God Never Changed
Introduction
For centuries, Christians have wrestled with the tension between an apparently wrathful God of the Old Testament and the all-loving revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Traditional theology often speaks of God “changing” His approach – first giving laws and sacrifices, then later offering grace – as if God’s character evolved. This treatise proposes a radical yet compelling alternative: God’s nature never changed at all. From the beginning, a relationship of faith alone was the only reality God intended, and any sense of distance or separation from God was always an illusion of our own making.
What follows is a systematic synthesis of this insight into a comprehensive framework. We will explore how the Fall of humanity was not a catastrophic plan‑B, but a foreseen step required for true freedom and love. We will reinterpret the Old Testament as humanity’s evolving perception of God rather than a record of direct divine commands, and show how Jesus’ life and teachings decisively confirm this framework. Along the way, we will resolve classic theological paradoxes – about God’s wrath and justice, law and grace, sacrifice and forgiveness – demonstrating that all biblical truths can be honored without contradiction. In the end, we will see why the cycle of separation is over: the illusion has been shattered by Christ’s ultimate revelation, bringing humanity into the full, unshakable truth of God’s unchanging love.
1. The Core Thesis – God’s Unchanging Nature and the Illusion of Separation
God’s Unchanging Character: The fundamental claim of this framework is that God has never altered His character or His will. The God revealed in Jesus Christ – full of compassion, forgiveness, and self-giving love – is exactly who God always was and ever will be. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), and as Jesus Himself said, “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). This means any portrayal of God that conflicts with the character of Jesus must be understood as a misunderstanding on humanity’s part, not an actual change in God. If Jesus would not stone a sinner or call down fire on His enemies, then neither would God, for Jesus is God in the fullest revelation. In short, God never shifted from wrath to grace – He was always gracious; it is human understanding that shifted.
Faith Was Always the Truth: In this light, faith – trusting in God’s goodness – was always the one thing God desired from humanity. Even in the earliest stories, those who simply trusted God experienced closeness with Him. For example, Abraham’s simple faith was “credited to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6, cf. Romans 4:3), long before any laws or rituals existed. The core issue separating humans from God was never a lack of rituals or moral perfection, but a lack of trust in who God is. From the very beginning, God wanted relationship, not religion. As later scripture affirms, “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6) – because faith is the open door to communion with an always-loving God.
The Illusion of Separation: If God’s love and presence never actually wavered, why did people ever feel separated from God? The answer is that separation was a human illusion, born of fear and unbelief. When humans distrusted God’s heart, they perceived God as distant or hostile. They hid from Him, or tried to appease Him with works – all the while God was reaching out. Scripture hints at this when it says of Christ’s work, “once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds” (Colossians 1:21). It was in our minds that we became enemies, not in God’s mind. In reality, “he is not far from any one of us” (Acts 17:27), for “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). God’s sustaining presence is the very ground of reality – if He ever truly withdrew, nothing would exist
Thus any perceived distance was on our side. We created religion – rules, sacrifices, temples – in an attempt to reach a God who wasn’t absent to begin with. This tragic irony is the crux of human spiritual history.
2. The Fall and Free Will – Why the Fall Was Necessary for Love
The Fall as a Step Toward Awareness: In traditional teaching, the Fall of Adam and Eve (their disobedience in Eden) is viewed as a catastrophic failure – a derailment of God’s plan that introduced sin and death. In our framework, the Fall is better understood as a tragic but necessary step in the journey toward true relationship with God. This is not to say disobedience was good, but rather that the possibility of turning away was essential for love to exist at all. God is love, and He created humans for loving union with Himself. But love cannot be authentic without freedom. If creatures are not genuinely free to choose, then they are not genuinely able to love. Prior to the Fall, Adam and Eve lived in an innocent unity with God, described almost as a state of childlike bliss – “naked and unashamed” (Genesis 2:25) – but also without full understanding. They had not yet experienced anything outside of direct communion with God. The paradox is that as long as they remained in unbroken communion without choice, they could not consciously know how good God was; they had never experienced an alternative. In order for humans to know God and love Him freely, they had to leave Him – at least in terms of their own perception – for a time. In other words, to truly find God, humanity first had to lose Him. This makes the Fall not an unexpected glitch, but something God foresaw as the only way to ultimately fulfill His purpose of having children who love Him by choice rather than by mere design.
Free Will Required the Fall: A common objection is, “Adam and Eve could have chosen not to sin – that was real free will; the Fall wasn’t inevitable.” But consider that before the Fall, Adam and Eve had no experience of a self apart from God. They existed in a state of oneness, not even knowing shame or ego. The very moment they ate the forbidden fruit, what happened? “The eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked” (Genesis 3:7). This indicates a new self-awareness – they suddenly saw themselves as individual selves, separate and exposed. That self-awareness only came through the act of disobedience. In effect, their first moment of choosing against God was also the birth of their consciousness of self distinct from God. True free will involves not just the theoretical ability to choose otherwise, but an actual self who can feel “I am separate and I can decide.” Before the Fall, such a fully realized individual perspective did not exist – they were living in seamless union like innocent infants in a womb. Thus, the Fall was indeed the first exercise of free will, the first actualized choice of self over against God. It was painful and disastrous in its immediate effects, but it made genuine freedom and personhood possible. As one modern theological perspective puts it: you never existed apart from God, but you had to believe you did, or else free will wouldn’t be real. The Fall “cracked open” the human self, enabling humans to stand apart in their own perception and thereby to enter into a real relationship with God rather than an unconscious one.
“They Could Have Chosen Otherwise” – Addressing the Paradox: It might still be protested that God could have left humans the option to rebel without it ever actually happening – that the Fall was avoidable. But this runs into a deep logical paradox: if no one had ever stepped away from God, then every human would perpetually exist in unbroken oneness with Him, never knowing anything else. In such a scenario, we might have avoided suffering, but we also would have never understood or appreciated God’s love in contrast to anything. It would be like trying to see light having never seen darkness – one would have no comprehension of light at all. God allowed the Fall because only through experiencing the absence of God’s manifest presence could humans learn (and choose) to treasure that presence. In fact, the ancient church sometimes spoke of felix culpa (“happy fault”) – the idea that Adam’s sin, lamentable as it was, led to the glorious redemption in Christ and a greater good than an unfallen world would have known. Our framework takes that notion to its fulfillment: the Fall was not a “happy” event in itself, but it was necessary for the fullest happiness of union with God to be realized. God was not surprised by Adam and Eve’s choice; He permitted it, knowing it was the only way for His children to mature into true freedom.
Why God Did Not Prevent or Undo the Fall: If the Fall was necessary for free will, it follows that God could not simply override it without voiding the freedom He willed for us. One might ask, “Why didn’t God intervene the moment Adam and Eve started down the wrong path? Couldn’t He have warned them more strongly, or immediately pulled them back before things got worse?” The answer is that such intervention would itself negate the very freedom and growth that the Fall was meant to allow. If God had “snapped” humanity back into innocence immediately, humans would effectively be reset to a pre-choice state – like rewinding a tape – and thus never actually learn or choose anything. They would remain spiritually infantile. Love cannot be programmed; it must be chosen. God’s respect for our free will is so profound that He permitted us to walk into the darkness of separation (though it broke His heart) because only by doing so could we truly come to love the light. In theological terms, God permitted the Fall but did not cause it. The suffering that resulted was not an inflicted punishment from God, but the natural consequence of choosing separation. It’s crucial to understand that God is Life itself – to turn away from Him is by definition to experience death and suffering, just as removing a plant from soil causes it to wither. God did not create death and suffering as things to torture us; rather, when we severed our conscious connection to the Source of Life, we inevitably felt the pain of that loss. This suffering, however, was and is fundamentally an illusion in the sense that God never truly stopped sustaining us – He continued to provide and care for us (note that even after the Fall, God graciously clothed the humans, Genesis 3:21) – but from our perspective the pain was real and had to be fully felt to drive home the lesson of separation.
