God has always judged sin, including in the New Testament. For example, I pointed him to the judgment of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. They were struck dead for lying to the Holy Spirit. I brought up the parable of the Ten Minas, Luke 19:11-27. (Which I wrote about in my previous post on the views of David Wood and Sam Harris.) I also brought up Matthew 25:31-46 when Jesus separates the sheep and the goats, and I brought up Acts 2:34-35, when God makes the enemies of Christ a footstool for His feet. I told him Grace is in the Old Testament and judgment is in the New.
God is the same. But the New Testament is the promised Covenant of Jeremiah 31. The Testaments served two different purposes. The Old Testament taught what sin is and how serious it is, and it taught what the consequences are through judgments, death, and a sacrificial system that could not take away sins permanently, Hebrews 10:4. But it promised a coming remedy that could. The New Testament provided that remedy. They both contain grace and judgment.
He asked me to show him where grace was in the Old Testament, so I explained to him that Christ was crucified from the foundation of the world. That means salvation and grace have been there since the beginning. Grace and truth are through Jesus Christ, 1Peter 1:19-20 and Revelation 13:8, and He is eternal, Micah 5:2. And, as I said, He was slain from the foundation of the world. So grace has always been available. Yet, as I said, there are two different covenants. One old. One new. The first taught what sin is, how serious it is, and what its consequences are -- death and judgment. It also prophesied of a coming remedy for sin, death, and judgment -- over and over, beginning in Genesis 3:15, "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." So the Old Covenant taught how serious sin and its consequences are. There must be punishments for sins against God -- just as there are punishments for civil crimes. Otherwise, sins only increase in frequency and severity. Sometimes the judgment came quickly, but usually it came after many warnings. But whereas the Old Covenant taught us what sin and its consequences are, the New Covenant brought us the remedy. The Old Testament lays out the history of God's unfolding plan to bring us that remedy.
The wage for sin is death. If God had not extended grace from the beginning, we would never have been born. If God had immediately judged sin, which required death, there would be no one left. It was God's grace and forgiveness that withheld judgment against sin and gave us the remedy through His Son. It was a plan that was there from the very beginning.
Grace is favor, but it is also the enabling God gives His people to accomplish His will. Grace is the power of God at work. Jesus was full of grace. Does that mean he had God's unmerited favor? No. He was the power of God at work. Grace empowers us. I have written on this before. A close examination of Grace in scripture teaches us that Grace is more than favor. It is empowerment from God to live a life that is pleasing to God.
Grace is tied to the forgiveness of sins and the supernatural empowerment to accomplish God's will. Noah was spared, and in spite of his sins, he was declared righteous because he believed God. Genesis 6:8 records the first occurrence of the word "grace", and the first occurrence of a word in scripture is considered significant. According to the Law of First Mention, it establishes its meaning in the mind of God and remains unchanged throughout scripture. It says, "Noah found grace in the sight of the LORD." He obeyed God. Yet he drank to the point of passing out. In spite of his sins, Noah found forgiveness and strength from God to accomplish what God called him to do. This was before God gave the sacrificial system to Moses. It was not sacrifices that saved Noah. It was Grace.
Abraham went down into Egypt, lied about his wife to save his own skin while endangering hers -- twice -- followed Sarah's advice to have a child through Hagar -- which has led to the problems with Islam -- and he did not believe the promise of God that he and Sarah would be given a biological heir. Yet God forgave him in spite of his sins, declared him righteous, and equipped him to do the things he'd been called to do. That's grace. Again, this was before the official sacrificial system was given by God to Moses. Throughout the account of Lot and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, we see grace extended to Lot and his family. Genesis 19:19, "...thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life." Grace is tied to mercy and the saving of a person's life -- despite that person's sins, God declares them righteous.
King David, the greatest human king who ever lived, was guilty of adultery and murder. Yet God loved him and forgave him and equipped him as a great military commander to defeat Israel's enemies and bring Israel closer to God's promised boundaries. King Solomon, the wisest king who ever lived, ended up in extensive idolatry with a thousand wives and concubines. Yet he still found forgiveness at the end of his life by God's grace. God is the one who empowered Solomon with wisdom and a great kingdom. Even Manasseh, the most evil king of Judah, found forgiveness by God's grace. Everyone in the genealogy of Jesus was a sinner, but God chose them for a purpose: That purpose was to bring about the birth of His Son and an end to the sacrificial system. (The sacrificial system was prophetic and pointed to the true Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world once and for all, Hebrews 10.) Because of God's grace, He saved Israel time after time in spite of their idolatry. Grace is listed as an attribute of God throughout the OT. See these verses for starters: 2Kings 13:23, Joel 2:13, Psalm 116:5, Isaiah 30:18.
God chose a people to deliver His Word to. He chose the prophets. He chose the land. He made a plan to redeem us -- though His only Begotten Son. All of it was in order to save the world and reveal Himself to us. I'd say that is the ultimate act of God's Grace.
Part of the problem the commenter at Twitter had was that mormons don't study the Bible. Most have only a superficial knowledge of it at best. They are taught it's not trustworthy. It's not translated correctly. Never mind that we have many manuscripts in the original languages, and there are many translations. The NET Bible is an excellent translation, and it is known as the translators' Bible because it takes a deep dive into its translation process. It gives scholarly reasons behind almost every word it translates.
I know from past experience with the mormon cult that they focus on the book of mormon and doctrine and covenants. They only crack open a Bible when they want to pull out a verse or two that they can twist to suit their own needs and the agenda of their cult. Many things bother me about mormons. One is their low view of God, another is their low view of scripture. For example, mormons believe God was once a man, and that mormon men will one day be gods and have all the power of God. They believe in many gods. Yet the Bible teaches that God is eternal, and there is only one God. They also believe that Jesus was not perfect and that He is the brother of Satan! All of those things are blasphemous heresies! They anger me more than I can ever express!
I've covered this before, but because of how important it is, I will cover it again. Even though God is One, scripture makes it clear that God works through three different persons that are one. Here is a diagram that you will find in many books on theology. I first saw it in Dr. Charles C. Ryrie's book, Basic Theology: A Popular Systematic Guide to Understanding Biblical Truth.
Another illustration of this unity is a candle. The candle is made of
wax. It has a wick. It has a flame. But the wax is not the wick. The
wick is not the wax. The fire is not the wax. But they are all part of
one candle. There are three different elements serving different
purposes, but they all make up one candle.
We clearly see plurality in God’s nature in scripture. Isaiah 48:16 reads, "Come near to me; hear this, I have not spoken in secret, from the beginning; from the time that it was, I was there, and now the Lord God and His Spirit has sent me." The Trinity is at the heart of that verse. Who was there from the beginning that is not God? Who was it the Lord God and His Spirit sent? Whoever He was, He was there from the beginning with God and the Spirit of God: which points to John 1:1 in the New Testament, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through Him (as in Genesis 1:1) and without Him was nothing made that was made." Verse 14, "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Later in scripture, we read that the Son is also God; so is the mysterious Holy Spirit. All of them are said to be eternal, yet we know from scripture that only God is eternal. 1Timothy 6:16. Jesus is eternal, and Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, Hebrews 13:8. Since Jesus is full of grace and truth, grace and truth have always existed.
The Holy Spirit was given after the cross to keep sin in check and to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. (John 16:8.) Before the Holy Spirit was given to all born-again believers, God kept sin in check with the law and harsh judgments to teach the serious consequences of sin and how much He hated sin. But there has always been a heavy penalty for sin. God took responsibility for sin when the 2nd person of the Trinity took on flesh and died for sin. But the Old and New Testaments have different purposes. However, grace is found in both -- and so is judgment.
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