Welcome back to Ask Me Anything where Pastor J.D. Greer answers your questions.

We are actually in the middle of a bonus series as J.D. is answering some of life's biggest questions.

This series is called 12 truths and a lie.

God chose to let his love overcome his wrath.

There's a contrast set up in God's presentation of his name to Moses there in Exodus 34. Verse 7. It says he's keeping steadfast love for thousands,

visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children and the children's children of the

third and fourth generation. That verse in Hebrew is a poem with a parallel structure

where the last phrase compares to the first. On one end, you got God's justice, which is to four

generations. And on the other end, you got God's mercy, which is to thousands of generations.

God's mercy is experientially greater than his wrath at least by a factor of 250.

Or go back to that phrase, slow to anger.

The Aramaic translation of the Old Testament, which is what Jesus would have used, translates that phrase this way.

It says, the one who makes anger distant and brings compassion near.

In other words, God had two emotions, if you will,

toward us, wrath and compassion. Both were right. Both were justified. He could have let

either one prevail and been fully righteous and fully just. But God, in his sovereignty,

and maybe you could even say inexplicably,

chose to bring compassion close and push wrath far away.

It might be one of the greatest mysteries in the universe,

one that the angels, even the angels, Peter says, are still confused by.

Peter says they look up and they say it just doesn't add up.

Why would God choose when he would be

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