The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty … (Ex 6-7a)
O Lord, I have heard the report of you, and your work, O Lord do I fear … in wrath remember mercy. (Hab 3:2)
Lord, your judgment, your wrath, your mercy and your grace go together. Praise you, for though I do not fully understand, I know enough to worship and to be grateful.
I was teaching American Literature, and my class had just read Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a sermon he preached in 1741. In the sermon, Edwards relates rather vivid pictures of the judgment and wrath of God, and those pictures are what most people remember — a spider hanging by a thread over a fire, a bow and arrow pointed to our heart, a great flood being stopped by the hand of God. I asked my students what they saw in the sermon. Anger, judgment, hell … these were the first answers. I then asked them if they saw any mercy. They had to think, and then one person said, “Yes.”
“Where did you see the mercy?” I asked.
“The spider was not in the fire. The arrow had not been fired. The hand of God was the only thing between the flood and us.” That was the gist of his answer.
“Yes,” I said and then pointed out a statement Edwards makes toward the end of his sermon. He says, “And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open, and stands in calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners …” He goes on and speaks of the love Christ has for us and how He has washed us from our sins in his own blood.
I then asked my students how Edwards can put the judgment of God and the mercy of God together. “Which is it?” I asked. “Does God judge or show mercy? How can He do both?” The class was silent. I then said, “Could you say that judgment is a prerequisite for mercy?” I saw the wheels turning inside their heads. They had never thought thoughts like this before. Finally two people spoke up simultaneously. One said “yes,” the other “no.” So I told them this parable.
A man robbed a bank. The police arrested him and charged him with robbing the bank, so the man had to go on trial. The jury found him guilty, and he then stood before the judge. A second man in another city did not rob a bank, but he was on the scene of a bank robbery at the time the robber fled, and the police mistakenly arrested him. They charged him with robbing the bank, and he went on trial where the jury found him innocent. He then stood before the judge. In the case of the second man, the judge said, “You are free to go.” In the case of the first man, the normal sentence was up to twenty years, but the judge said, “Well, these circumstances and those … four years.”
So I asked my students, “Which man received mercy?”
“The one who robbed the bank,” they said.
“Why?” I asked. “He got four years, but the other man got nothing.”
“But he was supposed to get more,” they said.
In other words, the presence of judgment gives meaning to mercy. You cannot forgive someone who has done nothing wrong. You can’t lighten a sentence that is already at zero. The mercy of God implies a real and just judgment. Mercy and judgment are woven together. To separate them makes no sense. Edwards understood this, for while judgment and wrath are central to his sermon, so are mercy and grace.
And this is how the Bible talks about God. Jesus spoke about hell more than any other person, yet it is Jesus who willingly gives His life to bring us forgiveness. Judgment and mercy kiss.
We must understand that when we remove the judgment of God, we remove His mercy. God does not owe us mercy. If he owes us anything, it is judgment, for that is what we have earned. When mercy is an obligation, it ceases to be mercy. God shows us mercy because He wants to. It is a free and gracious expression of His love. We do not have it coming to us, and it is most certainly not a duty.
We must, thus, be careful in our attitude. God’s people cannot imperiously demand mercy, as if God were a store clerk dispensing it and somehow owed them good customer service. Rather we must acknowledge our bankruptcy before God. We must understand that, if the truth be told, hell is what we deserve. The difference in these two approaches to mercy is no light thing. One group knows it has no claim on God’s mercy; the other sees mercy as a right. One group approaches God with a broken heart; the other with a presumptuous heart. One group lets God judge them; the other judges God and thinks He is not such a grand chap unless He conforms to their view of Him. Both groups talk of God’s mercy, but their hearts are as different as heaven and hell. I oversimplify to illustrate, but unless our hearts are like the broken group, we do not know God’s mercy.