Free Will and the Plan of Love: Ultimately, what appeared to be a disaster was transformed into the backdrop for the greatest love story. God in His foreknowledge already had a plan to redeem and heal, but not by negating free will – instead, by entering into our fallen experience Himself (more on that in section 4). The key point here is that free will made the Fall inevitable, and God allowed this inevitability because He values love above painless automatism. He created us not as pre-programmed angels but as children who could grow, learn, and love in freedom. In allowing our rejection of Him, God opened the door for a depth of relationship that otherwise would not exist. We fell, so that we could know what it means to be picked up; we were lost, so that we could know the joy of being found. Thus the Fall, while grievous, is reinterpreted not as the moment God’s plan failed, but as the moment God’s plan for authentic relationship truly began to unfold. And as we shall see, God’s unchanging love was active even through all the dark centuries that followed, guiding humanity toward a full restoration.
3. The Old Testament Reinterpretation – Humanity’s Evolving Perception of God
The Law of Moses in Context
If God never changed and always wanted faith and love, what do we make of the Old Testament laws, sacrifices, and apparent divine commands for wrath or ritual? Traditional doctrine holds that God Himself instituted the Law of Moses (the Torah) as a necessary stage – a covenant of rules and sacrifices meant to deal with sin until Jesus came. Our framework offers a different lens: the Old Testament reflects humanity’s evolving (and often flawed) perception of God, rather than a full, direct revelation of God’s perfect will. This means that many elements of the Law and narrative – from sacrificial regulations to commands of warfare – were not God’s ultimate desire, but were accommodated by God within the relationship because of where people were in their understanding.
To be clear, we are not saying the Old Testament is false or should be discarded. Rather, we affirm it as the true record of a real relationship between God and His people – but that record is told from the human side as much as the divine. It is “God’s Word” in the sense that it reliably chronicles the journey of faith, but within it we can see the filter of human culture and assumptions at work. The Bible itself hints at this dynamic. Jesus said explicitly, “The law was given through Moses” (John 1:17) – notably, He did not say “the law was given directly by God to you,” but rather via Moses, a human intermediary. Elsewhere, Jesus points out that certain laws (like permitting divorce) were given “because of your hardness of heart,” not because they reflected God’s ideal (Matthew 19:8). This suggests that the law was a concession to human limitations. It was allowed by God and used for a time, but it was not the pure and final expression of His heart.
In fact, the people themselves seemed to want a more structured, rule-based religion. Throughout the Old Testament, we see people grappling to understand God. Sometimes they glimpse His true nature – for instance, the Psalms celebrate His mercy and intimate care (“The Lord is my shepherd…”). But other times, they attribute to God the same harsh attributes seen in the pagan deities of surrounding nations – assuming He demands blood sacrifice, or that He favors one tribe’s violence over another. In ancient Near Eastern cultures, gods were thought to require elaborate laws and offerings; as Israel grew up in that environment, it’s unsurprising that they expected their God to operate similarly. Thus, when Moses spent time with God on Mount Sinai, he certainly experienced the real, living God – his face even glowed from the encounter. Yet Moses, as a man of his time, interpreted what God wanted through a particular lens: he emerged with stone tablets and a detailed law code, instituting an entire religious system. Did God truly desire all those rituals and penalties? Our thesis would say no – not as ends in themselves. Rather, God allowed Moses to formulate a law as a response to the people’s constant waywardness and their expressed desire for structure. (The people were afraid of direct contact with God – “Do not have God speak to us or we will die,” they said to Moses (Exodus 20:19) – and they seemed to prefer clear rules and a mediator.) In a sense, Moses and Israel insisted on a system, and God accommodated them by breathing as much goodness into it as possible.
The Old Testament itself gives hints of this accommodation. The prophet Jeremiah, speaking for God, says of Israel’s sacrificial practices: “I did not speak to your fathers or command them in the day that I brought them out of Egypt concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices” (Jeremiah 7:22). This startling verse implies that the sacrificial system was not God’s original command, but something that arose later. Similarly, the prophet Hosea conveys God’s heart: “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6). If God explicitly says He doesn’t desire sacrifice, yet the Law of Moses is full of sacrificial rules, the only logical conclusion is that those rules were not the fullest revelation of God’s desire, but a temporary measure shaped by human context. They were a teaching tool, even a concession to a people who understood covenant in transactional terms. God “gave” the law in the sense of allowing it and guiding it for a time, much as a parent might allow a child’s self-invented game with rules in order to teach within the child’s frame of reference. In other words, God worked within the framework the people were able to handle, without violating their free will. He permitted the law – which the people thought they needed – and used it until the time was right to remove those “training wheels.”
Human Projection and Divine Permission
This reinterpretation can be summed up like this: whenever we see an image of God in the Old Testament that looks unlike Jesus, we are seeing the imprint of human projection. The people knew God was real – they had genuine faith – but they also projected their fears and cultural ideas onto Him. They thought He must be a lawgiver and judge like other deities, so they related to Him that way. God, honoring their faith (even though it was mingled with misunderstanding), went along with the relationship on those terms for a season. He “met them where they were,” not by declaring their ideas about Him were 100% correct, but by working through those ideas patiently until a greater truth could be revealed.
For example, when Abraham believed God wanted him to sacrifice his son Isaac (because in Abraham’s world, supreme deities were commonly thought to demand the life of one’s child), God intervened at the critical moment to stop it (Genesis 22:11–12). From Abraham’s perspective, God was “testing” his obedience. But in our framework, something deeper was happening: God was using Abraham’s mistaken assumption (that God might be like the pagan gods who require child sacrifice) to dramatically correct it – demonstrating in action that He does not want such a thing at all. Abraham’s faith in God was genuine, but his understanding was still influenced by his surrounding culture. God honored the faith by responding to Abraham, yet also provided a ram as a substitute to teach, “I am not that kind of God.” On the mountain, the angel of the Lord declares, “Do not lay a hand on the boy… now I know you fear God” (Genesis 22:12). God never actually desired the death of Isaac; He desired Abraham’s trusting surrender, and then He personally provided the sacrifice so that Isaac would live. In effect, God said to Abraham, I myself will provide what is needed – you don’t have to give Me your child. Indeed, much later God would declare through Jeremiah that burning one’s children in sacrifice was “something I did not command, nor did it enter My mind” (Jeremiah 7:31). Jesus’ revelation of the Father’s heart confirms that the true God never desired such an act – ever. The “test” of Abraham was not God demanding blind obedience; it was Abraham’s own paradigm being shattered. He discovered that Yahweh is utterly unlike the pagan gods: not a deity who delights in sacrifice, but one who provides and loves. This moment was a paradigm shift, collapsing the illusion that we approach God through appeasement. The illusion of a “distant God who needs appeasing” fell apart when God stopped the sacrifice. Abraham’s faith was real but incomplete – and God perfected his understanding by revealing His true character of compassion at the last moment.
