God is also merciful and faithful. In Ex. 34: 5-6, God Himself descends in the cloud and stands with Moses and proclaims the name of Yahweh. And Yahweh passed before him and proclaimed: Yahweh Yahweh; God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding and abundant in lovingkindness, goodness, faithfulness and truth. The Hebrew word used here needs all of those English words to even begin to describe what God was saying. That word is where we get steadfastness, everlasting, enduring and others.
That overwhelming expression at the end of v. 6 shows up in the New Testament in John 1:14 where John describes Jesus with the same term in Greek, translated "full of grace and truth". They are very much the same. What God revealed about Himself on that mountain - goodness, faithfulness, truth - John now reveals about Jesus in this presentation of the Gospel of grace and truth. Both God the Father and Christ the Son are Holy, Merciful, and Gracious. The more we learn and experience the faithfulness of God, the more we will be rightly directed to His wonders! mjm
