When Jesus was crucified upon the Cross He took upon the sins of humanity past, present and future. 2 Corinthians 5 states, "He died for all. . .". If we are to believe this to be true we must also conclude that God was completely gracious to every human being ever. "All" surprisingly in the original Greek means "all."
So I come then to a conundrum: what about the Amalekites, the Midianites, the Philistines, and every people that God destroyed? How do we stomach that? Was God complete grace to them too? I understand that these people were destroyed to make way for Israel and due to their own wrong-doing, but total destruction doesn't seem the right course. I think about the lives of the men, woman, and children that made up these people and I cannot come to the logical conclusion that they were all somehow pure evil. No, I believe that they were human as much as I am and thus a subject of God's grace. But where is this grace?
I submit to you that God was gracious to them just as much as He is to us today after Christ's death and resurrection.
1 Peter 3:18-20
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which He went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.
This illustrates a story of grace. It depicts the Son, after His crucifixion, going to the countless lost souls or "spirits in prison" and telling them of what He had just done: died for their sins. For if He indeed died for all of humanity, past, present and future, this must be true.
When I look at the lives of these people caught in genocide I see a different story now. I see one of God giving them chances to change, to bow to Israel's expansion, to turn to God, yet refusing. I see their deaths but then I see a victorious Savior coming and explaining that they have yet another chance to accept Grace.
Today I see a Son who defeated Death in every moment in history. God did not just save those who came after Christ, He defied death to be Grace.
Romans 8:38-39
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
