Word of Salvation – Vol.32 No.16 – April 1987
The Justice Of God
Sermon by Rev. M. P. Geluk on Lord’s Day 4
Reading: Romans 1:18-32, 2:1-11
Singing: Ps.H.184:1,2; Ps.H.184:3,4;
BoW.77:1,2,3; Ps.H.439:1,4; Ps.H.210:1,2
It is a great comfort for the Christian to belong to Jesus Christ. This belonging to Jesus enables the Christian to face life in whatever circumstances, and it also helps him to face death, for he knows death cannot separate him from God.
To have this comfort the Christian must know the a,b,c of the Christian faith. He must know about the biblical doctrines of sin, salvation and service. As the student of Scripture, which we all must be, comes to grips with each doctrine, then he must not lose sight of the other doctrines. Keeping all of them in your sights helps to maintain a balance in your understanding of what Scripture is teaching. But you can’t go into details with all of them at the same time. You have to take one at a time.
We have been doing that with the doctrine of sin and we have seen that we discover our sin when we see what God’s law requires of us. God requires a total love for Him, with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and a love for our neighbour that is equal to the love we have for ourselves. But our great problem is that we can’t love like that. Sin has a habit of getting in the way. We can’t blame God for our problem because He made us good. He gave us the right equipment to love Him and our neighbour but we failed to use our equipment according to the Maker’s Instruction Manual. Adam and Eve were the first to foul things up and since their time everyone has just kept on doing the wrong things. What man needs is a new spiritual birth. Without it he remains corrupt and will continue to mess things up.
Now all that is stated clearly in our Confession, in L.D.’s 2 and 3. There we confess what we believe Scripture to be teaching about the doctrine of sin. But we haven’t quite finished with this doctrine of sin yet. We still have to face the fact that God punishes all sin. It’s not just a matter of having failed to do what God requires of us. God regards that failure as sin and sin and the sinner are going to be punished. It’s all tied up with God’s justice and His judgment.
Let us therefore now look at:
The Justice of God and we will see
1. God’s justice requires punishment
2. The objections to God’s justice.
- In the first place we see that God is a God of justice and He must therefore punish. It is not easy to speak about the element of justice in God’s nature. Most people prefer to hear about the love and the mercy of God. And God is that too of course. When speaking about God, we must always try our utmost to be true to Him and present Him as He is, as He has revealed Himself in the Scriptures. And the Scriptures show God to be both loving and holy; He is both merciful and just. Unfortunately, today most people tend to emphasize God’s love at the expense of His justice. In the past there have been times when the justice and holy anger of God was overemphasized and people lived in constant fear of God. Then they needed to hear more of His love. But today most people hold to a concept of God that says He is merely love. And because God’s love is one-sidedly emphasised, people tend to think that they themselves must also only show love to others. Now the problem is not in that people want to show love and kindness, for all that is good, but the problem is that all this is done at the expense of justice. If God is only love, then what does it really matter if a person is a sinner? If God is only love, then so what if Christ died? Is it all that important for sinners to believe in Him and take Him very seriously, if in the end God’s love will see to it that everyone will be saved anyway?
The fact is that if God is only love, then in the end all would be saved. All those evil people you hear about in the Bible, people like Pharoah, the many kings of Israel and Judah who did only evil continually, they would all be saved in the end. What’s more, Judas, Pilate, Nero, Hitler, Idi Amin, Pol Pot and whoever is evil today, they would all in the end be saved and go to heaven. If God is only love then there is no need for a judgment and there is no such place as hell. And indeed there are many people today who accept a heaven but not a hell.
It’s therefore constantly necessary to correct the view people have of God. People form a picture of God in their mind according to what they would like to see in God! But that’s idolatry. We must see God as He has revealed Himself in the Scriptures. And the Scriptures say that when you sin, you will receive the punishment of death. God said to Adam and Eve, “You must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” (Gen.2:17), And that’s exactly what happened. They died, they are not here anymore. Anyone who sins dies.
That’s the sorry history of mankind. God does what He says He would do, “The soul who sins is the one who will die.” (Ezek.18:4). The Lord God who describes Himself in Ex.34 as the “compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin,” is also the One who, “does not leave the guilty unpunished.” (vs.7). God, says the psalmist, is not a God who takes pleasure in evil; with Him the wicked cannot dwell. The arrogant cannot stand in His presence; He hates all who do wrong. He destroys those who tell lies. (Ps.5:4,5).
Moses got the priests to recite a whole list of sins before the Israelites and with each sin the person who would do it was pronounced cursed by God. (Deut.27:14ff). The prophet Nahum was told by God to speak about His anger over against sin, “…the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath… the Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished.” (1:2,3).
In the New Testament the apostle Paul writes, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” (Rom.1:18). And again, “The wages of sin is death.” (Rom.6:23). And “…God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient.” (Eph.5:6). And the letter to the Hebrews says, “Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.” (9:27).