This story also gives us a template for a crucial principle: God does not violate human free will, but He will intervene when a person of true faith is unknowingly about to act against His very character. In Abraham’s case, God did not force Abraham to have faith – Abraham already believed – but God did step in to prevent a tragic deed that Abraham was willing to do in God’s name, but which God Himself would never want. In doing so, God was not overriding Abraham’s deepest desire, but rather fulfilling it: Abraham wanted to obey God’s will, and God graciously corrected Abraham’s understanding of that will
This pattern holds generally in Scripture. God rarely intervenes with human freedom, even when humans choose badly; but when a devoted heart is about to do great harm under a false impression of God, God mercifully “course-corrects” to reveal the truth. He did it on Mount Moriah, and later we see Him do it on the road to Damascus – Saul of Tarsus thought he was serving God by persecuting Christians, and Jesus intervened in blinding glory to stop him (Acts 9:3-5). In both cases, God was safeguarding His own character and the believer’s soul from a deception. Such interventions are always corrective and illuminating, never coercive. God wants children, not robots – but He also doesn’t want children running off a cliff in His name. So, while God honors free will, He also faithfully prevents our sincere faith from derailing into actions that oppose His love. This gentle guidance is central to spiritual growth: He leads us out of our misconceptions into greater truth, as we are able to bear it.
All through the Old Testament, similar patterns occur. People cry out to God and truly encounter Him, but then they interpret the encounter through their skewed lens. They set up rules, rituals, kings, and wars in God’s name – sometimes with a mixture of divine guidance and human impulse. The result is a text that is partly divine revelation and partly human misunderstanding entwined together. This is precisely why the Old Testament, taken alone, can give a confusing picture of God – a God who is merciful one moment and seemingly vengeful the next. It’s not that God actually flips between mercy and wrath; it’s that the people writing the story are oscillating in their grasp of who He is. As humanity’s spiritual perception slowly matured (through prophets, exile, wisdom literature, etc.), the picture began to clarify: the later prophets increasingly emphasize God’s compassion, justice, and desire for heart-relationship over ritual. They prepare the way for the full light of God’s character to shine in Jesus.
One clear example of human will shaping Israel’s religion is their demand for a human king. In the time of Samuel, the Israelites begged for a king “like the other nations” to rule them, even though God was their King. God warned them this was a rejection of His direct kingship, yet He allowed it: “The LORD told [Samuel], ‘…they have rejected Me as their king’” (1 Samuel 8:7). Still, God honored their stubborn choice and told Samuel to anoint a king for them. This was not God’s perfect will (as He explicitly said), but He worked within it. He even brought good out of their monarchy – establishing the line of David – ultimately leading to Jesus, the Son of David, who would be the true and final King.
In allowing Israel a human king, God demonstrated that no external authority or system could replace a relationship with Him. Every human king, even the best, failed in some way to bring the people closer to God. The lesson was that only God Himself could shepherd His people’s hearts. Centuries later, God came in Christ as the King of Kings, fulfilling the role Israel had tried to fill on their own. Jesus’ kingdom is “not of this world” (John 18:36) – meaning it doesn’t operate by the coercive, external rule of earthly kings. Instead, He rules from within, by the Spirit, in the hearts of those who trust Him. Thus, the era of Israel’s monarchy – begun by human insistence – ultimately proved humanity’s need for Jesus as the true King who brings God and humanity together. It collapsed the illusion that any external authority or institution (be it a king, or later even religious institutions) could achieve what only God’s presence can. In Jesus, God’s original desire to be Israel’s King is finally realized, and unlike human kings, His reign unites us directly with God rather than adding another layer of separation.
Addressing Divine Authorship and God’s “Voice”
Understandably, this view raises the question: If the Old Testament law and commands weren’t God’s perfect will, why does Scripture present them as coming from God? The answer lies in the ancient mode of thinking and writing. In biblical times, it was common to attribute events to God’s agency as an ultimate cause, even if He only permitted them. For instance, where we today might say “God allowed it to rain,” an ancient writer might simply say “God sent rain.” Similarly, if Moses, under inspiration and faith, established a covenant code, the narrative speaks of God as giving it – because it was done in relationship with God, under His oversight. This way of speaking doesn’t mean God literally dictated every statute; rather, God supervised and used the process, and so it’s attributed to Him as the source of all truth. But as Jesus later clarified, some commands were given “because of your hardness of heart” (Matthew 19:8) – i.e. as a concession, not as God’s eternal ideal.
This perspective does not diminish the inspiration of Scripture; instead, it calls us to read Scripture in the light of Christ. We assert that the Bible is indeed the inspired Word of God, but we must understand “inspired” correctly. It does not mean every command or idea reported in Scripture was directly dictated by God’s mouth. Rather, the Scriptures are a truthful record of humanity’s progressive experience of God – especially the experiences of those who truly had faith. The Bible faithfully tells the story of real people encountering God, sometimes getting it right and sometimes misunderstanding Him. It is “inspired” in that God’s Spirit guided the preservation of these stories and used them to reveal truth to future generations – often through showing us the failures and misconceptions of even the best of us. As the Apostle Paul wrote about Israel’s history, “These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us” (1 Corinthians 10:11). In other words, Scripture includes both positive examples and negative object lessons for our benefit.
So when we say the Old Testament is God’s Word, we mean it reveals God’s truth to us – but not always in a simple, one-dimensional way. Sometimes a passage shows us directly God’s heart (as when a prophet proclaims justice or mercy). Other times, Scripture shows us human beings acting in ways contrary to God’s heart, and we are meant to learn by contrast. For example, when the Israelites beg for a king and God says their request is a rejection of His kingship (1 Samuel 8:7), the story is teaching us about human stubbornness versus God’s desire. The inspiration of Scripture ensured that the Bible tells the whole, gritty story of God’s people, not a sanitized propaganda. It includes their misconceptions (like thinking God wanted mass violence or elaborate sacrifice) precisely so that, in light of Christ, we can discern what was human error versus God’s true nature.
Jesus Himself modeled this Christ-centered reading of Scripture. He frequently quoted the Old Testament to reveal God’s true intent, yet He also corrected traditional interpretations of it: “You have heard it said (in the Law)… but I say to you…” (see Matthew 5:21-44). He clarified that Moses allowed certain things “because of the hardness of your hearts” (Matthew 19:8), implying those rules were concessions, not God’s original ideal. In one striking statement, the Gospel of John contrasts the two eras: “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). Notice, it doesn’t say the law was given by God, but through Moses – affirming Moses as the mediator of the law, while Jesus embodies the full truth of God. This doesn’t mean the Old Testament is false; it means it must be read as an unfolding narrative of God meeting people where they were. It’s “the inspired history of faithful people” grappling with God, rather than a mere list of God’s dictates dropped from heaven.
