Is God a loving God or A Vengeful God?

Reflections for this date are based on the following scripture passages:
Matthew 10	Matthew 11	Matthew 12	Genesis 7	Genesis 8	Psalms 3

Is God a loving God or a vengeful one? Scripture says that "God is love." (1 John:4:8, 4:16) However, scripture also depicts God as being at times angry and vengeful. But it is love and not these characteristics that define Him. No being, God included, exhibits only one characteristic, all love, for instance, and no other characteristic. Furthermore, are we to say that anger is always a result of hate and not of love?

God made man to have relationship with him but gave him the freedom to choose how he would respond to his maker. From the beginning man did not choose wisely, starting with the first man, Adam. God gave Adam and his wife, Eve, a perfect setting and a direct relationship with God. But the couple chose to break the relationship by doing what they were told not to do. With this break in the relationship the couple no longer had the direct relationship with God nor the perfect environment. From there it continued downhill with the murder of their son Abel by their other son, Cain. And the downhill slide continued until the time of Noah and God decided it must stop. Man was not intended to live apart from God, and the further he withdrew from God the more evil he became. We must recognize here that evil does not act out in isolation but rather upon others. Other people suffer because of the evil condition of a man's heart. While God is disturbed by our rejection of Him, He is just as disturbed by our evil actions toward one another. In Noah's day, God decided the evil must stop and so He destroyed all mankind and every living creature with the exception of the only righteous man of his day - Noah. Also saved from destruction were Noah's family and a pair of every creature.

God sent His Son, Jesus, because of His love for man. Man cannot overcome his naturally evil heart simply by determining to do so. Two thousand years of history prior to the birth of Jesus demonstrated this truth. With Jesus, man was not only provided forgiveness for sin, but the presence of God's Spirit in his heart to enable him to overcome his evil bent. All of this was an act of God's love toward man. The gospels describe Jesus' efforts to enlighten the people of His day about this new pathway God was providing for them. But the people were not open to hear it. They already had it figured out and were not to be persuaded otherwise. Not even by Jesus despite the miracles they saw Him perform. Rather than shedding the light of Jesus' teachings upon their lives and changing accordingly, they judged Jesus by their own narrow understanding and rejected Him.

Jesus had little patience with the narrow-minded religious types though He had great patience with those who lived in darkness of His truths and hungered for what He brought to them. When He sent out His disciples two-by-two to a series of Jewish villages to announce that: "The kingdom of heaven has come near," He told them to move on whenever they were not received. Those who were open to God's voice would hear them and those who were not would not receive what they had to say. Jesus did not try to convince them nor instruct His disciples to do so. They would live and die with their choice but there were too many who need equal opportunity to hear the good news of Jesus to spend time trying to convince those who didn't want to be convinced.