I will not execute the fierceness of my anger. (Hosea 11:9)
What is your best hope of salvation? Some people hope that God will be just like them (Ps. 50:21). They hope that God is a compromiser like them, that He is a kind of changeable character, and they just hope that they will catch Him on a good day rather than a bad day.
But God says our hope should instead be based on His unlikeness to man. “I will not execute the fierceness of my anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of you: and I will not enter into the city.” It is God’s dissimilarity that is our best and only hope. “For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Mal. 3:6).
Do you really want someone like yourself to be your only hope? What are you like? Are you not unpredictable, capricious, and changeable? Do you not judge one way one day, and another the next? Have you ever been fiercely angry and yet possessed the self-control not to execute the fierceness of your anger? Have you ever found a technique to turn away and exhaust your anger? No, you haven’t; because you are man and not God. Too much weakness and too little wisdom means that you will usually execute the fierceness of your anger.
Only God has the power and the wisdom to find a way of not executing the fierceness of His anger upon you. His power and His wisdom are found in Christ crucified. He is the power and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24). Having executed the fierceness of His anger upon Christ, God can then turn to you and say, “I will not execute the fierceness of my anger.”
And because He is God and not man, once He executes His anger, it is gone. He does not harbor a grudge or bear secret and bitter resentment against you. He is God and not man. Let God’s dissimilarity be your hope, your only hope of salvation.