Crucially, this perspective even reinforces core doctrines like human sinfulness. It proves that all humans are fallible – even the most faithful heroes – because at times they misunderstood God. Moses, David, Elijah, and others all had moments where their view of God was partial. Only Jesus, the perfect Son, revealed God without distortion. As the New Testament boldly claims, “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son… has made Him known” (John 1:18). When we say sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) as our authority, we must also say totus Christus (the whole Christ) as our interpretive key. Jesus is the one and only full Word of God – the complete self-communication of God. Therefore, we read all scripture through the lens of Christ. In sum, the Old Testament must be re-read as the story of people coming to know an unchanging God through the haze of their own misconceptions. It is a progressive unveiling of God’s true character, culminating in Jesus. What changed over time was not God, but human apprehension of God. The law and all its system was “added because of transgressions” as a temporary measure (Galatians 3:19), a guardian or tutor “until Christ came” (Galatians 3:24-25), after which we are no longer under that guardian. This implies the law was partial and preparatory – exactly as our framework holds.
4. Jesus’ Ultimate Revelation – “You Have Heard… But I Say to You”
Jesus as the Full Truth of God: Christianity professes that Jesus Christ is God Incarnate – God in human flesh. As such, Jesus is not merely one more prophet or teacher in the biblical story, but the absolute climax and fulfillment of God’s self-revelation. “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son… the Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being” (Hebrews 1:1–3). This means when we look at Jesus – His character, His actions, His teachings – we are seeing the exact character of God on display with no distortion. All previous revelations must be measured against the revelation of God in Christ. Jesus knew this about Himself and made startling claims that, in our framework, directly validate the idea that much of the Law was a human misunderstanding (or at least a partial and provisional step).
During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus repeatedly taught, “You have heard it said… but I say to you” (Matthew 5:21–48). Each time, He quotes an Old Testament command or permission (such as “Do not murder,” or the law allowing “an eye for an eye” retribution, or the rule about giving a wife a certificate of divorce) and then overturns or radically deepens it. Importantly, He doesn’t say “God said… but I say” – He says “You have heard it said.” This phrasing suggests a contrast between what people thought God wanted versus what God actually wants. Jesus speaks on His own authority – “I say to you” – effectively declaring that He, as God, is correcting their understanding. For example, He moves from the external command “Do not murder” to the deeper issue of the heart: do not even hate or insult others (Matthew 5:21-22). He replaces “eye for an eye” (the legal principle of equivalent retribution from Exodus 21:24) with “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:38-39), a teaching of radical non-retaliation and mercy. He takes the Mosaic permission of divorce and indicates it was never God’s true intent (Matthew 5:31-32, cf. Matthew 19:8). In the clearest example, He says: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:43-45). Here Jesus directly refutes the notion (found in the mentality of Israel’s old holy wars) that hating one’s enemy could be godly. Instead, He reveals that God shows love to both the righteous and the wicked, “sending rain on the just and unjust” alike – demonstrating the Father’s perfect mercy. Jesus is unveiling the Father’s true character, which had been obscured by people’s limited views.
This refrain “You have heard… but I say” encapsulates our thesis: much of what people had “heard” or believed about God in the past was incomplete or mistaken, and Jesus came to set the record straight. Far from simply ratifying everything in the Old Testament, Jesus in many ways contradicted or superseded traditional interpretations of it. He healed on the Sabbath and declared, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27), pushing back against a legalistic view of God as a strict rule-enforcer. He openly forgave sinners and restored outcasts, which scandalized the religious authorities who believed God’s law demanded such people be shunned or punished. When faced with a crowd ready to stone an adulterous woman according to the Law, Jesus famously said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone at her.” This simple statement utterly disarmed the mob – one by one, they dropped their stones and left, and Jesus said to the woman, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more” (see John 8:7-11). In that moment, He both upheld righteousness and bestowed mercy, revealing God’s true heart. Every action of Jesus – eating with tax collectors, touching lepers, welcoming Gentiles, chastising the self-righteous – served to reveal God’s true heart in contrast to the distorted versions of religion.
“I Desire Mercy, Not Sacrifice” – God’s Heart Confirmed by Jesus
Jesus also explicitly cited the prophetic refrain about mercy over sacrifice. To the religious critics, He said, “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’” (Matthew 9:13). By quoting Hosea 6:6, Jesus pointed them back to the idea that God cares about love and mercy, not ritual correctness or payment. This must have been shocking – the entire Temple system was built on sacrifices, yet Jesus implied that God never wanted that transactional system in the first place! Indeed, Jesus identified the greatest commandments as the love of God and love of neighbor (Matthew 22:37-40), stating that “all the Law and Prophets hang on these.” Love and trust were the point all along; the rituals and rules were meant to support that end, but people had taken them as ends in themselves. In short, Jesus peeled away the layers of human-added complexity to reveal the simple truth: God is love, and true righteousness is to live in that love by faith.
Fulfilling the Law by Dismantling the Illusion
One might ask, how does Jesus’ stance relate to His famous statement: “Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17)? Traditional interpretation suggests Jesus fulfilled the Law by perfectly obeying it and then completing its purpose. Our framework agrees Jesus fulfilled the Law, but we understand “fulfill” in a profound way: He fulfilled the Law by bringing it to its intended conclusion – by revealing the reality to which it pointed, and thereby ending the misinterpretation that the Law was an end in itself. Imagine a tutor who teaches a child until the child grows up and learns the lesson – the tutor’s role is “fulfilled” once the child understands and can move on. Similarly, the Law functioned as a tutor or guardian (Paul uses this image in Galatians 3:24); when Jesus came, He graduated humanity from the tutor by revealing the full truth. He did not “abolish” the Law in the sense of nullifying its purpose; rather, He completed its purpose. And ironically, that completion involved dismantling the legalistic framework that had developed around it.
Jesus fulfilled the sacrificial system not by offering yet another animal, but by offering Himself – showing that God would go to infinite lengths to restore us, thus ending any notion that we must bribe or appease God. He fulfilled the moral law not by imposing even stricter rules, but by internalizing it (writing it on our hearts) and showing that apart from a trusting relationship with God, law-keeping is fruitless. Everything Jesus did aimed to collapse the illusion that had built up: the illusion that God was distant and required us to perform rituals to coax Him near.
When Jesus died on the cross, the Gospels record a symbolic and significant event: “the curtain of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (Matthew 27:51). That veil had long represented the separation between a holy God and sinful people – only the high priest could pass behind it, and only once a year with a sacrifice. Its tearing at the moment of Jesus’ death powerfully signifies that the illusion of separation is now torn open. By His self-sacrifice, Jesus exposed that God was not locked away behind a veil at all; God’s presence burst out to be available to all. It was as if God were saying through the ripped curtain, “I was never truly separated from you – your sins are forgiven; there is nothing keeping Me from you anymore.” Jesus’ resurrection then confirmed the victory: not even death (the ultimate consequence of the Fall) can separate us from God’s love now. The risen Christ, bearing human wounds yet filled with divine life, is the permanent proof of our restored union. And the risen Jesus told His disciples, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). In Christ, God has always been Emmanuel, “God with us” – but now humanity could finally grasp this truth.
