I’ve been reading through R.C. Sproul’s The Holiness of God the past few weeks. Today, I got through a lot of it; I read about 80 pages or so today; and the book is filled with some pretty weighty stuff. The one chapter of this book that stuck out to me was the chapter on God’s Holy Justice. I was awe struck and I was filled with a sense of my own arrogance; my presumptuous nature was placed before me and I was ashamed.
You know those passages in the Old Testament that many people find difficult to swallow–those passages where God killed Aaron’s sons; where God ordains the slaughter of the Canaanites; where God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s this sort of action that we see God taking that makes us question whether the God we place our faith in is truly just; or if this deity revealed in the Old Testament is the same God that put Jesus Christ on the Cross for us.
I’m not going to lie, I’ve had those same feelings, and I’ve always struggled to reconcile those passages of God’s Holy Justice with God’s Holy Mercy expressed in the New Testament. However, Dr. Sproul pointed out the root of this problem is not found in God’s action and expression of His justice but in our presumption of grace and mercy, and in our misunderstanding of the gravity of sin.
Think about it: God has made it clear that sin is no simple issue and that the wages of sin is death. As Christians, it should not be surprising to us that even the slightest sin, the smallest deviation from God’s morally perfect standard, outrages Him and should be dealt with justly. This was the wage of the first sin; this was the wage of Adam’s sin. “Eat this and you will surely die,’ God said to Adam. Simply put: If you sin, you will die. This is not a far off death, but rather a death that should be immediate. However, thanks to God’s mercy and grace, He grants us time before we die to come to repentance. This is patience that God has with our sinfulness is an unimaginable expression of His grace. This is the way we always expect God to act because our God is a God of patience and mercy. But He is also a God of justice; and He is not merely a God of our human conception of Justice but rather of Holy Justice.
Now, this presumption of grace impacts how we view God’s justice greatly. Often times, it is received with shock; it is received with offense. The reason we are so shocked by this is because we are terribly arrogant. We feel we deserve the grace God gives to us. We are so conceited that even though each day we commit cosmic treason against the Almighty King of the Universe, we do not deserve punishment. This is like a murderer, who is fully aware that he has broken the law by murdering an innocent person, demanding to be pardoned because he doesn’t want to be punished his just punishment.
We are that murderer. I’ve had this realization before, but never in such a lucid way. We are a murder on trial; we are treasonous creatures guilty of eternal damnation…yet we demand pardon because God wants us to repent and come to Him. We utilize the time God gives us to repent to further refine our sinfulness; we abuse God’s patience to commit further treason against Him. I can hardly even fathom this. We are so wicked, we are so disgusting, we are so guilty; yet we demand grace. Just as God said to Israel “You are a stiff necked people.”
We are an arrogant and stiff necked people that need to learn their place before God. We need to recognize that He is God and that we are His creation. I wish that my post will impact you the same way this realization impacted me, and I pray that it will help you grow closer to God by recognizing our place before his Eternal throne.
Thoughts of a Wicked Sinner 