Word of Salvation – Vol. 20 No.16 – January 1974
The Justice And Mercy Of God
Sermon by Rev. M. H. MacFarlane, Th.Grad. on Lord’s Day 4
Scripture Reading: Hebrews 10: 19 – 31
Psalter Hymnal: 184; 275 (Law); 121; 226; 493
Sin. . . and misery. That’s what this first part of the catechism is all about. Sounds rather depressing, doesn’t it? And it is, too – especially for God’s people, who are still plagued with the curse of sin. Despite the fact that Jesus has already paid the price for their sin.
So: this state of sin – and the misery that goes with it – this is a real headache and heartache for God’s people.
What about those people who are NOT God’s people?
That is, those people – the big majority of people – who really know nothing or very little about God?
Well, if they know little or nothing about God, and the revelation of himself in the Bible, then . . . you can’t expect them to know much about this business of sin and misery. Because man’s sinfulness plays a big part – a very big part – in his relationship with God. Who is without sin?
When you think about it, it’s really not so hard to understand why people who know little or nothing about God also know little or nothing about sin.
For consider: if such people know nothing, or virtually nothing about a being – about God – who is perfectly righteous, holy: (that is – a God who is altogether without sin), then how can they understand what sin really is?
You see, it’s a matter of comparison, a matter of values.
Non-believers don’t know what sin – is they don’t know the deadliness of sin – simply because they have no fixed point of comparison; they have no knowledge of sinlessness; they have no real knowledge of a sinless God. So they do not, cannot comprehend the nature of sin.
The Greek word for “sin” means to “miss the mark”, or to “fall short of the mark.”
You see: there’s a point of comparison” – that fixed point of comparison; that “mark”.
And what IS that “mark”? It is the holy law of God. But, you see, the non- believer does not know the full meaningfulness, does not realise all the implications and consequences of obeying or disobeying this law of God. So . . . the non-believer does not, cannot know much, if anything, about sin.
Oh yes, such a person may feel there’s something wrong in his own life, and also maybe in his relationships with his wife, his family, his friends. Something that makes him feel pretty miserable.
But he doesn’t see it as SIN which is ingrained into his life-style. He just shrugs off his worries, convinces himself (again) he’s all-right-mate, and hopefully looks forward to better things.
1. KNOWING OUR SIN:
You know the old saying, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.”
It’s much the same with our sin.
When we, as believers, come to know our sin for what it is in the face of God’s pure and holy law, of love, then in all probability it will rock us and knocks us off our high perch.
But that’s a whole lot better, isn’t it, than continuing in a state of ignorance about our sin, because when we come to know our own sin, we are on our way towards dealing with it…., more, we are on our way to life, real life, life everlasting with Jesus in the new heavens and the new earth. In the kingdom of God.
Now that’s great, isn’t it? That’s really something.
But – there always seems to be a “but” – but despite our best endeavours, we just don’t seem able to keep God’s law of love as well as He would like. Nor, for that matter, as well as we would like, either.
And all because of this ingrained sin, handed down by Adam from generation to generation, that makes us naturally inclined to HATE God and one another. And that’s bad, very bad.
= = = = =
It might be just as well for us at this stage to take a bit of time off to explain what all the foregoing material has to do with Lord’s Day 4.
We could put it this way: if we don’t have a fair idea of what goes on in Lord’s Days 2 and 3, then we’re left hanging high and dry as far as a proper understanding of Lord’s Day 4 is concerned.
Actually, this first part of the catechism can be pretty depressing, or it can be a real thriller, depending on which way you come at it.
It’s as though we’re standing in the dock, guilty as guilty can be, with two learned gentlemen (the authors of this catechism – one a professor and the other a preacher) firing their questions at us in rapid succession.
1. How do you know about your sin and misery?
(A): From God’s holy law.
2. What does God’s law require of you?
(A): To love God and my neighbour.
3. Can you do this for 100%? Be honest, please.
(A): No, I am inclined to hate God and my neighbour.
4. What is it that stops you from loving God and your neighbour for 100%?
(A): My own nature stops me from doing this.
5. Does this mean there was something wrong,
something deficient with God’s creation?
Did God create man bad in the first place?
(A): No; God created man good – in God’s own image,
in righteousness and holiness.
6. Then where does this depraved nature of man come from?
(A): From the disobedience of my original parents, Adam and Eve.
7. Are you so bad now that in yourself you can do nothing
that is of any good in God’s eyes?