Now in these statements from God and many others similar to them, it is clear that there is a side to God’s nature that speaks of justice and that He will punish the wrong-doer.
What does this punishment consist of? Well, it can be the things God does in the sinner’s life in the here and now. Old Testament Israel, when sinning against God, found out that God withheld His blessings. Disorder and chaos prevailed and after many warnings the 70-year long captivity in a foreign country came upon them. God punishes the sinner in this life and this can be in all different kinds of ways. But what can be a form of temporal punishment for the unrepentant sinner, can be for the believer an occasion to seek a closer relationship with God and experience Him in a deeper way. The same event or happening, therefore, can be a blessing for the one and a punishment for another.
And, as seen already from the earlier statements quoted from Scripture, God will finally punish the unrepentant wrong-doer with everlasting punishment in hell. Hell is a terrible truth but it is a truth nonetheless. God forbid that we would ever discuss everlasting punishment with relish or wish it on those who bring evil on us. Yet, it is a Biblical truth that all unbelievers and all who do not repent from sin, will, when they die physically, also die eternally. In eternal death they will always be separated from God. They are without hope, ever and always experiencing the due reward upon their sin and the rejection of God. Hell is a terrible reality where men gnash their teeth in continual anguish and where there is no let-up. It’s eternal and once separated from God through physical death, there is no return to God possible. Hell is a place to be feared. And the Lord Jesus, whom some think of as being only meek and mild, spoke about hell and everlasting punishment more than anyone else in the Bible.
But upon whom will God’s judgment fall? Upon all who are not in Christ. God will punish those not in Christ for both the sin they are born with as well as the sins personally committed.
So awful is the punishment of God upon sin that it caused the author of the Hebrew letter to cry out, “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (10:31). Isaiah the prophet received a vision of God seated on a throne in heaven, high and exalted, and angels were calling out to one another, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty.” (Is.6:1ff). Into the holiness of God no sin or sinner can enter. How can people then say that God is only love and that He will not punish the unbeliever and the unrepentant everlastingly? Do they know something about God that we do not know? Do they have some knowledge about God that we have not read about in the Scriptures? If they claim to know things about God’s nature that we do not find in the Bible then it must be that they know more about God than God knows about Himself. But that’s nonsense of course. The thing men should be busy with is not to think of God differently from what He has shown Himself to be, so as to suit themselves, but to ask how sinful man can be saved from the judgment of God. Yet, important as that question is, it is not asked enough. More often people raise objections to the justice of God.
- Let us, therefore, in the second place, look at some of these objections to the justice of God. Frequently they arise in our own hearts too. One of the objections that is often voiced goes something like this: Is it not unjust of God to ask of us what we cannot give to Him? After all, if we are born with sinful human natures, which makes it natural for us to sin, is it then not pointless to demand perfection? How can God ask of us perfect, total love, for Him and our fellowmen, if by nature we are inclined to hate Him and our fellowmen?
Now that would seem to be a fair question to put before God, doesn’t it? By the way, you realize of course that by questioning God’s justice man puts God on trial. Man puts God in the dock and if he is able to prove that God is unjust then he has an excuse for not believing in Him, or for not taking seriously God’s mention of everlasting punishment and hell. So questions about God’s justice are always an attempt to prove Him wrong and to prove ourselves right.
What then of God asking from us what we are unable to give to Him? Does this not prove God unjust? Well, we are certainly right if we say that we are born with sinful human natures.
Original sin is a scriptural truth! And whereas Adam and Eve before the fall into sin could love perfectly, after the fall nobody can. But there is a bit more to it, isn’t there? If I, by some action of mine, don’t love God or my neighbour perfectly, then is it only because I can’t, or is it because I don’t want to? I think our conscience will tell us that it’s because we don’t want to. Somewhere in my human nature I put myself before God and neighbour. When God today asks of you and me, to love Him totally and completely, as well as loving our neighbour as ourselves, the same thing He asked of Adam and Eve, then you and I will frequently have to admit that there is in us more love for self than for God and others. And if we, who accept original sin, admit to that, then those who don’t accept original sin but believe man to be basically good, will have to admit even more that lack of love to others is a shortcoming they are personally responsible for. The reality of life today bears that out. The evils of society are brought about by a lack of love and people know they themselves are to blame.
Then what about the objection that is also frequently heard: Is it not unjust of God to condemn those who have never heard of Christ? Those who make this objection know that only through Christ can a sinner be saved. But what about all those people who have never heard of Christ and who died not knowing the gospel? Will God send the heathen to hell for simply not believing in a Christ of whom they never heard? The answer this objection is, “No”, God will not condemn the heathen for not believing in Christ if they have never heard of Him. But God will condemn the heathen for the sins they have committed. There are many sins men commit. To hear of Christ and to reject Him is the most serious sin anyone can commit, but it is not the only sin for which men are punished. There are many other sins and a sinner is condemned not for the sins he didn’t do but for the sins he did do!
