God is love - a Lenten series 5 Love is greater

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Psalm 103:8 The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.
9 He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever;
10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.

I used to think God's justice was equal to his love, because I also had to believe in an eternal hell in the theology I grew up with. (Now I think differently.) So verses like this in the Psalm were not allowed in my head to threaten my theology.

This psalm is clear that God's love is greater than his wrath. I understand that as a father of three children. No matter how mad they would make me, my love was, and still is, greater than my anger. Not only is it a tiny bit greater, but orders of magnitude greater. They can make me mad, but they can never make me stop loving them. Won't God the Father be likewise but perfectly as the ideal father? A father who tortures his child is considered a satanic monster.

My God is love, not a demon. Lent is a season that recalls Christ's temptation by Satan, who used scripture to justify giving into temptation. May we all, like Christ, find the better scriptures in response.


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