January 27 – LD 4, Day 6: God’s Mercy and Justice
by Prof Herman Hanko
Read: Psalm 103.
In the classroom where we
are taught all that is necessary to know in order that we may have comfort, our
teacher also informs us that there will be objections brought against those
things which we must believe. Does God do injustice when he demands perfection
from us who are poor and totally depraved? Is not his punishment much too
severe when we do not do what he commands? And now, another objection: You talk
of God’s justice; but is not God also merciful? Are you not forgetting that
mercy?
The objector, maybe he
raises his hand in the classroom to argue with our teacher; maybe he hears what
we have been taught and does not like it very well – the objector thinks that
the mercy of God is so great that it swallows up God’s justice. God could
punish sin if he maintained the strict standards of justice; but the Scriptures
teach us that God is also merciful; and so we must emphasize, not a vindictive
God who makes men pay for every little sin, but rather we must think of a
benevolent God who is merciful to us poor sinners.
In other words, this
objector wants a God in whom, when his justice and his
mercy clash, puts his justice aside in the interests of being merciful. Or, if
we want to put it bluntly, God is a God in whom the attribute “justice” is not
important.
Our teacher quickly does
away with such nonsense. He says, as it were, “Of course, God is merciful! All
the Scriptures teach this. His mercy is from everlasting to everlasting and it
endures forever. But this does not mean that God is not just. He is just! And
to deny his justice is to deny a very important attribute of God. If he is not
just, then he is not God. We may not deny his justice, for if we do, we deny
him.”
But our teacher also
reminds us of what our sins are like: they are committed against the most high majesty of God. So terrible is this that even one little sin is enough to earn for us everlasting
hell. And just look at all the sins of which we are guilty.
We sin with body and
soul; that is, we sin with our bodies, but also with our minds, our wills and
our emotions. We are sinful in everything we do. And we deserve all the
punishment God gives us. That is, we deserve extreme punishment.
Let us then humble
ourselves before God and confess before his great majesty what worthless
sinners we really are.