The Hosea 13:16 problem

We understand, of course, the difference between the Old Covenant and the New, and how the work of Christ and the gift of the Spirit dramatically change how we relate to God.

But he's one and the same God. Jesus gives us a clearer and deeper revelation of God, but not a different one. The God Jesus spoke with and spoke for, the God he unveiled, is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

But we can't be closet Marcionites. Who was he? Marcion claimed the god of the Old Testament was a demiurge, a lackey deity, and sharply distinguished that being from the heavenly Father whom Jesus revealed and Paul preached. We don't believe that. The God of Moses is also the God of Paul. They're one and the same.

But then there's Hosea 13:16. "The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open."

That seems as different from, say, John 3:16 as god is from God, as Marcion's demiurge is from our heavenly Father. 

Perhaps it is Hosea 13:16—"The people of Samaria must bear their guilt because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open"—that Jesus' disciples had in mind the day the people in a Samaritan village refused them hospitality. "When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, 'Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?' "

God, in their minds, seems ready to release mass destruction for such things.

"But Jesus," we're told, "turned and rebuked them. Then he and his disciples went to another village" (Luke 9:51–56). Jesus turns the other cheek and makes his disciples turn theirs as well.

Is this a new thing? Is this a different God?

No. Or better: This is a new thing from the same God.

But before we go there, consider for a moment how thin the gap really is between the revelations of God in the Old and New Testaments. God's mercy, his kindness, his pathos, is as marked in one Testament as it is in the other. And his dreadful wrath, his fierce justice, his burning jealousy for his people and his own righteousness—again, these characteristics of God are well represented in both covenants. It's worth noting that in order to make his case, Marcion had to excise not just the Old Testament, but a fair bit of the New as well.

Further, both Testaments narrate a kind of historical determinism. The brutality that Hosea describes is sickening but hardly confined to some remote, barbaric past ruled by bloodthirsty chieftains at the behest of their cruel tribal deities. 

No, such brutality is happening somewhere in the world right now, often at the hands of those who are well educated and, in certain contexts, charming and sophisticated. 

But as then, so now: they commit such acts because, at root, "they have rebelled against their God." And as then, so now: it's often the women and children, the innocents, who suffer the consequences. In some ways, Hosea 13:16 simply announces a terrible historical reality: evil happens when men reject God, and often the wrong people suffer for it.

The problem here, though, is that Hosea 13:16 implicitly, and other texts explicitly, impute the agency of such acts to God. He's the author and perfecter of the atrocity. He is the one pulling the levers, pushing the buttons—or watching it all happen with approval, like Saul holding the cloaks of the assassins.

Is that you, Jesus? we ask. Which takes us to the heart of the matter.

In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.

Thus begins the Book of Hebrews. Over its 13 chapters, the writer builds a compelling case for Jesus' complete solidarity with frail and sinful humans and yet his utter superiority over everything that breathes—over angels, prophets, high priests, Moses. "In the past" is one of the book's refrains. "But now" is another. In the past, God spoke and acted through prophets, through angels, through priests, through Moses. But now, God speaks and acts through his Son, Jesus, who is superior to all others—who, indeed, is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being.

Jesus reveals God like no other. Jesus speaks for God like no other.
Hebrews draws a vivid contrast between past and present, Moses and Jesus, the Old Covenant and the New. In every way, Jesus—what he says, what he does, what he inaugurates, what he consummates—is superior to whomever and whatever has come before him. The past is a mere shadow of Christ's present reality and future glory.

But Hebrews sees no contrast in God. There is no Old Covenant versus New Covenant God. There is no God of Moses versus God of Jesus. Whoever wrote Hebrews was no Marcionite.

All of this ties together as Hebrews wends toward its conclusion. There, the contrast between past and present, Moses and Jesus, Old and New rises to a brilliant crescendo:

You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded: "If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death." The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, "I am trembling with fear."

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Heb. 12:18–24)

Jesus ushers in a new day and a new way. In the past, we trembled before this God. But now we can approach him with joy, with confidence, with singing.

But he's the same God. Indeed, here's a surprise: The road is even steeper now, the judgment of God sterner, and the cost of refusal greater:

See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? . . . Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our "God is a consuming fire." (Heb. 12:25, 28–29)

Jesus opens a new way to the same God. But Jesus, rather than lessening the stakes, heightens them. His blood speaks a better word than Abel's, or any other's, but his message is only an intensified version of what God has always said: Do not refuse me when I am talking to you.

Our pastoral instinct is that this all resolves at the Cross. All talk of God must filter there. All views of God must refract there. All theology must converge there. At the Cross, God's own wrath falls on God. The God of the Old Covenant meets himself in the Christ of the New Covenant, and in a way superior to everything that has come before, he enacts a deep and lasting reconciliation.

No matter how bleak it gets, how many fall to the right and the left, how inevitable your defeat seems, hold on! The high court of heaven rules in your favor. You win in the end. Think, for instance, of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, or David and Goliath.

But here's the strangeness of it: The Cross is mostly God's defiance of himself. God erects a cross against his own wrath. What the Cross defies, what the Cross defeats, what the Cross pushes back, is as much the wrath of heaven as it is the power of hell. God disarms himself at Calvary. To put it another way: At the Cross, God made a way for his mercy and love to triumph over his justice and judgment.

We take refuge from God in God. The only escape from God's wrath is God's mercy. And what rains down on your head? Grace upon grace upon grace.

Is that you, Jesus? Thank God, yes.