(A): Yes unless I am regenerated by the Holy Spirit of God.
= = = = =
This brings us to the end of Lord’s Day 3.
Until the last question and answer, things seem to be quite hopeless for us, don’t they? By a lot of skilful questioning, we are driven right into a corner. . . into the darkest, dankest and furthermost corner of our prison cell.
And it isn’t as though we can blame God for our unhappy state. He made us good – very good. The crown of His creation in fact.
But. . . . we went bad, very bad. Like a load of bad fruit, rotten to the core. Full of love towards God and one another? With the promise of eternal life? Come off it, mate: full of hatred and murder, more like it.
Actually, the answer we give to the question at the end of Lord’s Day 3 – that we are so bad that in ourselves we can do nothing that is of any good in God’s eyes unless we are regenerated by the Holy Spirit of God – this answer is the – high point of the first part of the catechism. It transforms the whole situation. Notice! It is not we who change the situation… it is not we who regenerate ourselves by our own will-power, our own ingenuity etc. No, this is all God’s work. By His Spirit, He regenerates us. Not because we’ve earned enough good marks for our regeneration, or anything like that, but simply because God, in His grace and mercy, has got to work on us; has got to work in us, and has changed us from a state of utter hopelessness, from a state of sin and misery, to a state of righteousness, holiness, freedom and joy.
It’s pretty much as we read in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians: “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us. Our sufficiency is from God, who has qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant; not in a written code (i.e. the law of Moses), but in the Spirit. For the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
= = = = =
In the first part of the catechism, we have come to know our sin and the misery of it, the curse of it.
Now in Lord’s Day 4, we come to the point of…
2. KNOWING OUR GOD
(i) Does God wrong man by requiring what he cannot do?
Here, three questions are asked of us. The first one is this: “Doesn’t God wrong man by requiring him to do, what he cannot do?”
To this, we have to answer, “No. God does not wrong us in this way. He made man capable of doing what He requires in His holy law, but, through the temptings of the devil and his own wilful disobedience, man has deprived himself – and all his posterity – of these gifts.”
Here, we get back again to the beginnings of things. Here, we get back to our original ancestors, Adam and Eve.
They were created by God in such a way that they were capable either of obeying God’s will or disobeying God’s will . . . by doing what was right, or doing what was wrong.
As we all know, they did the wrong thing by listening to Satan, and that’s how all this sin and misery business started.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if it was just a matter of Adam doing the wrong thing. But it went a lot further than that.
You see, Adam didn’t stand alone. He was not a man in isolation. He was a man in fellowship with his creator God. And more than that: he was the head, he was the representative of the whole human race in the covenant of works that God made with him.
Now the promise of this covenant was the promise of life – life at its highest and best.
The condition of the covenant was that of absolute obedience to God, and Him alone; and the penalty for disobedience to God was death in the widest sense of the term – physical, spiritual and eternal death.
And this is the penalty we all incur, as sinful descendants of our covenant head, Adam. This is our legacy, this is the legacy of our children and our children’s children, until the end of time as we know it. Until the end of this world.
And there’s no relief for us, there’s no way out for us, unless and until God, in His grace and mercy, sees fit to renew and restore us to something like the man Adam before his fall into sin – by regenerating us, making us new, by the Holy Spirit. As we’ve seen already.
= = = = =
(ii) Will God allow man’s disobedience to go unpunished?
Well, the answer is pretty obvious, isn’t it?
“God is terribly displeased with our original sin as well as our actual sins, and will punish them by a just judgment temporally and eternally, as He himself has declared (Gal 3:10): “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them.”
So you see we find ourselves sinners twice over: because of our original sin which we have inherited from Adam, and which we cannot get rid of this side of paradise; and also because of our own personal sins which we wilfully commit, and which God has to deal with in accordance with His just judgment.
And really, what else would you expect of God to do in this sort of situation? Wink His eye at our misdemeanour? Pretend He doesn’t see what we’re up to? Sit back and do nothing?
If God were that kind of God. . . if God were to operate in that kind of way. . . then He would be acting against His own nature, just as He would also be acting in a very cruel and heartless way as far as we are concerned. As far as everyone is concerned.
Then, we would be like children who had been betrayed by our own over-indulgent, easy-come-easy-go parents who foolishly gave us everything we wanted, and never even tried to straighten us out when we went wrong.
And that is precisely the reason why so many people, especially today, don’t know what is right and what is wrong anymore.
For them, anything or everything can be right; anything or everything can be wrong. Depending on their own point of view.
