“The Lord replied to Moses, ‘Whoever has sinned against me I will erase from my book. Now go, lead the people to the place I told you about; see, my angel will go before you. But on the day I settle accounts, I will hold them accountable for their sin.’ And the Lord inflicted a plague on the people for what they did with the calf Aaron had made.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
One of the most incredible aspects of God’s character is that He is a perfect combination of justice and mercy. This mixture is not 50-50 like one we might make. Instead, it’s 100-100. He’s 100% just and 100% merciful. He’s all of both at exactly the same time. We can trust that He will always do the right thing, but He will always do the right thing in the most merciful way possible. We trust that in part because of passages like this one. Let’s talk about what’s going on here.
Israel had sinned. Grievously. They had willfully and flagrantly violated the covenant they had made with God. And it wasn’t like they picked a couple of minor terms to quietly set aside. They boldly smashed to pieces the very first two commands and had a party while they were doing it.
To get some sense of what this was like for God, imagine that you have just signed a business agreement with another person. You have developed a product that is unlike anything else anyone has ever created and it has taken the world by storm. Everybody wants to get their hands on it because it genuinely makes everyone’s life better who uses it. I’ll let your imagination run wherever it will as far as what that product might be. You’ve developed this product, but distribution and management aren’t your strengths. You need help there.
As a part of this agreement, your new partner is going to gain access to proprietary information that you do not want shared. If word about this got out, competitors would multiply like rabbits, and your entire company would be threatened. As a result, the first two clauses in the contract are that your partner will not share the information about how your product is made with anybody…ever…for any reason. Even his own family can’t know. The second clause is that he won’t try to make one for himself. Then, a few weeks after your partnership has been made official, you find out that he has gone out and made one for himself and told everyone in his contact list how he did it.
What are you feeling in that moment? Betrayal? Rage? Hurt? It would not only be totally understandable for you to break off your partnership with this guy immediately and forever, but you would be totally within your rights to do it and to go after him to ruin his life financially to the fullest extent of the law. Disregard most of the details there, but that’s a little like what Israel did to God with the golden calf.
He would have been fully within His rights to cast them to the side, walk away from them for good, and leave them in the middle of the desert to figure out what to do next on their own. Borrowing on some of what we said about God yesterday, as God, He would have been fully within His rights to wipe them out as a people and start over just like He initially told Moses He wanted to do.
But He didn’t.
Instead, He announces that He is going to hold those who sinned accountable for their sin. The people who participated in the rave will face judgment for that. What that judgment is going to look like, we don’t know. Because God is just, we can trust that the judgment coming will be just as well. It will be properly proportional to the nature of their sin. That’s what it means for God to be just. At the same time, though, He tells Moses that He is still going to be involved in helping the people get to the place He told them He was going to take them. Because of their rebellion, He is not going to be quite as intimately involved in that leading Himself as He might have been before, but He is not going to abandon them entirely. He could have refused to honor His promise to them in return for their violating their promise to Him, but He didn’t. He was still going to give them the good thing He had planned for them. That’s mercy. All justice. All mercy.
Now, from a details standpoint, we have to read these three verses in light of Moses’s intercession in v. 32. He offered to take the people’s place in judgment. He mentioned being written out of God’s book. That’s probably not a reference to the Book of Life the apostle John shared a vision of in Revelation. It is likely referring to some kind of a record of who is a part of the covenant and who is not, but we’re not totally sure on that. It seems at the very least to reference some kind of way for God to account for who is faithful and who is not.
Toward the end of the passage, we see reference to the fact that even though God often delays delivering justice now for sin in favor of being merciful, there is a day coming when all accounts will be properly settled. Although the text here does give indication of this at all, through the lens of the New Testament, we understand that this is the kind of patience on God’s part the apostle Peter was talking about when he said, the Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but it patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.”
Throughout the Old Testament narrative we see God delaying or withholding judgment several times. Through the lens of the cross, we understand that He was holding back on a final judgment in these cases until the people had a chance to receive the life Christ would make available by His death and resurrection. His death would satisfy God’s justice for all the sin that had or would be committed by everyone who ever lived. Somehow, in His great mercy, He was waiting to give those who would repent and receive Christ’s ministry as efficacious on their behalf the chance to do just that even after their deaths. He was waiting to honor the faith and faithfulness of those who put their trust in Him.
God still does that today, except that now we don’t have to wait for Jesus to come and make this path of repentance and life possible because He already has. We all sin from time to time. In fact, “from time to time” is probably far too generous of an assessment of how frequently we violate the character and commands of God in our lives. Because God is just, all sin will have consequences. Yet because God is also merciful, those consequences have already been satisfied in Christ. If we are willing to put our trust in Him, then the ultimate consequences of our sin will have already been paid for us. We may yet face the practical and temporal consequences of broken relationships and societal restrictions, but God in His mercy and compassion can even help us bear up under those and accomplish His good plans for and through us in spite of them. All it takes is our willingness to trust in Jesus. If you haven’t done that before, today is a great day for it.
The Nexus 
Any thoughts on the idea that God knew this was going to happen when Moses stayed a while? Was it a way he allowed this rebellion from the people to occur to show them the consequences or was he as surprised as Moses? It’s not like they had a good track record after leaving Egypt. Lol.