No More Separation – “It Is Finished”: On the cross, Jesus cried out a deeply mysterious phrase: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). In our understanding, Jesus at that moment experienced the depth of the human illusion of separation – the feeling of Godforsakenness that sin and fear produce. He quoted the opening line of Psalm 22, expressing the desolation that humanity feels apart from God. Jesus took that desolation fully into Himself, identifying with our darkest subjective experience (though objectively, the Father never truly abandoned the Son – Jesus’ very next words were to willingly entrust His spirit into the Father’s hands, Luke 23:46). By undergoing even that despair, and then conquering it in resurrection, Jesus destroyed the power of the lie. Thus His final words, “It is finished” (John 19:30), can be taken to mean not only that His suffering was over, but that the entire futile system of separation, sacrifice, and striving was over. The work of revealing God’s true heart was completed. The long chapter of humanity’s ignorance and fear could now close, as the new chapter of grace and truth was opened. In Christ’s life, we see who God is; in Christ’s death, we see God’s response to our sin (forgiveness and self-sacrifice, not wrath toward us); in Christ’s resurrection, we see that nothing can ever defeat God’s purpose to be with us.
Jesus, then, is the ultimate revelation in every sense. He retroactively shines light on the Old Testament (we can now interpret the Law and the Prophets rightly, seeing where they were pointing and where people had misunderstood) and He establishes the pattern going forward: any concept of God’s character or will must align with the person of Jesus. There is no deeper revelation to appeal to beyond Jesus – He is “the fullness of the Deity in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9). Therefore, this framework stands or falls on Jesus Himself. If Jesus truly displayed an unchanging, non-violent, gracious God who seeks faith and relationship over ritual and law, then our synthesis holds true. And indeed, that is exactly what the Gospels present. With Jesus’ revelation in place, we can revisit and solve many theological puzzles that have lingered. Jesus is the answer – the one who resolves the contradictions by showing us the Father plainly.
5. Resolving Theological Paradoxes – A Consistent, Unbreakable Framework
The view we are presenting is bold, and it naturally raises questions from traditional theology. However, rather than creating new contradictions or discarding biblical truths, this framework resolves long-standing paradoxes in Christian thought. By holding that God never changed (only our understanding did), that the Law was largely our idea (met by God’s guidance) and not His eternal command, and that Jesus unveiled the truth fully, we can answer objections in a way that is internally consistent and faithful to Scripture’s overarching message. Let us address several major concerns and show how this view provides satisfying answers:
Paradox 1: Progressive Revelation vs. God’s Unchanging Nature
Objection: If God didn’t change, why does it seem He revealed Himself gradually – first laws and wrath, then Christ’s grace? Doesn’t the Bible itself show a progression in how God deals with humanity? Are we not just admitting God had an older “wrathful” phase and then a nicer “Jesus” phase?
Resolution: We affirm there was a progression, but it was on humanity’s side, not God’s. The concept of “progressive revelation” is reframed: God’s fullness was always there, like the sun always shining, but people were only capable of grasping bits at a time due to their spiritual blindness (like fog gradually clearing). God did not evolve; human perception did. This solves the inconsistency of a mutable God. Scripture supports this: Jesus said, “No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him” (Matthew 11:27). If prior generations had fully known the Father, Jesus would not make such an exclusive claim. The Gospel of John likewise states, “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son… has made Him known” (John 1:18). This indicates that until Jesus, every vision or understanding of God was partial at best. Our view holds that what looked like God “changing” (from law to grace, from “eye for eye” to “turn the other cheek”) was actually God accommodating our stage of growth.
Analogy can help here. Think of a master teacher: Early on, the teacher might allow a beginner to use training wheels on a bicycle, and later insist they be removed. The teacher’s goal (learning to ride) never changed; only the method adapted to the student’s capacity. Likewise, God allowed Israel to use the “training wheels” of Law, because they weren’t ready to ride by faith alone – until Christ came to take those training wheels off. Importantly, in this analogy it is the child who feels the need for the training wheels; a confident rider wouldn’t need them. Humanity falsely assumed we needed an elaborate system to relate to God, so God permitted it and even steadied the bike at times, but those supports were always meant to come off. The goodness and guidance within the Law were from God; the shortcomings in it were from human will. Crucially, once the fullness (Christ) had come, we are expected no longer to cling to the shadow. As Scripture says, the old law was only “a shadow of the good things to come” (Hebrews 10:1) and when the reality is here, the shadow is surpassed. Similarly, “the Law was our guardian until Christ came… now that faith is come, we are no longer under a guardian” (Galatians 3:24-25). Our framework thus affirms that God’s nature and desire (faith, love, communion) were constant, but He wisely permitted an educational journey to unfold. Jesus is the final lesson that brings everything into clarity. There is no inconsistency in God, only in our prior understanding of Him.
Paradox 2: Divine Wrath and Justice vs. God’s Love
Objection: The Bible often speaks of God’s wrath against sin and His judgments. How can we claim God never had wrath or never punished? Are we ignoring God’s holiness and justice? Does this framework gloss over the seriousness of sin?
Resolution: We do not deny God’s justice or the reality of consequences for sin. What we clarify is the nature of God’s wrath. In our framework, “wrath” is a metaphor for the experience of those who turn away from God’s love, not an emotional temper tantrum from God. The Scripture plainly says “God is love” (1 John 4:8) – it never says “God is wrath.” Wrath is what humans perceived when they violated God’s design and felt the pain of separation. Think of it like the pain one feels when stepping out of warm sunlight into cold darkness – the sun hasn’t changed or willed you harm, but you experience the chill as a result of moving away from its warmth. So it is with God’s “wrath.” The Eastern Orthodox tradition often emphasizes this: God’s love is constant, but to the unrepentant or self-estranged soul, that same love is experienced as a “consuming fire” only because the soul isn’t aligned with it. One 7th-century Christian mystic, St. Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian), wrote, “I reject the idea that God turns away from the sinner…It is not [God] who has wearied of [the sinner], but [the sinner] of God.” He and other saints understood that God does not have a side of hatred towards mankind; all wrathful imagery in Scripture is a human way to describe the serious consequences of sin. Our view aligns perfectly: God’s disposition towards us was always love. When we see portrayals of anger or vengeance attributed to God – especially in the Old Testament – we interpret them as either prophetic symbolism or human attribution. Jesus strongly supports this re-reading: He likened God to a father of a prodigal son who, notably, inflicted no punishment on the returning rebel – only a warm embrace and a celebration (Luke 15:20-24). In the parable, it is the elder brother who expected wrath and refused to join the celebration (Luke 15:28-32) – a picture of the Pharisees who could not understand such grace. Another telling incident: when Jesus’ disciples wanted to call down fire on a Samaritan village that rejected Him (imitating Elijah’s Old Testament example), Jesus rebuked them: “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of” (Luke 9:55), and declared that He came to save, not destroy. This is dramatic – Jesus explicitly rejected using the Old Testament mode of “wrath from heaven.” Instead of endorsing Elijah’s punitive miracle, He reveals that it was not God’s Spirit behind such destruction in the new covenant.
