Many evangelists feel the need to help God out in explaining God's "cruel" actions towards the human race in the old testament. This is wrong in Biblical understanding as well as motive.
God does not owe us His grace at all. What's done in the past is done in His perfect, sovereign, absolute righteousness. He does not need to show us His grace. He does not need us to explain how "not cruel" He was; for if we do so with the assumption that He was even slightly "cruel", our explanation will err biblically, because unrighteousness does not proceed from God.
As for God is Love, therefore He MUST RESPONSIBLY send His Son Jesus Christ, this statement is erred in such way: As if God needs to send His Son in order to prove His Love. God does not need to prove His love by sending His Son because God is not bounded by any of His creations, including time itself. God sent His Son because it has always been His perfect display of Just and Grace. So that when Jesus came, we know that it is the long awaited salvation since the fall of mankind, in this matter, we come to understand God's love. We must understand God's love, from the perspective of a merciful God, NOT from the perspective of taking sympathy towards the suffering of Christ. Indeed our Lord suffered the greatest turmoil for our sake, but He is never to be sympathized on, we are the ones who need His mercy. (Luke 23:28)
If we bring others to Christ by making them feel sorry for our Lord on the cross, they will never see the truth, they will never have the right relationship with God.
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