"And it shall be, that just as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good and multiply you, so the Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you and bring you to nothing; and you shall be plucked from off the land which you go to possess." - Deuteronomy 28:63 (NKJV)

How can we believe that God is good and only good when we read verses like this? How can we trust in the love of God fully - when we see in his own Word a promise of harsh and brutal punishment for those who "don't carefully observe all the words of this law" (verse 58). Surely God knows the impossibility of His people, even one single person, meeting this standard. Thus it would appear that God is sentencing His people, whom He claims to love, to an inevitable consequence of punishment for violating a standard He Himself has set. This does not seem loving. On top of that, verse 63 says that God "will rejoice" in carrying out this judgment. This can't be right, can it?

This offends our modern-day view of God as a sweet, gentle, and loving father who wants nothing more than to ease our suffering and take us to heaven where we can live in paradise with Him forever. Fortunately, "THE LORD YOUR GOD" (verse 58), Jehovah Elohim, the personal God of His people and universal God over all existence, is far more impressive, glorious, and awesome than such a narrow view. Paul writes in Romans 11:33 (NKJV), "How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!" The thoughts and wisdom of God aren't out of reach to our human grasp of understanding because God deems it so, as if He prefers to hide behind a curtain of mystery and superiority. Rather our understanding and capacity are simply too infantile to even hope to fully grasp His motives and intentions (beyond what His word says) to develop at best, theory, and at worst, mythology.

This is why the only reliable opinion and commentary that we can trust to accurately teach and inform us on the character of God is limited to what God himself has written in His Word. Taking into mind that even when studying the Scripture, although it in itself is absolutely perfect, infallible, and inherent... our interpretation, language, and perspective remain limited for us to perfectly articulate the vast weight of Its truth. So on the matter at hand, my first thought is when we read something about God in the Word that offends our view of Him or His nature or doesn't make sense to us, we remember that the problem lies not in God but in ourselves, nature, or limited capacity. In other words, God, being who He is, is always perfect and right in all His ways. If we disagree or dislike something we think He has done, the error lies in us, not Him. How do we know that God is perfect in love, the essence of good, and just in all His ways and judgments? The Scriptures tell us plain and true that He is, therefore He is and He does. God cannot be anything other than loving for "God is Love" (1 John 4:8).

That being said, our lens should be based on knowing that God loves His chosen people, demonstrated by His provision and covenant with them, does not delight in the pain and suffering caused by the consequence of His people breaking covenant (which we know inevitably happens) but rather because God is perfectly just, He delights in justice, is fair, and is good. In fact, we want God to love justice and be altogether just because it is based on this attribute of His character that we can trust that He accepts Christ's perfect sacrifice as a just and fair payment for our sins. Without the justness of God, we cannot know His mercy. It is His kindness [experienced through his mercy] that leads us to repent, turn to Him, and know Him and the richness of life in Him (Romans 2:4 NKJV).