God Saves

He redeems me from death and crowns me with love and tender mercies.

Psalm 103:4

ATHEIST RICHARD DAWKINS wrote in The God Delusion that the God of the Old Testament is a “most unpleasant character.” Dawkins cataloged God’s supposed sins—making him responsible for genocides, murders, homophobia, sexual prudery, and other things he says he finds in the Bible. You have to wonder, though, if Dawkins has ever read words like those of Psalm 103.

While the Bible does sometimes bewilder us, it can be understood and honestly explained if one is willing to study and learn. Much more often you find words and passages like those in Psalm 103, which lists many of the benefits and blessings God bestows on us. In the above verse we read, “He redeems me from death.” Jesus accomplished that when he died on the cross for our sins and then rose again, sending death back to its hole forever. Those of us who trust Jesus know the confidence and hope that one day, though we may die physically in this world, in the next we will be alive forever in a world that contains none of the evil of this one.

God redeems us not only from physical death but also from spiritual death, emotional death, and all the other kinds of death we experience in this world. When we truly encounter the God of the Bible, we don’t find him “unpleasant,” but rather a tender Father who “crowns [us] with love and tender mercies.” That’s the God true Christians know, love, and tell the world about.