God is also jealous, wrathful and protects His holiness.
I see and understand both sets of attributes of God. You wish to ignore the second.
It is not a matter of ignoring the second, but rather of understanding where being and truth reside. The early Fathers of the church applied the term skia (shadow) to the Old Testament. Truth and reality reside in that which casts the shadow, not in the shadow itself.
If someone is walking toward you from the east at sunrise, his shadow reaches you before he does. The role of the shadow is to herald the approach of your friend. But who would you rather grasp ahold of, the shadow or the person? And does the shadow give a true image of the person?
That is the relationship between the Old and New Testaments.
Quite right stripes -- God does feely offer His gift to everyone.
Good points. A good analogy of the OT with respect to the NT.
Regards
If a person has difficulties in reconciling the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New, it suggests to me there is some fundamental error in their theology. There is no difference. People came to God through Judaism in the Old Testament (Caleb and Ruth to name two) just as people now come to God through Christianity. The only difference was the old covenant was imperfect. It was through the completed work of Christ that God placed His Spirit permanently in us to cause us to walk according to His commands.
Christians do not like to talk much these days about the wrath of God. However our Lord Jesus talked far more about hell and damnation then He did of the love of God. The God of the Old Testament that flooded the world in Genesis 6 is the very same Christ that will destroy the world with fire described in Revelations in the New Testament. If someone wants to talk about the love of Christ as it is used in its distorted framework of today, then they need to pay close attention to the wrath poured out in Revelation. This wrath was so great that even the angels stood speechless for a half an hour.
This isn't to say God's wrath is to be focused on exclusively. Its simply that if you understand the wrath and judgment that awaits the world, then you fully can appreciate the grace, love and mercy that God has richly bestowed on us Christians. But God doesn't show love to those who are outside of His covenant. Not to Jews. Not to Hindus. Not to Buddhists. He does not stand outside some door knocking hoping we will open the door. He takes the initiative and, in His great love, grace and mercy, seek and save that which was lost. He drags us out of Sodom.
The trouble is that is difficult for some to comprehend, God doesn't do this for everyone. He goes to the pool of troubled waters but tells only one to pick up their pallet and walk.
That is where the truth resides.