Jesus takes sin just as seriously as the Father. His purpose in His first coming was not to condemn the world, but to save it (John 3:17). His purpose in His second coming is significantly different. This is a time of judgement. We see a glimpse of this in Matthew 25, when the Son of Man sits in judgement and sends some to “the eternal fire” (41).

I can remember hearing this phrase by Michael Reeves about 10 years ago: There is no God in heaven unlike Jesus. This succinctness of it, the clarity of it. I love it. God the Father and God the Son are one. There is no variation between God in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament. “For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed” (Mal 3:6). “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8). The immutability of the Triune God is the clear teaching of Scripture. Jesus has no problem identifying as one with the Father. He doesn’t see any discrepancies between Himself and the Father. “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Also, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Jesus is the exact imprint of the nature of God the Father (Heb 1:3), and in Jesus, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily (Col 2:9). And while this seems clear, I want to address some misconceptions that lead to thinking that Jesus and God appear differently from the Old and New Testaments. (For clarity, when I say “God”, I’m referencing the Father, and when I say “Jesus”, I am referencing the Son).

Misconceptions About Sin

One misconception is regarding sin. Sometimes we read those stories of God’s judgement on the nations and think that God is being too harsh or overdoing it. But I think God is warning us in these histories of the truly heinous nature of sin. First, those nations were terrible. God had patiently waited for hundreds of years. He sent prophets (think Egypt and Nineveh), yet they wouldn’t listen. In Egypt, they were literally taking newborn babies straight from delivery and murdering them. How should a good God respond? If He was simply casual about it, then I’d suggest He is not good and just. But what we see in Israel’s judgement on the nations is God’s good justice finally coming to bear on a wicked people. God was judging the nations and confirming His promises when He drove out the nations. “Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob” (Deut 9:5).

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