Articles
“God's Awesome Tenderness”
“For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”
Deuteronomy 10:17-19
The word “awesome” is abused in our modern vernacular. I know I’ve been guilty of using it to describe rather trivial things. But in the Bible, “awesome” most often describes the works God has done, the places God has been, and the character of God himself. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word yaré means something so big, terrifying, and powerful, it causes astonishment and awe in us. The same word translated “awesome” in Deuteronomy 10:17 is translated “terrifying” later in verse 21.
Whenever God ‘made an appearance’ among his people, they were consistently awestruck. Israel was scared to death at the foot of Mt. Sinai, when God gave the Law through Moses. Ezekiel saw God riding on a lightning storm/cosmic chariot across the plains of Babylon and responded by falling down as if he were dead. Isaiah met with God in the heavenly throne room and declared his own ruin in the face of the King’s holiness. An astonished Daniel saw the “Ancient of Days” giving the dominion of the universe to one “like a son of man.” When John turned to see the voice of many waters he came face to face with our resurrected and glorious Lord. John responded just like Ezekiel, “I fell at his feet as though dead.”
These “theophanies” (intense visual manifestations of God’s glory to humanity) broke all categories of human experience. They were so awesome, that when the biblical writers tried to convey their encounters with God, they resorted to the words “like,” “as,” “had the appearance of” or “the likeness of” because what they saw was so unique it was far beyond the limits of their vocabulary.
Among the many attributes of God which make him “awesome,” is his tenderness toward the lowly. In fact, his condescending grace is rooted in his transcendent greatness. God is awesome because his love reaches across the infinite gap between us and him. We see these ideas in Deuteronomy 10, particularly in verses 17-19.
God is transcendent, the “God of gods and Lord of lords.” On the basis of this greatness, God is “not partial” and “takes no bribe.” God is self-sufficient and needs nothing outside of himself. God does not take bribes not only because he is just (Deut. 16:19; Prov. 17:23) but also because he has no motive to take a bribe. He who already owns everything cannot be bribed with anything.
He shows no “partiality” for the same reason. He does not try to curry anyone’s favor through special treatment because he has no need to. God is above all that. He doesn’t need to create a debt with anyone through favoritism because all created beings are intrinsically and eternally in his debt already. If he wants to get something done, he will do it. He doesn’t need coercive strategies.
On the basis of his transcendent self-sufficiency, Moses says, “He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.” Since God can’t be bribed by the rich and has no deficiency to be remedied through favoritism, he cares for those who can’t afford bribes and have nothing to attract his partiality — orphans, widows, and refugees.
The application for us is to love like God loves. We are beneficiaries of God’s kindness. If we will recognize our widow-like, orphan-like, refugee-like spiritual condition of helplessness (Mt. 5:3), and rely on God’s love and power, we will have the power to love as he loves. This is why James says, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” (Jas. 1:27)