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That could be. I don’t know that I’ve seen that particular perspective before. On the one hand, He knew this was going to happen before the foundation of the world. He knew it when He led the people out of Egypt in the first place. He knew it when He called Moses up on the mountain in the first place.
On the other hand, this outcome wasn’t a foregone conclusion. God would have been willing to do all the law-giving right in front of them. The people rejected that because they were so terrified by the storm theophany when He first appeared on the mountain. Had they not refused Him at the outset of this process, they wouldn’t have been likely to go the route of the golden calf. They separated themselves from God and then drifted away from Him.
I wonder if perhaps the better application here is that when we separate ourselves from the presence of God for some reason, we are far more likely to put ourselves on a path of sin. We are still perfectly capable of drifting into sin even when we are with God, but we are far more likely to do it when we are separated from Him. Remaining connected to the presence of God is vital and essential for followers of Jesus if we want to remain faithful to His path through life. That means staying in the Scriptures, staying faithful in prayer, and staying connected to the church. Without that trio, you won’t grow. With it, you almost won’t be able to help but to grow.
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Hi ,
( Exodus 32 : 33) states : ‘And the LORD said unto Moses,” Who soever hath sinned against Me, him will I blot out of my book.”
The verse is propounded nicely in this article
This is one way of explanation about Christians loosing their salvation.
To blot out the name from the divine record of Book of life, means loosing the salvation.
These are the other consistent verses _:#########
! ) (Revelation 3 : 5) :‘He who overcome s will thus be clothed in white garments & I will not erase his name from the
book of life.’
!!) (Psalm. 69 : 27-28):‘lniquity to their iniquity ,& may they not come intoYour righteousness.May they be blotted out of the book of life & may they not be recorded with the righteous.’
The following verses denote 6 other reasons ;of the person losing his salvation _:
Reason 1 :
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Due to dead body.
( Romans 8 : 10 ) states : ‘And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin.’
(Ezekiel 18:24-26) states:‘ When the righteous turneth away from his righteousness & committeth iniquity & doeth according to all the abominatio ns that the wicked man doeth, shall he live? All his righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned: in his trespass that he hath trespassed & in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die.’
These are the iniquities a righteous may commit due to his dead body.
:Anything such as :’ Sensuality, passions, drunkedness, orgies,
drinking parties, & lawless idolatry.’(1 Peter 4:3 )
’ Care of this world & the deceitful ness of riches.‘(Matthew 13 :22)
’ Filthy dreamers, Murmurs, complains, hard & sensual speeches. ‘( Jude 8,19 )
’ Friendship with this world, covetous ness, & adultery. ‘ James 4: 4)
’ Bitter envying, strife & jealousy.’
(James 3: 14)
Confusion, selfish ambition
& every evil work.(James . 3:16)
‘Desires of the flesh & of the mind.’ (Ephesians.2 :3)
‘Divisions’ (1Corinthians 3 : 3)
‘Lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.’
(1John 2: 16)
‘ Fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, witchcraft,hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, seditions or, heresies.
(Galatians .5 :19, 20 )
So, not to loose salvation, the person has to deny & submit himself to The Holy Spirit, daily.
(Luke 9:23 ) says :’Jesus said to all,“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily & follow me.’
Reason 2 :
^^^^^^^^^^^^
lf he remains in the pollution of this world.
(2 Peter 2:20-22) states: ‘For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord &
Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, & over come, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteous ness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy command
ment delivered unto them.’
Reason 3 :
^^^^^^^^^^^^
If he did not remain in the good ness of God.
( Romans 11: 22) says:‘Behold therefore the goodness & severity of God: on them which fell,
severity; but toward thee, good ness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.’
Reason 4 :
^^^^^^^^^^^^
If he takes away from the words of the book.
(Rev. 22 :19) states :‘lf any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of
the book of life. ‘
Reason 5 :
^^^^^^^^^^^^
lf he does not remain in faith till end.
(Matthew 24 :13) says,‘ But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.’
Reason 6 :
^^^^^^^^^^^^
lf he goes after false Christs & false prophets.
( Matthew. 24 : 24) states : ‘False Christs & false prophets shall
deceive the very elect’.
Thus, when the person lives carnally, the Holy Spirit doesn’t stay in him.
(Rom. 8 : 6, 8,13) states : ‘To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind
is enmity against God ’13.,lf you live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do
mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.’
These are 3 examples of The Holy Spirit living the person :
!) Samson
(Judges16 : 20) says, ‘She said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson.& he awoke out of his sleep, & said, I will go out as at
other times before, & shake myself. & he wist not that the LORD was departed from him.’
!!) (lsaiah 63 :10)states:‘But they rebelled,& vexed His holy Spirit: therefore He was turned to be their enemy, & he fought against
them.’
!!!) king Saul
(1 Samuel 16 :14) says,‘The Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul & an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him.’
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Hi Usha, thanks as always for your thoughtful response. I don’t know that I fully agree with you on the idea of a true believer being able to lose his salvation, but we should nonetheless take very seriously the warnings against wandering away from the faith that we find in the Scriptures.
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