Summary
Merciful and Gracious
When God descends upon Mount Sinai to reveal Himself to Moses, He gives a self-portrait in His own words. After the golden calf incident, the Lord calls Moses back up the mountain with two new tablets, hides Himself in a cloud (since "no one shall see me and live," Exodus 33:20), and proclaims His own name: "The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness" Exodus 34:6. The very first two words God uses to describe Himself are a window into His heart—“Merciful and Gracious”.
Mercy is God not giving us what we deserve. Grace is God giving us what we do not deserve. These are not afterthoughts or qualifiers attached to a sterner self; they are the leading edge of who God is. Just as Jesus describes His own heart with two words—"gentle and lowly" Matthew 11:29—the Father here leads with mercy and grace.
The Hebrew that follows is vivid: God is "slow to anger," literally "long of nostrils." The image is of an animal whose nostrils flare quickly when provoked—a "short-nosed" bull pawing the ground. God is the opposite: long of nostrils, hard to rouse to wrath. Scripture confirms this pattern; God must be provoked to anger (Deuteronomy 9:7; 1 Kings 14:9; Jeremiah 32:32), but mercy and love come naturally to Him. With us it is the reverse—we have to "stir up one another to love and good works" Hebrews 10:24. Anger must be provoked in God; love already pours forth.
Then comes a waterfall: "abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin" Exodus 34:7. "Steadfast love and faithfulness" is covenant language—God binding Himself to His people, as He binds Himself to us in the waters of Baptism. He never throws up His hands and walks away. And the three words for sin each carry a distinct image in Hebrew: iniquity is a blotch to be blotted out; transgression is dirty clothing to be washed; sin is a stain to be removed. God forgives every kind.
The harder line that follows—"yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children to the third and fourth generation"—does not contradict His mercy. Scripture is clear that children are never punished by God for the sins of their parents; the punishment for sin has been laid upon Christ at the cross. But sinfulness can be generational, passed through family systems—patterns of addiction, abuse, unbelief running through fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles. The unrepentant remain responsible for their own sin. Yet the proportions are staggering: judgment reaches three or four generations (the generations alive in a family at one time), but steadfast love reaches thousands of generations. Grace swallows up the inheritance of sin.
There is a story of George Buttrick, longtime preacher to Harvard University, who when students told him, "I don't believe in God," would gently answer, "Tell me about the God you don't believe in." After they listed off the cold, distant, hypocritical, indifferent deity they had rejected, he would smile and say, "I don't believe in that God either"—and then point them to the God of Holy Scripture, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. This is the God revealed on Sinai and revealed at Calvary. Know His name, and you know His heart.
Video citations
- “Merciful and Gracious” 9-19-21 — What you want when your Bible is pleased with me to Exodus 34th chapter for our study today. Exodus 34, if using a few addition, you're going to find that on page 75 in the Old Testament. Exodus…