God the Father, Mentor's Guide, MG06

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G O D T H E F A T H E R

Ask and answer your own critical questions about the nature of God’s goodness and his wrath. Ponder your own issues and concerns, and identify any specific questions you may have on the issues raised by the truths of God’s goodness and his anger against evil. The questions below might spark some thoughts of your own! * If God is absolutely holy, how can he have any kind of relationship with us or with creation, since we are all now living under the curse? * If our God is a God of perfect and unbounded love, how can he truly send even a single soul to perish in hell? * Since the blood of Jesus has appeased God’s wrath (i.e., propitiated us before the Father), why aren’t all people automatically saved, even without having to ask for forgiveness? * In light of the fact that God is gracious and does not deal with us on the basis of our merits but on his sovereign grace and love, why hasn’t God chosen to save everybody everywhere? If God does not desire a single soul to perish, why do they perish anyway? * How do you resolve and connect the idea that God makes it rain on the just and the unjust, while at the same time, God’s anger is against those who defy his will and his salvation through Jesus Christ? How can this be? * What does it mean to receive the grace of God in vain? Is it possible for someone who was once the object of his love and grace, to become an object of his wrath and anger? Explain your answer. Discuss and outline the way in which God’s relationship with his people Israel may give us insight into the nature of God’s love and justice in connection to his people. For instance, the same people that God rescued from the bondage and cruelty of Egyptian oppression, were judged by God to wander for forty years in the wilderness because of disobedience and unbelief. The same people who were rescued by God under the kings of Israel and Judah were sent into exile into the two respective kingdoms, Assyria in the northern kingdom, and Babylon in the southern kingdom. What clues or hints do we get from the case study of the Israelites that God’s love and his justice are simultaneously in play when he relates to his own people? The People of Israel

Student Application and Implications

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