain outside the sphere of our humanity. This was likely one of the reasons that the Mosaic Law was insufficient – it lacked a connection to our human hearts. David, as well as other great Old Testament poets and prophets, had wonderful insights into the character of God, but their observations remain somehow fractured and disjointed. When we read the Psalms, as well as other Old Testament books, we are confronted with a picture of God that can’t help but leave us in some confusion. There has to be another, more intimate way, of knowing the character of God. And so there is.

I chose the title for this teaching for a very good reason. Jesus asked the disciples what the crowds were saying about Him – how they identified Him. Then He asked, “But who do you say I am?” (Luke 9:18-20). This same question is asked of each of us, and our answers have a lot to do with our concepts and visions of God – and vice versa. If we have a preconceived idea of God, and that idea doesn’t fit what the Bible says about the character of Jesus Christ, then we’re unlikely to make the connection. But if we come at it from the opposite direction – if we look at the Biblical character of Jesus, and formulate our perception of God on Jesus, we can’t go wrong. For Jesus Christ is God (which is a study in itself, and one worth pursuing, as this single doctrine sets Christianity apart from almost every other religion and cult on the market). When we study Christ, we study God – and not a set of philosophical or theological arguments, but a personal, in-your-face God, a God Who is an intimate part of His own creation. In Jesus we find all that the Old Testament writers saw: Justice, forgiveness, compassion, holiness, mercy, righteousness, and purity. We find the Judge and the Saviour, the King and the Servant, the Lion and the Lamb. We find all the apparent “inconsistencies” resolved and revealed in the one divine Man, God in human form.

“Who do you say I am?” Study the character of Jesus Christ, then answer His question for yourself. You might be surprised at what you find.

NOTE: For a more comprehensive analysis of the Psalms by a much finer mind than mine, please refer to Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis.