1). INTRODUCTION

The issue this post seeks to clarify is simply this:

What does it mean when God says He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished? (KJV “by no means clear the guilty”)

In considering the encouraging topic of God’s forgiveness, we read one verse that is both important and puzzling (caps for emphasis):

“[5] The Lord came down in a cloud, stood with him there, and proclaimed His name Yahweh. [6] Then the Lord passed in front of him and proclaimed: Yahweh — Yahweh is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in faithful love and truth, [7] maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving wrongdoing, rebellion, and sin. But HE WILL NOT LEAVE THE GUILTY UNPUNISHED, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ wrongdoing on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:5‭-‬7 HCSB)

For the record in passing, note the LORD (in the HCSB given His correct name Yahweh), is NOT Allah and there is no linguistic contortion any Muslim can make that equates them, but that is not our focus here.

2). FORGIVENESS OR CONDEMNATION?

On the one hand, God emphasizes that it is His nature to forgive. And then He immediately follows that by saying He “will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.” Hmmm…which is it? Does God forgive, or does he refuse to clear the guilty?

A puzzling verse of apparent contradiction can sometimes best be explained with a paraphrase. God is saying: ‘I forgive the iniquity and transgression and sin of those who come to me in faith and repentance. But, toward those who refuse to repent and continue stubbornly in their sin, I will be perfectly just and will by no means clear them of guilt. In fact my justice is so thorough that I will visit the iniquity of stubborn, unrepentant sinners not only on them but also on their descendants who walk in the ways of their sinful fathers and likewise stubbornly disobey me.’

How can this interpretation be reached?

3). SCRIPTURE INTERPRETS SCRIPTURE

After the rule “Scripture must harmonise”, there is another golden rule of hermeneutics “Scripture interprets Scripture” which Muslims also ignore at their peril. A further rule, ‘context is king’ in other words ‘a verse without a context is a pretext’ is also ignored by the Muslim fraternity. All three rules once followed, allow for correct interpretation of Scripture and understanding that God is indeed not a god of confusion (such as plagues the Quran).

The Bible is its own interpreter. We don’t need any other sources to glean its truth. We don’t need a degree in Hebrew or special historical knowledge. We don’t need to know about other faiths, and we sure don’t need the Quran. We only need the Holy Spirit to convict us.

People of every race culture and creed can understand Biblical truth. We don’t need any special knowledge to understand sin, grace, forgiveness, and salvation. These are universal concepts. As the subject of this post is exemplary proof.

The best commentary on any one verse is the rest of the Scriptures. The Bible is unified truth that is ultimately from one author—God himself—and He does not contradict Himself. His revelation of His will unfolds and develops over time as a sequential narrative, and within the context of that story He does not contradict Himself (that is to say, God dealt differently with people at different points in the story of redemption).

We interpret a verse within the context of its biblical book, such is the case here in Exodus; then within the wider context of all that the human author of the book has written in the Bible, such as in this case all the writings of Moses; then within the context of the Old or New Testament story of redemption, such as in this case the Old Testament; then within the context of the entire Bible, with the New Testament being God’s final revelation of His will and ways.

4). THE TWO GROUPS: THE FORGIVEN AND THE GUILTY

So, what does the rest of the Bible teach about forgiveness? Verse 7 itself unmistakably teaches that God forgives sinners and emphasizes that by saying He forgives “iniquity and transgression and sin.” That is, He forgives everything that needs forgiving!

And God repeatedly promises forgiveness of sins under the Old Covenant to those who fulfill its obligations by confessing their sins and offering blood sacrifices at the tabernacle/temple, as taught by Moses in the Book of Leviticus. David writes in Psalm 103:2–3, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity.”

But forgiveness in the Old Testament is provisional, contingent and incomplete.

Muslims and other sceptics often argue: “Well, didn’t He forgive the Israelites before the cross?” The answer is: Yes, but only superficially and contingently.

The New Testament consistently teaches that OT forgiveness was not the same as the forgiveness that came through the Cross:

“For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” (Hebrews 10:1-4)

Instead of the eradication of sin, the Old Testament forgiveness merely covered over sin:

“[Jesus] whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” (Romans 3:25)

Because Israel’s sins were merely “passed over,” Jesus’ atonement had to work retroactively to cleanse the sins of the OT saints:

“For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.” (Hebrews 9:13-15)

It is only through Christ that our sins are cleansed and purified so that we can confidently enter into the presence of God (Hebrews 10:19-22). Instead, OT forgiveness was only a matter of God passing over sins, not purifying them:

“Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” (Psalm 32:1;)

“Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance?” (Micah 7:18)

The OT saints would only experience a “passing over transgression,” but they were also promised a New Covenant through which God would “remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:34).

Because their sins hadn’t been eradicated, even the deceased OT saints could not come into the presence of a God whose righteousness had not yet been satisfied by the Cross:

“And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.” (Hebrews 11:39-40)

Consequently, after Jesus proclaimed that “It is finished” and the veil of the Temple was torn in two, symbolizing the fact that the way into presence of God was now opened, there was a great earthquake to reinforce this lesson:

“And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.” (Matthew 27:51-53)

The New Testament promises forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ. At the Last Supper, Jesus offered the cup to the disciples and said, “this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28).