So, our framework doesn’t ignore God’s holiness – it upholds that God is perfectly holy and that sin is utterly incompatible with Him. But it asserts that God’s response to sin was never to abandon love and start hating humanity; rather, His “wrath” was simply allowing humans to reap what they sow, so that they’d learn their need for Him. “Divine wrath” is real, but it is directed against the sin itself (which harms His children), not against the sinners in a personal vendetta. As Julian of Norwich (14th c.) wrote after visions of God’s love: “I saw no wrath except on man’s side, and God forgives that, for wrath is nothing but a failure of love.” In other words, what we call God’s wrath is what happens when we fail to receive His love. In this synthesis, all depictions of God must harmonize with the self-emptying, forgiving love displayed by Jesus even toward His executioners (“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”). There is no split personality in God. Thus, the perennial theological tension between love and justice is resolved: God’s justice is an expression of love (aimed at restoring right order and shalom), and His “wrath” is simply the tough side of love that refuses to indulge our self-destructive illusions, yet always seeks to bring us back. God’s holiness is His pure love, which does consume sin – but not because He hates us, rather because He hates what harms us. Once we understand this, we see continuity between Old and New: the same God who disciplines in the Old Testament is the Father who disciplines those He loves in the New (Hebrews 12:6). The difference is that in earlier times people misinterpreted discipline as divine fury and rejection, whereas in Christ we see it as loving correction. Jesus reveals that even God’s judgments are aimed at redemption (think of Him weeping over Jerusalem, longing to gather her children, even as He pronounces the coming desolation in Luke 19:41-44). In Jesus, love and justice meet perfectly – no contradiction.
Paradox 3: The Necessity of Sacrifice – Human Religion vs. God’s Desire
Objection: The Bible is full of sacrifices – from Abel’s offering to the entire Levitical system. Most importantly, the New Testament says Jesus’ death was a sacrifice for sins. If God never wanted a transactional system, why require sacrifices? And why did Jesus “have to” die?
Resolution: Our framework distinguishes between what God requires and what humanity requires. God in His love did not need the blood of bulls and goats – as mentioned, He repeatedly voiced through the prophets that He desired steadfast love rather than sacrifice. But people throughout history felt the need to “do something” to deal with their guilt or prove their devotion. God allowed a sacrificial system for a time as a pedagogical tool: it taught the seriousness of sin and the concept of atonement in terms they understood. However, the inadequacy of those sacrifices was always clear – the very repetition of them showed they never truly solved the problem (Hebrews 10:1-4 notes that the law’s sacrifices had to be offered endlessly and could not perfect the conscience). They were a stop-gap, pointing forward to the true solution.
Now, Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is absolutely central, but we must understand it not as God finally getting the sacrifice He demanded, but as God in Christ giving Himself to break the cycle of sacrifice. In other words, Jesus was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. On the human level, Jesus fulfilled and thus abolished the old system by being the ultimate offering – not to appease God’s wrath, but to appease our perceived need for an offering. Humans, in their darkened understanding, sent Jesus to the cross (thinking, in some cases, they were doing God’s will – e.g. the high priest rationalized that it’s better for one man to die for the people in John 11:50). We committed the ultimate religious crime: killing God’s Son in the name of law and order. And how did God respond? By using that very act to save us. On the cross, Jesus absorbed human violence and sin – all the scapegoating fury of misguided religion – and responded with unconditional forgiveness and love (“Father, forgive them…”). This revealed two things at once: the depth of human wrong (we murdered the innocent Lord of glory) and the height of divine love (God still forgave and loved us). In doing so, Jesus exposed the entire sacrificial, punitive system as bankrupt. The Letter to the Hebrews puts it this way: by establishing the new covenant, God “makes the first one obsolete” (Hebrews 8:13). When Jesus said “It is finished,” it was like the closure of the sacrificial chapter; and as we saw, the Temple’s curtain tearing was God’s own sign that the era of sacrificial religion had ended.
Thus, the necessity of Jesus’ death was not that God needed pain to forgive us – rather, we needed God’s dramatic demonstration to truly believe in His love. Jesus Himself explained that no one took His life from Him, but that He lays it down “of His own accord” (John 10:18); it was a mission to rescue and heal, not to pay off an angry Father. In fact, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19). Notice, God the Father is in Christ, doing the reconciling on the cross, and His attitude is “not counting our sins against us.” This is far from the common caricature of a wrathful Father and loving Son. Rather, it is one God (Father, Son, and Spirit together) saving us by self-sacrifice. So our framework holds all the elements: sacrifice is indeed needed – but it is God who provides and becomes the sacrifice (just as in Abraham’s story God provided the lamb). The cross was necessary to definitively shatter the illusion that we must earn God’s grace or appease His anger. At the cross, God says, “I forgive you – you could do your worst to Me and I still love you. Now stop living in guilt and fear, and be reconciled to Me.” When this is understood, there is no contradiction between grace and holiness: the cross upholds God’s holiness (sin is dealt with seriously) and His love (He Himself bears the cost). It also upholds human free will – humans freely sinned and killed Jesus, yet God turned that worst act into the very instrument of salvation.
Paradox 4: Are We Dismissing the Old Testament (Marcionism)?
Objection: Reinterpreting or “demoting” the Old Testament’s depiction of God sounds like what the early heretic Marcion did – rejecting the Old Testament and its God as different from the New Testament God. Are we essentially saying the Old Testament was a mistake or that the God of Israel was not the true God?
Resolution: Not at all. We are not rejecting the Old Testament; we are re-reading it in the way Jesus and the Apostles did. Far from being heretical, this approach is rooted in Christ’s own teaching. Marcion threw out the Old Testament entirely, which the Church rightly condemned. We, however, embrace the Old Testament as Scripture – we just recognize its proper role. The Old Testament is indispensable as the record of God’s patient dealings with humanity. We see it as inspired by God to lead us to Christ. We are saying what the New Testament itself says: the old covenant was real but partial (“fading,” as 2 Corinthians 3:7-11 puts it), a shadow of what was to come (Colossians 2:16-17). The difference between our view and Marcion’s is the difference between completion and deletion. We aren’t deleting the Old Testament; we’re seeing it completed in Christ. We affirm that the God of the Old Testament is the same God revealed in Jesus – there’s no “other god.” The issue is that the people of the time could not see Him clearly. They truly encountered God, but “through a glass, darkly.” The harsh or violent portrayals of God in the Old Testament are understood as misperceptions or temporary accommodations, not as a different deity. In fact, by taking this view, we defend the unity of God’s character – we show that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is fully consistent with the God incarnate in Jesus. This is far more faithful than saying (even implicitly) that God changed at the incarnation. We uphold that God was always as loving as Jesus revealed; thus, any apparent discrepancies must come from the human side of the scriptural witness. This approach was hinted at by Church fathers like Origen and others who read troubling Old Testament passages allegorically or as condescensions by God. They, too, refused to believe God’s true character could be at odds with Christ. So we are well within orthodox thought here. We are not abolishing the Old Testament; we are honoring it as the necessary journey that finds its destination in Christ. The Old Testament gives context that makes Jesus intelligible: without the Law and the Prophets, we wouldn’t understand the problem to which Jesus is the solution. As Augustine said, the New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old is unveiled in the New.
Therefore, we wholeheartedly include the Old Testament in our theology, preaching and teaching from it – but always with the awareness that its ultimate purpose is to point to Jesus and that it must be interpreted in that light. In practical terms, this means we can still learn from the stories and laws (they “were written for our instruction,” 1 Corinthians 10:11), but we interpret them through Christ. We don’t emulate everything in the Old Testament (e.g. we don’t perform animal sacrifices or holy wars) because we understand those things in their redemptive-historical context, now surpassed by Christ’s work. This isn’t heresy; it’s basic Christian hermeneutics. To sum up: We are not saying the Old Testament was a mistake – we are saying human beings repeatedly made mistakes (sins and misunderstandings), which the Old Testament faithfully reports, and God worked through those to bring about our redemption in Christ. That is a very high view of Scripture, not a low one.