But this is not the way God operates . . . thank God!
He has His own absolute values, He has His own absolute standards as they are to be found in His holy law, and it is by these absolutes that He judges all – great and small.
= = = = =
Still on this second question that is asked in L.D.4 about God’s justice: the catechism tells us how God hands out punishment for our sins in two ways: temporally (that is, during the time we are here in this world), and eternally in hell.
Punishment, chastisement, discipline – call it what you will: it has to be carried out by God.
Not because He likes doing this kind of thing – and so incurring the hatred and wrath of the humanists, sentimentalists, and such-like people – but because He has to do it – as God. For our own sakes, and also for the sake of His own justice, His own righteousness. This is what Lord’s Day 4 is all about: the administration of God’s justice.
In our day, such words as punishment, chastisement, discipline etc. have come to be regarded by many as vicious, if not obscene.
The prevailing view is that everyone should be free to do, say and think whatever he or she feels like doing, saying or thinking at that particular moment. Any time, any place. A kind of moral laissez-faire.
This way, it is suggested, you get rid of all your frustrations and inhibitions, even though the thing you feel like doing may be positively injurious to yourself, and to others.
But the fact still remains that, however we may regard such ideas as punishment chastisement, discipline etc., God makes no bones about putting them into practice wherever necessary.
It may hurt at the time. Invariably it does hurt at the time. Indeed, what would be the use of it, if it didn’t hurt at the time?
I still remember how a few good, swift strokes of the cane at school made me painfully aware of the inseparable connection between wrong-doing and justice.
I knew I fully deserved what I got. Maybe I deserved more than I got. But I saw the point.
And if more magistrates of today were to administer justice more and more in accordance with the nature of the offence committed, then it would be of great benefit to all — including the malefactor.
= = = = =
(iii) Is God not merciful as well as just?
The answer of the catechism to this third and final question in L.D.4 is “Yes, God is indeed merciful, but He is also just.”
As you can see for yourselves, there is more to the answer than that, but just let us consider this part first.
Suppose God were NOT a God of mercy: what then?
Then there would be no hope for us – literally no hope for us. Because then there would be nothing of the one thing needful to give us hope – that is God’s mercy!
Here we see something of the wisdom and the love of God; here we see the perfection of God’s nature.
The fact that He is merciful as well as being just.
Having one without the other would be disastrous for man.
Supposing, for example, that God was deficient in justice: then life would be hell indeed; then, it would be a case of every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.
And on the other hand: if God was lacking in mercy, then there would be no hope for us because we all sin, and continue to sin, against God day in and day out.
Happily for us, neither of these situations applies.
God is a God of mercy AND justice; a God of justice AND mercy.
And His justice demands that sin which is committed against Him should also be punished with an everlasting punishment of body and soul.
= = = = =
That’s how L.D.4 closes . . . with those who persist in their sins of omission and commission against God, being punished with an everlasting punishment of body and soul: that is, being committed to hell!
But wait a minute.
What about that question and answer at the end of L.D.3? Where we are told we are so corrupt that we are completely incapable of doing any good in ourselves, under our own steam, and in fact are inclined to do evil?
Remember the answer that comes through to us like a dazzling ray of light?
The answer is “Yes: we are so corrupt that we are completely incapable of doing any good in ourselves unless something happens.
Unless we are regenerated by the Spirit of God!
And there, precisely there, is God’s mercy! There is God’s love! Despite all our stupidity, our wilfulness and waywardness despite all our blindness and disobedience, and so on and so on:
God, in His mercy and love, comes to us in His grace, and so changes us that we become different people: we become new people.
Our sins are forgiven and forgotten – and we now have the capacity – and not only the capacity, but also the burning desire to submit our whole lives to Him, in complete trust and obedience.
So that, instead of being consigned to hell, as we deserved according to God’s justice, we now find ourselves being destined for heaven.
A complete about-turn (that is, a conversion of the whole man, the whole woman, boy, girl).
So that we are no longer turning our backs to God, but find ourselves turning our faces towards God.
It’s just as Peter says (1Pet.2:9,10): “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light. Once you were no people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
= = = = =
This is the grace of God: justice, tempered with mercy.
Be careful what you do with God’s mercy; don’t take it for granted.
If you do take it for granted . . . if you do think this ensures a place for you in the kingdom of God, regardless of the kind of life you live in this world, then….
God has to exercise justice.
And that means punishment.
Even unto hell, maybe….!