From beginning to end in the Bible, God forgives the sins of those who confess and repent and put their faith in the shed blood offered in sacrifice, the blood of animals prior to the revelation of Jesus, and then the blood of Jesus after his sacrifice on the cross. It is no coincidence that the destruction of the temple in 70 AD brought the curtain down on temple sacrifices.

So, when Exodus 34:7 says, “He will by no means clear the guilty,” it cannot possibly mean that He forgives sinners but doesn’t “clear” them. Rather, it must mean that “the guilty” are a different group of people who have not been forgiven of “iniquity and transgression and sin.” They are “guilty” because they have not done what is necessary to be forgiven.

5). NOT LEAVING THE GUILTY UNPUNISHED/NOT CLEARING THE GUILTY

This interpretation agrees with how the word/phrase “clear the guilty” (these three words translate the one Hebrew word ‘naqah’) is used in another Old Testament passage. Nahum 1:3 says:

“The Lord is slow to anger but great in power; the Lord will never leave the guilty unpunished. His path is in the whirlwind and storm, and clouds are the dust beneath His feet.” (Nahum 1:3 HCSB)

The Book of Nahum is a prophecy against the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. God had used the wicked nation of Assyria to punish His people Judah for their long-term disobedience. Assyria had conquered Judah and taken its people into exile. But soon God would deal with idolatrous Assyria differently from those in Judah who remained faithful to Him. God would forgive those in Judah who returned to Him in repentance, but He would by no means clear the guilty nation of Assyria, for they followed idols and cruelly oppressed other nations.

This contrast between how God would deal with Judah versus how He would deal with Assyria illustrates the meaning of Exodus 34:7—“forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means leave the guilty unpunished/clear the guilty.”

6). OUR WAY AND GOD’S WAY

■ Our way (eg Islam): Fallen people presume that God will overlook their sins, that He can be appeased by an unholy combination of good deeds and shedding blood for His cause and they will escape judgment. They do not think God will really condemn people for even one sin. Or they give the shrug of fatalism “Allah knows best.” This is the casual way of Islam, where sins are mere mistakes which can be outweighed by good deeds and even magically transformed into good deeds! (Surah 25:68-71) Allah just shows mercy and forgives at his whim, but always without retribution and at the expense of justice.

Since there is no atonement and no vicarious sacrifice as the basis for forgiveness in Islam, the Muslim will try to find an alternative basis for Allah to show mercy. They claim he can just “blot out” sins as if they never existed, ignoring the fact that there is a tension between mercy and justice. Showing mercy at the expense of retributive justice is not the hallmark of a perfectly just God. As William Lane Craig argues: “A Judge in a criminal case “has an obligation to do justice—which means, at a minimum, an obligation to uphold the rule of law. Thus if he is moved, even by love or compassion, to act contrary to the rule of law—to the rules of justice—he acts wrongly.” That Islam’s god is morally deficient is alone enough to destroy Islam as a way to reach God.

■ God’s way (ie the Cross of Christ): God is perfectly just. He punishes all sin. He cannot overlook sins, still less just brush small sins under the rug as Allah claims to. We have the binary choice of whether our sins are punished by the death of Jesus on the Cross or by our eternal condemnation. Those who do not have their guilt removed through the blood of Jesus Christ will not be cleared by God of condemnation.

7). CONCLUSIONS

From the Old through the New Testament, God requires justice and accountability. Blood atonement has ALWAYS been the means for forgiveness. And whereas Old Testament sacrifices enabled the passing over of sins, the superior once and for all perfect sacrifice of Jesus is the only way to be permanently CLEANSED from sin and have Christ’s righteousness imputed to us.

Hebrews chapter 9 bears repeating; it sums it up perfectly:

“For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.” (Hebrews 9:13-15)

An infinitely just and holy God cannot allow unjust and unholy people like you and me to go unpunished, still less into His presence. His plan of redemption from eternity, was simple: He punished Himself in our place. He’s the ransom. He has to judge sinners, just like a judge in a courtroom. He has to punish people that have broken the law. That is a fundamental paradigm which everyone should be able to understand, but which Islam completely ignores. Atonement in Islam is non existent and there is nothing offered in its place. Muslims have no protection from God’s wrath. Good deeds can never save you. Fasting, pilgrimages, 5x a day prayer-times observed cannot save you. They are all useless. Only the blood of Jesus saves. It’s all about what He did in love for us, it has nothing to do with our efforts.

Life principle: God will be perfectly just with you and your sins. He will either condemn you for your sins or punish Jesus for your sins. Your choice. Repent and follow Jesus and receive forgiveness; or reject Christ, die in your sins, and stand at the Judgment seat of Christ someday to give account for every wrong you have ever committed.

Bottom line: Muslims you need to act now before its too late. Thank me later.

Make No Mistake: #HisWrathFallsOnTheUnsaved #JesusBloodAtones