Paradox 5: Why Did God Allow Centuries of Misunderstanding?
Objection: If this view is correct – that people long had misconceptions about God which God gradually corrected – why would God let His people labor under misunderstanding for so long? Why not send Jesus, or otherwise clear things up, much sooner? All those millennia of sacrifices and strict laws… could that long detour really have been necessary?
Resolution: This question is akin to asking why God allows any process at all rather than instant solutions. The answer again comes back to human freedom and development. God seeks a real relationship, not forced obedience or instantaneous programming. He plants seeds and lets them grow. History was the soil in which the seed of revelation sprouted and matured. In “the fullness of time” (Galatians 4:4), when the stage was set culturally and spiritually, God sent His Son. Consider that if Christ had come much earlier, people might not have grasped the need for Him. By allowing humanity to exhaust its own efforts – to try law, priesthood, kings, exiles, etc. – God ensured that when the Messiah finally appeared, the lesson would be clear. We often appreciate the light more after experiencing the darkness.
In a sense, every possible approach had to run its course so it could be seen as insufficient: humans tried innocence in Eden (failed), tried conscience alone (the world before the flood), tried patriarchal family covenants, tried law and nationhood, tried kings and empires, etc. Through it all, God was slowly preparing the way, giving prophecies and sparks of hope. By the time of Jesus, the world was more ready to understand the radical solution God would provide. Additionally, God’s gradual revelation allowed concepts to be introduced step by step (the idea of one God, the idea of holiness, then the idea of inward morality, and finally the full idea of grace). It also allowed God to form a particular people (Israel) as the cradle for the Incarnation – with a shared language, history, and set of scriptures to interpret Jesus’ mission.
So yes, God permitted a long education process. As Paul preached, “In the past God overlooked periods of ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). That time of overlooked ignorance is done. Once Christ came, there is no further ambiguity about God’s heart. With Jesus and the sending of the Spirit, we have everything needed for a full relationship with God. We can trust that in God’s wisdom, the timing was perfect. And rather than seeing those prior ages as wasted, we see them as the necessary story that shaped who we are. Much like an adult can look back on childhood missteps as important lessons, humanity’s spiritual childhood provided invaluable (if painful) lessons that make the triumph of Christ all the more meaningful.
At this point, having addressed these paradoxes, our framework shows itself consistent. It doesn’t require rejecting the Bible or any core doctrine; it simply requires us to center all doctrine on Jesus Christ. By doing so, every paradox finds resolution and the character of God shines consistently as loving, just, and wise.
6. The Final Collapse of the Illusion – The Truth Realized and Its Implications
With the coming of Jesus and the completion of His work, our framework declares that the long cycle of separation and return is over. The “illusion” of separation – the false belief that God is distant, that we must earn our way to Him, or that we are something apart from Him – has been decisively exposed and defeated. What does this mean for humanity now, and why do we call it the final unveiling of truth?
No More Cycles – The Definitive Revelation: In the past, as we saw, humanity went through repeating cycles: faith and closeness to God would be followed by forgetfulness, fear, and sin; then partial measures (like law and sacrifice) would bring people back temporarily, only for the cycle to repeat. But with Jesus, there is a sense of finality. The New Testament speaks of a “new and everlasting covenant” (see Hebrews 13:20) – a permanent relationship secured not by our consistency, but by God’s decisive act. Jesus promised the Holy Spirit would come to live in believers, to guide and remind us always (John 14:26) – something only possible once the separation was dealt with. The veil is torn for good; it cannot be stitched up again. The truth of God’s love and nearness is like a bell that cannot be un-rung in the consciousness of humanity. Even those who do not yet personally believe in Christ now live in a world fundamentally altered by His revelation – a world where the idea of a truly loving, accessible God has been unveiled and is being proclaimed to the ends of the earth. There is no new chapter of redemption to wait for; Christ is the fulfillment of all. As the book of Jude verse 3 says, “the faith… [has] once for all been delivered to the saints.” In short, we are living in the age of full revelation.
This also means there is no further need for God to accommodate any more misunderstandings as He did in the past. The times of ignorance that God patiently overlooked are done (Acts 17:30). We have the truth plain before us: God is as Jesus revealed Him to be – nothing more, nothing less. Any teaching or system that suggests otherwise can be confidently set aside as a human deviation. This gives the Church a clarifying lens: religious traditions that re-introduce fear, heavy legalism, or a notion of God’s remoteness are steps backward into illusion. The final truth invites us to move forward boldly into grace. As Jesus told the Samaritan woman, a time was coming “and now is” when true worshippers will worship the Father “in spirit and truth” rather than in specific temples or rituals (John 4:23-24). That time is now – direct access to God in spirit is open for everyone, everywhere. We don’t need to go to a certain mountain or perform a certain rite to find Him; Christ has shown that God is seeking us already.
Living in the Reality of Union: If indeed “the separation was always an illusion,” and Jesus has burst that illusion, then the reality is: we are and always have been in God’s embrace. To fully realize this truth is transformational. It means that instead of striving to reach God, we start from God. Instead of anxiously begging for forgiveness or favor, we receive the forgiveness and favor that have been there all along (of course, we still confess and repent of sin – but not as people unsure of God’s response, rather as beloved children running back into open arms). Our entire orientation shifts from doing in order to be loved ➝ to being loved, and therefore doing. The pressure is off – we don’t have to manufacture salvation or enlightenment; we awaken to what’s already true in Christ. This aligns with Paul’s teaching that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself (an objective reality), and so now the message is, “Be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20) – i.e. embrace what has been accomplished. In other words, wake up and smell the coffee: the room is already filled with the aroma of God’s presence.
One immediate implication of this awakening is profound assurance and peace. If God never was our enemy – if He’s not “up there” waiting to smite us for the next mistake – then we can truly have what Paul calls “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). Fear of condemnation evaporates (“There is now no condemnation for those in Christ” – Romans 8:1). We can have the intimacy of children with a loving Father, crying “Abba!” by the Spirit (Romans 8:15). This kind of fearless intimacy wasn’t psychologically possible when people believed God might still judge them harshly. But now the perfect love of God, when accepted, “casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment” (1 John 4:18). The final unveiling of truth shows God is not out to punish; He’s out to heal and restore. What remains is for each person to let go of their mistrust and let God love them.
Another implication is a breaking down of religious elitism and division. If no one is separated from God except by their own illusion, then as soon as that illusion is dropped, anyone can enter communion with God – no special ethnic, ritual, or moral prerequisites. Christ opened the way for all, and indeed in Him “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female – for you are all one” (Galatians 3:28). The wall between the “chosen” and “outsiders” is gone. Humanity is invited as a whole to see themselves as one family under one forgiving Father. This should make believers ambassadors of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:19-20), not gatekeepers of exclusion. The task is not to separate the “good” from “bad” or the “sacred” from “profane” – it’s to announce that all who will may come, and to help each person see that God has always been waiting with open arms. The illusions of tribal gods, of religious insiders vs outsiders, are invalid in the light of Christ. This doesn’t lead to a mushy universalism that bypasses personal faith; rather, it’s through Christ that all are welcomed. We still call every person to personal faith in Jesus – because trusting Him is how one’s illusion of separation falls away. But we do so knowing that God’s love precedes their response; in evangelism we are inviting people to awaken, not trying to convince an angry God to accept them. It’s more like telling a prodigal, “Come home, your Father already forgives you and longs for you” than scaring someone with threats of hell. The urgency of mission remains, but its tone is transformed from fear to love.
