Matthew 5:48
Be Perfect
48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Luke 18:19
Only God is Good
19 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.
1 Peter 1:15-16
Be Holy
15 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”
Matthew 7:4-5
Man's Way of Judging
4 How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
1 John 1:9
God is Perfectly Faith and Gives Perfect Justice
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
1 Peter 3:18-21 (KJV)
Jesus Died for the Unjust
18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
Romans 7:7-21
Man's Sinful Nature
7 What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead. 9 Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. 11 For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12 So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.
13 Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! Nevertheless, in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it used what is good to bring about my death, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.
14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
John 14:6
Believing in The Truth Gets Us to God
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Isaiah 55:8
My Thoughts are Not Your Thoughts
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
Matthew 5:17
Jesus Fulfills the Prophets and the Law
17 Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.
I have read where people at times see the Old Testament God, as a little different than the New Testament God that Jesus speaks and teaches about...I have read where God is even an unpleasant character in the Old Testament...But God is Perfect and Holy and Good in both Testaments...And in reading the entire Bible, we see these things about Him, and we understand that He is Perfect, Holy, and Good...But we often do not ask how much...We tend to overlook that He is Infinitely Perfect, Infinitely Holy, and Infinitely Good...There is Eternal Vastness in this last statement, and we need to better understand that...
As I think about this, I think about C. S. Lewis talking about God choosing a selected group of people in the Old Testament to be His people...God would teach His people the kind of God that He is...In teaching often comes discipline...Lewis tells us that this powerful Being selected a specific group of people and spent hundreds of years hammering into them what kind of God He was, and that He cared about their conduct...Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament chronicles the hammering process...
For man it takes a few hundred years to understand His Hammering Process...This hammering process was not always neat and agreeable to man...Part of the hammering process was discipline...Discipline is still not always agreeable to man, (sinful man), as we read through some of the verses that we might see as immoral...Yet, we cannot judge God, because we are the ones who are sinful and immoral...
What kind of God He is, is a Perfectly Moral God that sees sin as something very, very, very, serious...So the hammering process was sometimes a very severe process of teaching the Hebrew people about sin and their sinful nature...It was not always pretty...And as they learned just how Good and Perfect He is, they also learned more and more about Him...So part of the hammering process shows just how much He hates sin...He does not believe in sin, nor does He sin, because of His Perfect Nature...After all God is Perfectly Moral and being Perfectly Moral, He sees things differently from us and does not think like us...William James Craig says “Since God does not issue commandments to Himself, He has no moral duties to fulfill, that is to say, no moral obligations or prohibitions...He can do whatever He wants so long as it is consistent with His own perfectly good nature...God can command us to do things which in the absence of a divine command would have been sin.” ...
And James goes on to mention the act of driving out of the Canaanites in the Promised Land...So God may do things that we may judge as mean and angry and even deceitful...But when we react like this, we are judging...He is teaching and using His Divine Command...We are not God and we do not think like Him, so how can we possible judge Him...We have enough issues with judging ourselves and others -and getting those right...
So since God is Perfectly Moral, and of Perfect Nature, He at times, from a man’s perspective, seems to be at odds with us and what we believe...We have to look at His Perfectly Moral Character to better understand His discipline and the hammering process that Lewis speaks of...Because we are so sinful, we cannot compare ourselves to God...But when we look at Another One who never sinned, we can see God’s attributes better...What Jesus taught about God does not in any way say anything about God’s behavior or inappropriate use of force or anger about Him and the Old Testament...And Jesus knows God better than anyone...So as you read the four different gospels not once does Jesus think or say that God is not forgiving and merciful and LOVING...God is God and the Only One Good...And we happen to see this, I think, better in the New Testament, than in the Old Testament because of how we feel and think about ourselves and mankind...We see more often in the Old Testament, how much at times that He views the complete distaste of sin and uses His Divine Command to teach His people...And Jesus says He fulfills the Prophet's writings and the Law of the Old Testament...