Here's an email from a podcast listener named Luke who writes in to ask this. "Pastor John, how do we reconcile Ezekiel 18.32, 'For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone,' declares the Lord God, with Deuteronomy 28.63, 'And as the Lord took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the Lord will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you.' How do you handle this apparent contradiction in Scripture between Ezekiel 18.32 and Deuteronomy 28.63?" What would you say, Pastor John?

When I meet passages like this in the Bible, especially passages relating to the emotions of God, I am very slow to think that God cannot have these seemingly contradictory emotions. One expressed in Ezekiel 18.32, "I do not have pleasure in the death of anyone," and the other expressed in Deuteronomy 28.63, "The Lord will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you." Instead, my assumption is that there is a true way that God takes pleasure in the just destruction of the wicked, and there is a true sense in which He does not delight in the death of anyone.

In other words, both are true, and our job is to discern as much as we can in what different ways or senses they may be true. It may be, Tony, that since this is such a huge issue, I should point to a couple of places where I've written about it.

Desiring God, pages 38 to 40, and The Pleasures of God, pages 55 to 59, I tackle precisely those two texts that were mentioned. It's as if they were reading what I wrote and wanted some clarity on it. That's where I've written about it if you want to pull down the book off the shelf.

But let me try to give a brief answer here, not depend on people going there. God's emotional life must be infinitely complex. Who can comprehend that the Lord hears in one moment of time the prayers, for example, of 10 million Christians around the world and sympathizes with each one personally and individually as a caring Father, as Hebrews 4.15 says He does, even though among these 10 million prayers, some are brokenhearted and some are bursting with joy?

How can God weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice when they are both coming to Him at the same time? In fact, they're always coming to Him with no break at all, day in and day out, century after century. This is unfathomable for us how God in His infinite complexity of emotions can relate intimately, personally, in a present wonderful way to the brokenhearted and not be a spoiled sport at somebody's wedding at the same time while He's delighting in the joy that they are having.

So consider, maybe this would help. It helped me anyway. The most relevant analogy I could think of was whether or not God delighted in the death of Jesus. Now clearly, God chose that His Son would be killed. Isaiah 53.10, "It was the will of the Lord to crush Him or bruise Him.

He has put Him to grief." What's not clear is that the word "will," the Hebrew word "will," "hafeitz," is translated most often with delight or take pleasure or enjoy or be glad or be the good pleasure of. In other words, nobody twisted God's arm to send His Son to die.

The death of the Son of God in one sense pleased God. It was a good and right and hard thing to do. In fact, Ephesians 5.2 says that Christ gave Himself, quote, "as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." You want to stop and say, "Fragrant offering?" Like to whom was it such a good smell?

And the answer is God. And yet Romans 8.32 says, "God did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all." Now that word "did not spare" is intended to communicate to us that this was not easy. This was His only Son. This was His much-loved Son.

This was emotionally difficult in one sense for God to do. He loved His Son. He did not relish the thought of the pain that would come to His Son, the darkness that would spread over His Son. And yet, in another sense, He did. So another analogy that has helped me with that and the other passages from Ezekiel and Deuteronomy is to suggest that God's infinite complexity is such that He can look at the world through two lenses.

He can look through a narrow lens or a wide-angle lens. And when God looks at a painful or wicked event through a narrow lens, He sees the tragedy of sin for what it is in itself, and He's angered or He's grieved at what He sees. I have no pleasure in the death of anyone when God looks at a painful or wicked event through His narrow lens.

But when He looks through His wide-angle lens, He sees the tragedy of sin in relation to everything leading up to it and everything flowing from it. He sees it in relation to all the connections and all the effects that form a pattern or a mosaic stretching into eternity. And that mosaic in all of its parts, good and evil, bring Him delight.

Psalm 135.6, whatever the Lord pleases, He does. He's pleased by all that He does and all that He permits in the world. He has His reasons for doing it in the wide-angle lens of things. So that's my effort to stay faithful to the Scriptures and come to terms with the infinitely complex emotional life of God.

Through one lens, He does not delight in the death of anyone, and through another lens, as He sees it as part of the whole, He does. That is brilliant balance. Thank you, Pastor John, for tackling these important issues. And Luke, thank you for the question. Every weekday we answer questions like this, and we are now over 700 episodes in.

That is a lot of grace. And to find our entire archive, go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. We have a guest joining us on Monday and Tuesday of next week, because I want to know, how is it that non-Christian novelists who suppress the truth in unrighteousness also know so much about the human condition?

This is a doozy of a question, and we will call on theologian John Frame to step in and help us out. I can't wait. That's Monday and Tuesday of next week. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Have a great weekend, and we will see you here on Monday. Thank you.

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