When the minister who writes the “Spiritually Speaking” column in my town’s newspaper expressed his views on what “God is love” means, he ignited a debate on the nature of God that monopolized the Letters to the Editor section for over a month. Does God’s love trump his justice? Is God primarily holy and just, or primarily loving? Can a God of love dispense both forgiveness and punishment?

The core theological theme of Ezekiel is to reveal God’s character, made known to Ezekiel through his “visions of God” (1:1). Three of these visions especially help us untangle the confusing relationship between God’s love and mercy and his wrath and justice.

Ezekiel threatens God’s wrath and judgment on sin more than any other book in the Old Testament and shows us that God does not hesitate to seek retribution. In Ezekiel 8, a figure with a torso like glowing metal and a lower half like fire grabs Ezekiel by the hair: “The Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and in visions of God he took me to Jerusalem” (8:3). There the Spirit showed him the idolatry and other detestable acts taking place.

The Lord declares to Ezekiel that he will deal with his people in anger and without pity. He calls to himself seven “men,” six bearing deadly weapons and one carrying a writing kit. The one with the writing kit marks the foreheads of those who grieve over the evil around them. The rest of the people—“old men, young men and maidens, women and children” (9:6)—are slaughtered.

Overcome with grief, Ezekiel cries out to the Lord, wanting to know if the Lord will completely destroy Israel (11:13). The Lord tells him that, on the contrary, he will eventually give an undivided heart and a new spirit to the people he brings back from exile. God’s stated purpose in what he did was to make them his people and enable them to follow his decrees (11:19-21).

In Ezekiel 37:1-14, God grants Ezekiel another graphic depiction of this move from punishment and abandonment to restoration. The Spirit of the Lord whisks him away to a valley full of parched bones representative of the hopeless condition of Israel. They had been cut off from God and were in exile for their sins.

Ezekiel is commanded to prophesy to the bones that they would live again. The bones rise up, flesh covers them, and breath enters them. The Lord says that likewise he will bring the Israelites back from the “dead” and will put his Spirit in them.

Once more, the purpose of punishment is to bring them back into a right relationship with God: “Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them” (37:13). They had a lesson to learn about relying on God rather than on themselves or on lifeless idols, and God had to humble them through punishment for them to learn it. He did this because he loved them.

Ezekiel’s visions reveal that God is too holy to allow sin to go unpunished, but that his punishment on sin is restorative as well as retributive. Some letters to the editor in my town argued, however, that if God is a God of love, he should love people and accept them without requiring them to live by his guidelines. Isn’t it unfair to punish them simply because they don’t follow God’s rules?

The metaphor God lays out in Ezekiel 16 helps show the flaw in this argument. It’s the picture of a husband and a wife: “I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine” (16:8). The “wife” to whom he speaks is the nation of Israel. She betrayed him and prostituted herself despite the love and blessings he lavished on her.

The Israelites’ idolatry was no different than a wife’s adultery. Even in our promiscuous society, if a wife were openly and unrepentantly cheating on her husband, we wouldn’t expect him to stay with her and accept her behavior. If we wouldn’t expect this of a human husband, why should we expect it of God? He has an even greater right to our loyalty and submission.

“That was the Old Testament,” some say about the references in the Old Testament to God’s vengeance, wrath, and punishment. “The God we meet in the New Testament is a God of love.”

Large portions of books like Ezekiel are discounted on the basis of an assumed discontinuity between the Old Testament and the New. This ignores, however, that God does not change (Numbers 23:19; Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8). The Old Testament shows his unfailing love (Psalm 33:18) and the New Testament shows his wrath.

In the New Testament, God’s anger and punishment fall upon two classes of people for different reasons. God will sometimes punish those who are not saved by faith in Christ in order to cause them to turn to him in repentance. For those who remain rebellious, God’s punishment is purely retributive. He punishes them because they deserve it. At the last judgment, Jesus will send his angels “and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 13:41, 42). The apostle Paul also writes a frightening description of what will happen “when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thessalonians 1:7, 8, New King James Version).

God also punishes those of us who belong to him because he is a good father. The principle that a good father is one who is willing to discipline his children is a biblical one but not a popular one in today’s society.

According to the writer of Hebrews, God cares more about our long-term growth and joy than about what makes us happy in the short-term: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11). Rather than calling into question God’s love, his punishment shows us that he loves us (12:5).

Ezekiel’s visions give us both encouragement and a warning. A few months ago, a friend came to me for counsel. In the past he had not lived in a Christ-like manner even though he called himself a Christian. Although he had made a genuine change and was trying to live in a way pleasing to God, he was still plagued with worry that his life wasn’t going the way he wanted it to because God was punishing him. The assurance we receive in Ezekiel (and in the New Testament) is that God does not continue to punish us for our sins once we repent and seek to follow him again. We might still suffer the results of our sin, but God does not continue to punish his children after his punishment has effectively produced repentance.

Alongside this encouragement comes a warning. God’s punishment is retributive for those who don’t repent and turn to him for salvation. Hell has become a taboo topic since many believe that a God of love wouldn’t send people there; yet Ezekiel tells us these people will be punished. This should renew our urgency to preach salvation through Christ alone.

In his visions, Ezekiel revealed to the Israelites the character of God. He is both loving and just, both wrathful and merciful. When we keep these in balance, we will know that God is the Lord and will be better equipped to live in a way that reflects this knowledge. |L