Transformation from Within: With the illusion gone, what about sin in daily life? Does emphasizing that separation is healed lead to moral laxity? The New Testament teaches that those united to Christ by faith receive a new heart and God’s Spirit, enabling them to live righteously (see Hebrews 8:10, Galatians 5:16-23). Our framework reinforces this: if relationship is restored and fear is cast out, the motive for sin (which often comes from fear, insecurity, or the desire to control) is undermined. We are free to obey God out of love and gratitude. Good works and holy living are the fruit of living in reality (the reality of union with God), not preconditions to achieve it. Rather than give license to sin, this truth empowers victory over sin. Those who truly grasp that God is ever-present and loving find a new desire to do His will – not out of compulsion, but out of alignment with the truth of who they are in Him. Sin is seen for what it is: a pointless clinging to the old illusion of self apart from God, which only brings misery. Knowing the truth sets us free (John 8:32) – free not only from guilt, but from sin’s bondage. If someone claims to embrace this message of grace yet uses it as an excuse to sin (“since God doesn’t punish, I can do what I want”), it shows they haven’t really awakened to God’s love; they are still trapped in self-centered deception. In reality, when we know we are one with God, we want to act in accordance with His character. The apostle John put it simply: “No one who lives in Him keeps on sinning” (1 John 3:6), because living in Him means living in love, and love will not willfully wrong others or rebel against goodness. Far from making sin harmless, our view shows sin to be extra tragic – it’s a denial of reality, a futile insistence on living as if God weren’t graciously holding us. Thus, we have all the motive in the world to renounce sin – not because we fear damnation, but because we love God and know who we are in Him.
The End of Fear-Based Religion
Perhaps the most immediate effect of this “final unveiling” is that it ends the legitimacy of fear-based religion. Christianity should no longer be about striving to reach God or fearing His wrath. Every practice – prayer, worship, communion, ethical action – is reoriented as a way to celebrate and deepen the relationship we already have, not as bribery or an anxious plea. This draws heavily from mystic insights: for example, Brother Lawrence (a 17th-century Christian monk) spoke of “practicing the presence of God” in every moment, because God is always with us. Eastern Orthodox spirituality speaks of theosis – becoming by grace what God is by nature – which starts from the premise that God’s energies suffuse us now that Christ has united heaven and earth. Such insights bolster the notion that the wall between sacred and secular is torn down: all of life can be lived in God’s presence. We no longer compartmentalize “God time” versus “worldly time” – we see God in our breathing, thinking, working, loving, for He animates all things. As Paul preached to the Athenians, even some of their poets intuited that “we are His offspring” and “in Him we live and move” (Acts 17:28). The difference now is that through Christ we know who this God is (not an unknown deity, but the Father of Jesus), and we are invited to consciously abide in Him.
What remains for humanity is simply to accept this truth – to wake up. The invitation is universal, but each person or community may go through their own process (just as individuals wake from sleep at their own pace). The role of the Church, then, is to shine the light of this truth graciously and persistently, through word and deed, until “the earth is filled with the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9). This framework motivates mission not as an effort to save people from an angry God, but as helping people see the God who already loves them and has reconciled them. Evangelism becomes less about scaring people with hell and more about joyfully declaring the good news: “You have a place at God’s table; come home, your Father is waiting!” It’s the proclamation of an accomplished reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:19-20 again) – “God is not holding your sins against you; be reconciled to Him!”
“It Is Over – We Have Won”
Finally, our synthesis carries a triumphant tone: the struggle to bridge the gap to God is over – God bridged it from His side, and it was never truly there to begin with! This is cause for profound joy. It means the victory is won not just partially, but completely. The powers of darkness, which operated through the lie of separation (think of how the serpent’s lie in Eden drove a wedge of distrust), have been disarmed. Those dark forces thrived when humans believed God was harsh or distant, because that kept humans running from the light and trapped in fear. But now, Jesus has made it unmistakable: God’s arms are outstretched – even scarred with nails as the sign of His everlasting welcome. There is nothing left for the devil to deceive us about except to bluff and pretend the old lies are still true. Our task is to stand firm in the truth and call the devil’s bluff. As the book of Revelation depicts in rich symbols, the culmination of history is the marriage of heaven and earth – God and humanity fully reunited, with every tear wiped away (Revelation 21:2-4). Notably, God says in that vision, “Behold, I am making all things new… It is done! I am the Alpha and Omega” (Rev 21:5-6). That “It is done” echoes Jesus’ words on the cross, “It is finished.” Truly, the new creation has begun; nothing can ultimately thwart it.
Implications for Daily Life and the Future
Living in the awareness that “there is only God” (meaning God’s presence permeates everything, and our independent separation was illusory) leads to deep humility and love. We realize every good that we do is actually God’s grace working through us – so there is no ground for pride. As it’s often said, “All is grace.” Even our faith is a gift, not a personal accomplishment (Ephesians 2:8). Knowing this prevents the ego from sneaking back in. We do not boast in having “found” God or in being especially holy; we simply rejoice that God opened our eyes. This mindset mirrors Paul’s teaching: “What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).
Moreover, seeing others – even those currently in sin or error – in this light fosters compassion. If someone is still living as if separated from God, we pity them and pray for their awakening, rather than feeling self-righteous or superior. We know Christ died for them just as much as for us; they are only hurting themselves by resisting love. This undercuts judgmental attitudes and fuels merciful outreach. After all, if we only see truth by grace, we can’t look down on those who have not seen it yet. We become gentle guides, not arrogant conquerors.
Finally, this framework provides a robust hope. If indeed nothing can separate us from God’s love (Romans 8:39) and the illusion is dissolved, then even death itself loses its sting. Believers can face martyrdom, hardship, or uncertainty with unshakeable confidence that Emmanuel – “God with us” – is a permanent reality. Our hope for the world is likewise optimistic: we anticipate not a doom in which God rejects His creation, but a restoration in which “all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,” to quote Julian of Norwich. This is not naive; it’s rooted in the victory of Christ. It drives us to be agents of reconciliation, justice, and healing now, because those align with the true reality that God’s love intends for creation. We work against evil not as those uncertain of the outcome, but as those assured that love already won and will win.
Conclusion
We have articulated a theology in which every piece reinforces the whole: God’s unchanging love, human free will and the Fall, the role of law and religion, the ultimate revelation in Christ, and the end of the separation – all fit together without contradiction. This framework doesn’t require rejecting the Bible or any core doctrine; it simply requires us to read everything in the light of Jesus Christ, who is the key. By doing so, every paradox finds resolution and the character of God shines consistently as loving, just, and wise. It tells the story of a God who never stopped loving, and a humanity that is finally awakening to that fact.In the end, the truth is as simple as it is profound: God never changed. It was our view of Him that changed – and in Jesus, we at last see clearly who God has been all along. The illusion of separation is over, and we are invited to live in the joy and freedom of reunion with our Father, now and forever. Amen.