I shared in the last post how Christians have argued for ages as to whether man is saved by grace through faith, or whether he is saved by works. I suggested that this may be a false dichotomy, that there may be a way to put both faith and works into a position of primacy, even if that initially sounds like a contradiction. Thus, I am not here to diminish the importance of either, but rather to fully embrace both. So let us begin by reflecting on scriptures that express the preeminent quality of each. Today we focus on the ones that emphasize grace and faith.
Grace and Faith)
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast, (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law, (Romans 3:28).
And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work, (Romans 11:6).
Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified, (Galatians 2:16).
Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; (Titus 3:5).
My Own Reclamation)
The message of these verses is clear: salvation comes by grace, through faith. And to these ancient words let me also add my own testimony. I have shared before how I walked a dark path of addiction, how I eventually turned my life over to Christ, and how he reclaimed my soul immediately, long before I had done anything to deserve it, and since that time I have known that I am truly saved by grace. The only action that I really did was to put my faith in him. I didn’t earn redemption, I didn’t fill a quota before he accepted me, I just trusted him, and he saved me because he wanted to.
Having had this personal experience, I would not accept any theology that denied this reality. Salvation comes by grace to those that exercise faith. This is a fact. And now, still keeping that in mind, we will dedicate tomorrow to seeing how it is also true that salvation comes through our works.
I mentioned in my last post that those who excuse sinful behavior by saying Jesus loves us, and always will, do have some truth to their claims, but also some falsehood. Let us first consider what is true.
It is, in fact, true, that Jesus loves us virtually unconditionally. There is the special case of the Sons of Perdition and denying the Holy Ghost, but I believe the vast majority of us do not even qualify for these categories. Pretty much all of us have never done anything that puts outside the reach of Jesus. Though we may have been unquestionably selfish, may have hurt other people and ourselves, may have given ourselves to all manner of lusts, yet the love of Jesus remains firm, and he offers grace to us all.
This is an incredible promise. Indeed, it is so incredible, that I think it is hard to really take it seriously. Such unconditional, patient, persistent love is so strange and unfamiliar when compared to our usual earthly relationships. I know that for myself, I truly had no real grasp on this sort of love for most of my life. I had to see echoes of it in some very special people to really comprehend it at all.
This truth of the gospel cannot be understated, and insofar as a disciple of Jesus truly has a conviction of this, they are in the right. But now let us consider where one can take this truth and go astray.
Half of a Bridge)
Yes, Jesus’s love for us is unconditional, and he offers salvation to us all, but that doesn’t mean we are guaranteed to end up on the right hand of God. Jesus’s love and mercy is an essential component of salvation, but it is not the only essential component. It is only half of the bridge between us and God, useless without the other half.
Jesus, himself, made this very clear with his own words: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven,” (Matthew 7:21).
Those who say “Lord, Lord,” but are denied the kingdom of heaven will surely be people who were loved by Jesus, who had their sins paid for by Jesus, who had the offer of salvation extended to them by Jesus…but none of that is the same as actually being saved.
In the following posts, we will explore more of what is required of us to connect our half of the bridge to Christ’s, but I hope it is already clear that while Christ’s love for us is unconditional, our place by his side is not. Jesus has freely given all of us a path, but we still have to walk it!
10 And he said, Behold, I make a covenant: before all thy people I will do marvels, such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation: and all the people among which thou art shall see the work of the Lord: for it is a terrible thing that I will do with thee.
Notice how God makes no reference to Israel’s sin or broken promises. He is establishing His covenant as if it is totally fresh, being extended for the first time, with no baggage from previous failures.
Such is the magnanimity of the Lord’s mercy. Because of the atonement of Jesus Christ, transgressions are not merely swept under the rug, they fully die with him, and every new beginning is as pure and perfect as the first. Because Israel sought a way to make restitution, the Lord has already forgiven them, and they are being offered the exact same covenant as before.
