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- Many present-day preachers hold forth misleading views of the character of God. They insist upon some aspects of the divine character, and quite ignore other aspects. It is equally wrong, however, to omit important truths as to enunciate positive errors. The objection, in fact, that may be raised against a vast number of preachers is based as much upon what they omit to say as what they actually say. The error of omission is more subtle than others, but is none the less dangerous.
(1) Many represent the Most High as full of love and compassion.
Many represent the Most High as full of love and compassion, supremely tolerant of the sins and frailties of His creatures, but lay little or no emphasis upon His holiness and righteousness. They affirm with much plausibility that “God is love,” and leave their hearers to conclude that the divine smile rests upon each one of them. What, however, is really implied in the words quoted? Do they mean that God loves sinners to the exclusion of all anger against them for their sins, or that, at the expense of righteousness, He will fail to punish impenitent transgressors? Verily not. This were to contradict the express statements of His own word. It is written, “God is angry with the wicked every day.”—(Ps. vii. 11.) The intimation is also gone forth that “the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”—(1 Thess. i. 7, 8.) To say that there is no righteous anger in God were also to deny the existence of hell. Many, we fear, are quite prepared to deny this, but if they do so, they must trample upon the plainest testimonies of Scripture, and the inward dictates of the natural conscience.
Further, they who ignore the divine righteousness also misunderstand the whole work of Christ. God sent His only begotten Son into the world as surely to vindicate the claims of His righteousness as to manifest the purposes of His love. The cross of Christ testifies to God’s inflexible justice as certainly as to His unspeakable grace. Christ suffered an accursed death that divine justice might be satisfied for His people’s sins. His whole life of humiliation was a testimony to that righteous wrath with which God regards sinful men. He could by no means clear guilty souls without pouring out the vials of His holy wrath upon them or their substitute. Some may imagine this view of the case to be incompatible with God’s love. So far from its being so, it is most evident that the vindication of His righteousness occasioned a more remarkable display of His love than was otherwise possible. If righteousness did not demand so great a satisfaction, love had not required to make so great a sacrifice. Righteousness asked from guilty men infinite sufferings as the penalty of sin. To this demand a full and overflowing satisfaction was given by the eternal Son of God in His obedience and sufferings unto death. The love of God, as expressed in the work of the Son, was here revealed in its transcendent glory. We hold, therefore, that those preachers who constantly descant upon the love and compassion of God without any adequate exhibition of His righteousness give an unworthy, impoverished, and therefore highly misleading view of the character of God.
(2) Many in the interests of the divine love either obscure or deny the divine sovereignty.
Many in the interests of the divine love either obscure or deny the divine sovereignty. They start with the fact that God is no respecter of persons, and draw from this the conclusion that there is no such thing as an absolute divine choice of men to salvation. This unwarrantable conclusion arises from a misunderstanding of the premises from which it is deduced. Certainly God has no respect of persons in that He esteems one person more highly than another on account of any natural qualities whatsoever. He Himself is the author of every good and perfect gift, and if we have anything that places us on a higher social or intellectual platform than others of our fellowmen, we have received it from God. He does not show us His gracious favour because we are rich, or learned or honourable. It is therefore because of no respect of persons on these or any other accounts that He chooses some to eternal life and passes by others. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” All equally deserve His righteous wrath in time and through eternity. The choice of God is not based upon anything in the creature, but solely springs from the good pleasure of His will. All the redeemed were “predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things according to the counsel of his own will.” (Eph. i. 11.) God is Creator and King of all the earth, and is therefore absolutely entitled to act according to His sovereign pleasure. And shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? The doctrine of divine sovereignty has little place in the preaching of our day. Man himself would be king and master. Sin made us rebels against the authority of God, and we are unwilling to acknowledge His just rights. One of the great tendencies of our time is to bring down the Creator to the level of the creature, and to exalt the creature to the place of the Creator. This appears very conspicuously in that kind of preaching that makes much of the will of man and little of the sovereign will of God. Again many think the universal misery of our race a sufficient reason why God should bestow His love upon all His creatures, and they conclude that He actually does love all alike. Much is therefore made in the popular preaching of our day of this view. But what is this misery? It is that penalty which divine justice has attached to sin. Absurd therefore is the idea that that misery which divine justice demands as a penalty can, at the same time, be a reason whereby on righteous grounds the exercise of the divine love may be expected on behalf of the sufferers of it. Misery may afford scope for love, but it cannot merit it. Sinners are therefore entirely in the hands of God. He is righteous in punishing the guilty, but if He sees a way consistent with the claims of righteousness whereby the guilty may be saved, He is free to adopt it. As to whether all or some of the guilty will be made partakers of this salvation lies with Himself. If He gives the blessing of salvation to some, He does so of pure grace, and if He withholds that blessing from others, He does not do them any injustice. The universal misery of our race is no sufficient reason why God should love all or any of us, no more than that He should love the fallen angels who are reserved in chains of darkness against the great day. Preachers imagine that such doctrines will keep sinners from Christ, they therefore obscure or deny them. But they are surely foolish who suppose that the truth, however unpalatable to the flesh, will keep any sinner from Christ. It is a step towards Christ for a sinner to believe the whole counsel of God, that counsel which Christ came both to fulfil and to proclaim. Be it ours, therefore, in spite of all the unworthy objections that man or devil can raise, to give God the glory due to His name as the sovereign King who doeth according to His will among the armies of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth, and to accept in humble submission the truth of the sacred oracle when it declares “Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”—(Rom. viii. 30.)
THESE are joined together in Zechariah xii. 10, a pouring out of the Spirit, and looking upon Him whom we have pierced, and mourning. The men of the world wonder what ails Christians to weep and mourn; but it is as comfortable to us to weep as to them to rejoice; it is sometimes as comfortable to us to mourn, as to them to laugh. We weep, because we cannot weep; and we mourn, because mourning is far from us. I’ll tell you news, sirs, it is a heartsome piece of enjoyment when it is attended, that every piece of wrong our Master gets lies nearer our hearts than all the wrongs that lie upon ourselves.—James Renwick.