Nâcham Elohim ra'

It's been quite a few days since I blogged. Just felt like sharing a few thoughts that I have. I think this season of my life have has been a time when I'm questioning a lot of issues and areas which I used to hold true in the past.

Seeing that Easter is coming...tomorrow, just wanna share abit about a sermon I have heard recently. The sermon titled "When God repents" by Shane Hipps from Mars Hill Church. When I first heard it I was abit disturbed....how could God repent? This sovereign God, this Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end...how could this creator that created the very concept of creation repent? Essentially the bible read nâcham Elohim ra' in Jonah 3:10, in the original Hebrew. Nâcham Elohim ra' means God repented of evil. This was in context to how God reacted in the face of the Ninevites repentance. He explained that it seemed to be that it was a mirroring effect so that the Ninevites know that they were not alone as they went through the process of repentance.

It is akin to how a baby would smile at the mother and the mother would smile back, establishing trust with the baby. It is liken to how when your friend smiles at you, you smile back to acknowledge trust. And it is a prophetic statement that was made available to those who could see a relation between the phenomenon and Jesus humbling himself...in a sense, in repentance for us, when He was crucified. Essentially God was humbling Himself, going against His nature to make us feel comfortable and having the assurance that He is with us as we go through life's battles

I was thinking seriously about my personal reaction of why I would react that way when I heard that God repented in the bible. Well...how should I put this? I think very often we think that God is a mechanical, principled organic holy entity. Yes he's a person, we can have a relationship with Him but at the same time...we ignore or we discredit Him as someone who can have a whole range or spectrum of behavior in a contextual situation. Could God have repented? That idea sounds blasphemous...but really when you think about it, why not? If God is a person as we always say He is, and he's humble as we like to praise him for, I don't think it is beyond God to acknowledge that hey..."I wanted to really bring judgment upon you guys but now I know..I should have been more gracious..hey I was quite angry...I'm sorry..it would have been horrible if I did what I did when you guys didn't really know the extent of your sin." Its liken to perhaps a couple quarreling...and the husband apologized that he was in the wrong. The wife also apologized and said that she shouldn't have been too quick to judge. I think that is not beyond God. Have we become so fixated on a certain idea of God that we dare not explore new grounds of what God can be?

To me Easter is about understanding the humanity of God, the flexibility, the all encompassing grace and love of God. Grace is Jesus personified. Grace is never a balance, because you cannot preach a balanced gospel. The very concept of grace is overriding, overwhelming and overflowing. When we talk about grace I think it becomes an oxymoron when you say that we need a balanced grace gospel.