The word that the Lord uses towards the end to describe the work that He will accomplish with Israel is translated here as “terrible.” The original word is יָרֵא, which is often used to describe fear, but more broadly can also mean to cause reverence or awe. It suggests something so great that it overpowers the beholder. In the next verses God will specifically mention the driving out of the heathen nations in Canaan, so the application of this word makes sense.
4 And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone.
5 And the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord.
6 And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,
7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.
Moses brings two new tables into Mount Sinai as instructed. The Lord passes before him, and while we do not hear about Moses being covered in the cleft of the rock by the hand of the Lord, presumably that transpires as described in the previous chapter.
It seems particularly appropriate that the Lord’s introduction, beginning in verse 6, particularly focuses on His patterns of justice and mercy, given that those are the qualities being weighed in His meeting with Moses today. Moses and the Lord are here to sanctify their agreement for Israel to be restored to God’s good graces, to be transferred from God’s justice to His mercy.
Verse 7 might initially sound contradictory to some. Is God merciful or does He dole out punishment? Will He forgive iniquity or refuse to clear the guilty? But I believe that is the whole point of this passage, to highlight that God does both. He is perfect justice, and He is perfect mercy. But isn’t that impossible? Aren’t those two mutually exclusive, at least in regard to any individual infraction? To man, perhaps so, but not to God.
These may sound like strange riddles, assertions with no basis, but the delight of the gospel is to take seeming paradoxes like these and beautifully resolve them. This particular riddle finds its answer in the person Jesus Christ.
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. -Isaiah 53:5-6
Does God dole out justice for transgression or provide undeserved mercy. Both. The justice is met in Christ, and the mercy comes through Christ to all of us. The two natures of God’s judgment described in today’s verses are entirely accurate.
God is all good, but does that make Him all-merciful or all-just? He must be both, or else He would only be half-good. It should therefore come as no surprise that we see examples of both forgiveness and retribution in the Bible. Sometimes God shows mercy, perfectly. Sometimes He demands justice, perfectly.
When we stand before God’s throne in the next life, and He assigns us a judgment either to our damnation or exaltation, it will be a judgment that is perfect. In that day we will know that His decision is right, and we will not have any basis to say that He was too lenient or too strict.
There are even cases in the Bible where God showed an openness to both justice and mercy, as they were each apparently an appropriate outcome for the situation. Thus, we have the extending of Hezekiah’s life, the sparing of the Israelites after they made the golden calf, and the redemption of Nineveh. God was apparently inclined to have things go another way, but in His all-goodness could allow for a different path. Probably many of us are in that same middle area, where both God’s mercy and His justice could rightfully claim us. It is to our advantage to use this time to our advantage, to try and secure the side of God’s goodness that we desire.
11 And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand?
12 Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.
13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever.
14 And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.
God had presented legitimate reasons for obliterating the people, now Moses presents legitimate reasons not to. He mentions the mockery that the Egyptians will make if Israel won its freedom in such spectacular fashion, only to be destroyed immediately after.
Moses also mentions the Lord’s promise to the patriarchs that He would raise a mighty people that would inherit the land of Canaan. As mentioned yesterday, God could still do that through Moses, but that would mean delaying the realization of the promise for many more years.
Moses had the opportunity to let God blot out trouble at its root, but instead sought to let it live instead, so that it could be wrestled with and redeemed. He chose the path of upward struggle, which is the story of our entire world. It was the story of Adam after the fall. Bread and children were both made possible, but only by sweat of brow and pain of childbirth. It is the story of Jesus after his condescension. He could defeat death and hell, but only by lowering himself into their jaws. So, too, Israel had just experienced its own collapse, but Moses elected to stay and fight even so. All of us are wicked and go astray, but we are spared because someone better agrees to take on our burden and fight for us.
Perhaps God really would have destroyed all of the Israelites. Perhaps He was giving Moses a chance to rewrite the narrative going forward. It does occur to me, however, that if Moses was going to be the champion for these people that the Lord needed to let him make that decision for himself. Suggesting the path of destruction might have been a clever way to get Moses to throw himself entirely into the cause of mercy instead. When God first called Moses to help these people Moses had hesitated, but now Moses was willing to do it entirely uncompelled.