And for some strange reason people think that those who have never heard of Christ are basically innocent. But the fact is that all people have received some knowledge of God. Romans ch.1 speaks of the light of creation. All have this light for in nature God has revealed His power and deity. But men, who can know therefore something about God through the creation, have supressed that truth by their wickedness. And as you can read in Rom.1, their wickedness had led them into all kinds of evil. But men have not only received the light of creation, they have also received the light of conscience and Romans ch.2 speaks about that. Man knows in his heart the difference between right and wrong. You ask anyone anywhere, “Have you ever done something which you knew was wrong?” and the answer will always be positive. So people condemn themselves by admitting to the wrong they have done. And not only do people know of their own wrong, they also condemn one another for doing wrong. God, therefore, is not unjust for condemning men for sins they themselves admit to have done and knowing it was wrong.
Another objection, not listed in L.D.4, but frequently voiced, is this, “what about the children of unbelievers?” Surely God would be unjust not to save the young children, or infants, or even those who die before birth? There are those who would say that all such children are automatically saved – and not to agree with that would surely make God unjust. It is, of course, a very sensitive issue for here we cannot speak of any wrongs committed, assuming now that they were still too young for that. But it is really a bad argument because it suggests that children come into world without original sin. But we know that this is not so. We are all in Adam, from the moment of conception. This scriptural truth prevents us from seeing people as individuals only. Every individual is part of a whole. The human race is not as a heap of gravel, which is a great many stones thrown together but more like a giant tree where each new twig or leaf is part of the whole tree. And if the tree has a disease then every part of it is involved. So it is with the human race. Each individual is organically related to the whole.
We really should not have too much difficulty with this. A local church is made up of a number of members. The church may owe a substantial amount of money to a bank which lent it for the purpose of buying or building a church. The loan is everybody’s debt. When the loan was taken out some members were not even born and new members are not asked if they are happy with it. But all members are responsible. Similarly, all people are in Adam and each one is affected by his sin.
I know, we can still have a problem about our being affected by the disobedience of one man who lived thousands of years ago. But that same problem is there when Christ’s obedience also affects a whole lot of other people, except then we don’t see it as a problem.. Christ’s obedience had good results and Adam’s a bad result. But the same principle is at work with both. And if we can accept it with Christ, then we must also accept it with Adam. Children of believers who die in infancy are with God in heaven because God said that the blessings of the covenant of grace also hold true for them. But God has not said this of children of unbelievers. He is not unjust because all are born in sin, it’s just that He is gracious to those who believe in Him and to their children.
The objection about children of unbelievers is actually also absurd. For if children of unbelievers are to be considered saved then its best to hope that they don’t grow up for then they could become lost. They would be better off dying in infancy and if they stay alive then God is only doing them a disfavour for unless they believe they will come into that age group where they could be condemned for their own sins. You don’t even want to bring children the gospel for then they could become guilty of the sin of unbelief. As you can see, working this objection to its logical end brings you into the land of absurdity.
But what then about God’s mercy? The catechism does mention this objection but doesn’t consider it in this Lord’s Day for it immediately returns again to God’s justice. However, this objection deserves some consideration here for people do wonder where God’s mercy is when they hear of His judgment.
Isn’t God’s mercy there when He provides food for those whose mouths blaspheme Him? Isn’t God’s mercy there when He gives health and strength to those who use their hands and brains to bring needless cruelty and destruction to others? God sends rain on the unjust and gives sunshine to the evil. Surely God’s forbearance and patience to evildoers is an eloquent testimony to His mercy. Men practise unrighteousness and pursue wrong but God does not immediately bring them into judgment. What if God were to paralyse us each time we lifted our arm to deliver an angry blow? What if God were to strike us dumb each time we uttered a foul word? What if God were to smite us with blindness each time we let our eyes look on things that stir our lust? What if God were to cripple our thoughts each time we sin with them? Surely God’s mercy is upon us all the time! But His mercy does not take anything away from His judgment.
Truly, God is not unjust. God is so merciful that He patiently hears our objections that we raise about His nature and through. His Word He answers each one.
In the end we can only see our sin and God’s holiness. But that’s also the time that God continues on with us and He points us to Christ through whom we can be saved from His justice. Let’s not worry about any injustice in God for there isn’t any. Rather, let us worry about the justice of the most holy and most righteous God and learn how to be saved from the judgment of Him who is too pure to look on sin. God will punish sin, both now and in eternity. And either our sins are punished in Jesus or we ourselves will have to bear that punishment. If in Jesus, it is heaven for us. If we bear our own punishment, it will be hell.
Amen.