God the Father, Mentor's Guide, MG06

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

come where the Lord will display in apocalyptic fashion his wrath unleashed on the world, called “the great day of the Lord (cf. Zeph. 1.14-15; Isa. 13.9). In the New Testament, Jesus reaffirms the prospect of God the Father Almighty pouring out his wrath on those who reject his will (cf. Luke 16.19-31). The consequences of rejecting God’s knowledge is terrifying and drastic (Luke 13.3, 5; John 15.1-11; Matt. 3.7). Faith in Jesus Christ averts the believer from the sure and certain prospect of suffering God’s wrath for those who reject God’s offer in him (1 Thess. 1.10; Rom. 1.18-32; Eph. 2.2). The only conceivable way to understand God’s goodness and severity is together. In other words, any attempt to describe or depict God as either one or the other is a kind of dialectical thinking that the Bible itself rejects. In the first segment we will explore God’s goodness, and in the next segment we will ponder the wrath of God. If there be any confusion or tension in our study, rest assured it will be in our inability to comprehend them together and simultaneously , and not in the actual demonstration of God’s perfections as our God and king. Again, please notice the objectives. As usual, your responsibility as Mentor is to emphasize these concepts throughout the lesson, especially during the discussions and interaction with the students. The more you can highlight the objectives throughout the class period, the better the chances are that they will understand and grasp their magnitude. There appears to be a malady in those who study the attributes of God, one which tends to infect virtually every exegete of Scripture unless they are particularly careful to notice it. What is it? Most interpreters of the attributes of God tend to emphasize one attribute of God to the exclusion or underemphasis of another. This kind of study is, in my mind, built into the idea of looking at the infinitely beautiful character of God as elements or as parts . While we may, for the sake of study and analysis, speak of God’s attributes like a list or collection of perfections, the truth is that God cannot be spliced up into elements. When God acts, he acts in unity with his own perfections and without any confusion or conflict between and among his own qualities. His being is like the seamless garment of our Lord; there are no parts,

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