Some time ago I did a study on the qualities of Justice and Mercy. One key takeaway was how justice is both a law for punishment and reward. If we harm another who doesn’t deserve it, justice demands that now we be harmed. Conversely, if we do good to another who doesn’t deserve it, justice demands that now we receive good, too. Justice can be either the vehicle for our damnation or our ascension, depending on which way we choose to engage with it.
Recently, I thought some more about this dual nature of justice, and I wanted to point out two more observations that I had.
Two Teachings of Justice)
I’ve realized that the complete picture of justice is only seen by combining two Biblical laws that were given by two different men at two very different times. The first treatise on justice comes from Moses, when he famously pronounced “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” This mandate was given while describing the rules for punishment that would befall those who broke Hebrew law and wronged their neighbor. It was, therefore, a representation of only the negative half of justice. To this day, no one uses the term “an eye for an eye” to mean paying a good deed forward, only for retaliation against the wrong that has been done by another.
The second treatise on justice was given over multiple discourses by Christ. His famous injunction to “do unto others what you would have them do to you” is, at its core, a call for justice. “Doing unto others” is giving the just reaction to a yet unreceived action.
Jesus also invoked the image of justice when he stated, “with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.” That is you being recompensed equally for how you treat another, which is another way of saying ‘justice.’ Undeserved kindness that you show to others must be returned by undeserved kindness from God because the scales of justice require it.
Moses gave the half of justice that condemned the guilty, but Christ gave the half that exonerated the innocent. Christ did not contradict the law of justice given by Moses, he completed it, and both halves have been in full force forever after.
Judicial Justice and Personal Justice)
It also stood out to me that Moses’s half of justice, that of punishment and redress, is the correct form of justice for a people. The chief purpose of a judicial system is to provide protection for the innocent, and to right those that have been wronged. In the western world our sense of national justice still mirrors that of Moses’s. Our court systems are in essence an eye-for-an-eye, intended to allow the victim to be restored to whole by taking from the perpetrator.
Meanwhile, Christ’s half of justice, that of forgiveness and reward, is the correct form of justice for the individual. We do not compel a person in our laws to forgive another who has wronged them, or to turn the other cheek, but we do applaud them when they choose for themselves to take that higher road.
And this is how it should be. There should be a default protection for the weak and innocent, and there should also be an option for the individual to waive the offense if they so choose. We are properly incensed at a judge who decides to withhold justice, while we are properly in awe of those who, without compulsion, show their offender mercy.
One law, two halves, each aligned with the righteous and blessed order of God.
Jesus showed mercy to the adulterous woman, but he also gave punishment to moneychangers at the temple when he drove them out with a whip.
Jesus besought forgiveness for the very men that carried out his execution, yet he also assured the pharisees that they would not be able to “escape the damnation of hell.”
Jesus besought his followers to turn the other cheek, but he also commanded the nation of Israel to destroy their enemies in the land of Canaan.
In short, at times Christ called for mercy, forgiveness, and patience with sinners and oppressors, while at other times he called for the punishment and condemnation.
The purpose of this study is to understand when we are to be the Lord’s balm and when to be His sword? When are we to be patient and longsuffering, and when are we to stand with boldness against evil? When are we to be a vessel of mercy, and when of justice?
In my following posts I will seek to answer these questions by looking at several examples in the scriptures, particularly of Christ, that speak to both sides. It is not my intention to argue for one side over another, but only to understand how to do what is right, serving God in either fashion according to His will and dictates.
I have already reviewed the account of the Lord’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in my standard scripture study, but the story has been on my mind lately and I wanted to address a few points about it in greater detail. All the verses I will be discussing can be found in Genesis 18-19.
God’s “Haggle”)
What first prompted my thoughts on this story was hearing a celebrity give it as evidence of God’s capriciousness, an example of Him being so petty and heartless that He would bargain and haggle over the lives of His children before destroying them. This is, of course, in reference to Abraham petitioning the Lord if He would spare the city for fifty souls, then forty-five, then forty, etc.
And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?
Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?
