(Continued from part six)
We now get to part four of Bob Vincent’s paper on our compassionate God and the suffering of men.
God rejects sin, disease, death and hell
The God of mercy also rejects sin, disease, death and hell, and he demonstrates that in the Incarnation. In the face of Jesus of Nazareth, I see God.
I see that God is both one and three, fully transcendent, yet fully immanent, that the one “who works all things after the counsel of his own will” (Ephesians 1:11.) also rejects sin, disease, death and hell by becoming part of his own creation.
In Jesus of Nazareth, God, the second person of the blessed Trinity, without ceasing to be God, becomes a human being. He hungers and thirsts, weeps and wrestles with temptation and fear, becomes impotent against evil and limited in knowledge, experiences the guilt and pain of humanity—his lot, too, is the loneliness, alienation and abandonment that characterize human experience. The damning God becomes damned, in his human nature, and dies on the cross.
I do not understand this God, his eternal, immutable decree, nor his stooping to my weakness in love. I cannot comprehend how the same God who has elected people to eternal salvation for reasons known only to himself and not based on anything good or commendable in them, sincerely, earnestly and passionately invites all people to come to him and vests mere mortals, the Church, with the task of proclaiming this good news.
There are simply so many things that the Bible never tells me about God, and so I defer my questions about who he is and why he has done what he has done to another time, a time when I will see him as he is, and when I will fully know, even as I am fully known, but until then I walk by faith, not by sight. (1 John 3:2; 1 Corinthians 13:12; 2 Corinthians 5:7.)
After walking with him for over forty years, I have come to know the voice of the good Shepherd. (John 10:4, 5.) He has demonstrated his love in countless ways over the years in my experience. I have seen him physically heal people, sometimes in a moment of time. Our congregation is filled with people who have come to the Lord Jesus bound in the chains of adultery, drunkenness, homosexuality and violent, hateful bitterness, and they have been set free, their bitterness and bondage gone, their sanity restored. I have seen him heal marriages, set people free from demons and provide for human needs in all kinds of ways, sometimes with huge sums of money, seemingly out of the blue, at just the right time.
All of this demonstrates that God—whom I do not fully understand and whose ways sometimes trouble me—is a God of mercy, kindness, love and grace. His own character and disposition to the entire human family is mirrored in his command through Paul: “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.” (Galatians 6:10.) He commands this because, he “is the Savior of all men, and especially of those who believe.” (1 Timothy 4:10.)
God’s gracious act of redemption in Jesus Christ is both universal and particular—being sufficient for every sin ever committed and making possible the sincere and true offer of salvation to every human being, while at the same time actually procuring the salvation of all those whom the Father has given to the Son, a multitude so great that no one can count, from every nation, tribe, people and language. (1 John 2:2; 1 Timothy 2:3-6; John 3:16; John 10:11, 15-16, 26-30; Titus 3:4-7; Revelation 7:9.) The Sovereign Elector of Romans 9:10-24 extends his hands in mercy to people who are disobedient and obstinate in Romans 10:21. Based on the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘The Spirit and the bride (can now) say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.’ (Revelation 22:17.)
Those who spurn God’s gracious offer justly go to hell, for while salvation is based entirely on grace, damnation is based entirely on works. And while no one who is in heaven deserves to be there, everyone who is in hell deserves to be there. One blessed and dreadful day, even Satan himself and every man and woman will bow their knees and acknowledge that God is just in all his ways. (Isaiah 45:23-25; Romans 3:4ff.; 14:11; Philippians 2:10, 11.)
I find my bitterness and fear go and my sanity restored, when I, like the Psalmist (whose words I quoted earlier.) “do not concern myself with great matters or things too profound for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.” (Psalm 131:1, 2.) I don’t think that is partitioning my thinking, but it is a choosing not to think too deeply with my fallen, finite and fallible reason.
As I adore this God in worship, I find myself changed. I receive him in the proclamation and in the breaking of bread, and I praise him with my life and lips.
“Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
With joy shall I lift up my head.
“Bold shall I stand in Thy great day,
For who aught to my charge shall lay?
Fully absolved from these I am,
From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.”
Nicolaus L. von Zinzendorf
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