So, let me first point out that these accusations are obvious falsehoods, completely misrepresenting the story as it is written. God did not haggle or bargain over how many people it would take for Him to spare the city and He never changed His position on the matter. Abraham’s position changed, but not God’s.
The first thing to note is that God never brought numbers into the matter. He simply expressed His judgment, which was to destroy the city, no numbers attached whatsoever, and it was only Abraham who brought up the idea of sparing the city if a particular number of righteous people lived there.
Abraham wanted to know whether God would have spared the city for 50 righteous, and God assures that He would have… but there just aren’t 50. Abraham wanted to know if God would have spared the city for 45 righteous, and once again God indeed would have… but there just aren’t 45. And so on and so on, until Abraham reaches his own personal limit for mercy: 10 righteous souls to spare the city.
That Abraham presses the matter no further than 10 seems to suggest that he, himself, could not condone sparing the city for any less righteous than that. Even he felt it was justified to lose nine or eight righteous, if it meant that such a terrible evil could be blotted from the earth. And, once again, God shows that His mercy extends as far as Abraham could ever hope for. God, too, would have spared the city for 10 righteous…but there just aren’t 10.
When I read the account in Genesis 18, it is not about God and Abraham haggling, it is about Abraham not yet fully trusting God, and him exploring the limits of God’s mercy until he is convinced that God’s judgment is worthy of his trust. God had pronounced judgment, but Abraham wasn’t able to trust that judgment until he was convinced that God came to that determination by due prudence and fairness, and God indulged Abraham’s tests because He wanted to earn Abraham’s trust.
Thus, there is no haggling going on in this story and no changing of God’s mind. God was simply allowing Abraham to double-check His calculations so that Abraham could begin to learn to trust the Lord’s decisions.
God’s Mercy
And, as it turns out, not only was God as prudent and merciful towards Sodom and Gomorrah as Abraham, He was even more so. For after there were not even 10 righteous in the city Abraham would have surrendered any good souls to their destruction, but God would not. God shows us in this story that He cares for even the individual righteous soul, the 1 over the 99. Thus, while He was determined to destroy the city, first He sendt two angels to draw Lot and his family out of the midst of it.
In the records we have, Abraham never beseeched the Lord for the life of his nephew, Lot, even though he knew that Lot lived in the path of destruction. Abraham seems to have been ready to let his own kin die as a justified sacrifice for this destruction of evil. It was only because God was more good than Abraham that Lot and his family were spared.
A Lesson for Abraham)
Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice the righteous for the greater good returns again later in his story. When God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, we do not see a moment of hesitation in Abraham’s response. He forthrightly makes preparation, goes to the place of sacrifice, binds his son, and raises the knife to take the lad’s life. Abraham knew that his son was good, but as with Sodom and Gomorrah, he was willing to sacrifice that good to fulfill the demands of the Lord. But then, as with Sodom and Gomorrah, God intervened to save the good and provide another way.
I wonder whether Abraham being commanded to sacrifice Isaac was, in part, a way for God to teach Abraham a lesson that He had tried to teach with Sodom and Gomorrah, but which hadn’t fully clicked yet. I wonder whether Abraham was too quick to believe in the God that would sacrifice good to destroy evil. I wonder if God temporarily assumed that role when He commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, so that He could then dispel that illusion from Abraham once-and-for-all. I wonder if one of God’s lessons to Abraham in that moment was “Stop seeing me as the God of sacrifice, the God of taking, the God of destroying evil. See me as the God of saving, the God that brings back, the God of redemption!”
This is, of course, pure speculation. I don’t claim to know that this was the subtext to Abraham’s trial, or even if it’s likely. It is simply something that I wonder about. At the very least, it does stand out to me that we have no account of Abraham pleading for Lot’s life nor Isaac’s, and yet God saved them both. Whatever else those facts mean, surely they mean that these stories show God’s mercy, not wrath. They show His care, not indifference. They show His compassion, not brutishness. They show that God is a God who can be trusted when He declares His judgment because He has already analyzed the situation more than we ever could, and He cares for the innocent more than we ever would.
Spiritual Wanderings 