God must always be just; He is not obligated to always be merciful | Clip from Divine Retribution

I was just thinking again how important it is to have established in your thinking who God is and the character of this King. How can you agree with that if you don't think that God is what the Bible says He is?

If you don't understand what it is to be holy, what it is to hate sin. I mean, not that we grab it completely, but if you have no context for really reckoning with that, how do you agree with what you just said?

The Holiness of God and the Reality of Divine Judgment

Yeah, and Edward says that at the end of his first argument there. He says that there is no way to deny the airtight logic of this and the rightness of an everlasting judgment of the sinner. Unless you can argue that God does not have infinite worth.

And, you know, because we are blind to the greatness of God, and we all are born thinking that we are God-like, you know, we're the center of the universe. In a sense, we cannot prove that to a person.

God has to open their eyes to that. But we can say when you stand before Him on that day, which Revelation describes as a day where we are called before that throne of judgment, and all creation flees the face of the Lord Jesus on the throne of judgment at that moment, not on the throne of mercy, and you are called before Him.

Can you imagine the terror of the first moment of awareness that He is infinite? Like He is all He said He was, and therefore, suddenly, your measure of every one of your sins is put in front of your eyes in the right size, you know.

And you realize the only right thing He can say to me is, depart from me forever. So, it's quite, you know, in the application, He's going to say, there is a madness to ignoring these kind warnings. Well, the second thing He says under the rightness of an everlasting judgment is that it's not against God's mercy.

Mercy Is Not Sentimentality

One of the problems that we have with considering God's mercy is that we often try to equate it with our mercy, our view of mercy. And oftentimes, our view of mercy is really a sentimental kind of mercy.

And so, we might see someone suffering what is justice, but feel like it's enough and start crying, you know, mercy, that's enough, it's enough, when justice really hasn't fully been completed. Or a sentimentality that overrides logic.

So, you look at a situation, and logically, you know, this is what needs to be done. But sentimentality, emotion grabs you, and you override logic, and you let something slide that you know you shouldn't let slide.

And I think, oftentimes, we think God is that way. And that, so, He intends to be just, but sentimentality will override justice at some point. And emotion will get the best of Him. Pity for us. But God's pity is not a sentimental pity.

His mercy is not a sentimental mercy. He's determined to show mercy, but on some very strict basis, and not just arbitrarily.

Justice, Mercy, and the Judge Who Shows Favor

Yeah, and, you know, we just tend to approach it all very egocentric, you know. Like, well, but when God sees me on the Day of Judgment, He will somehow find it in His heart just to ignore justice, in that instance.

And He will be overrun with, you know, pity for me, and so He'll give me mercy instead. You know, somehow it's going to work out, because I think God is so loving, He, you know, He couldn't find it in His heart to punish me eternally.

But, again, let's think of, let's go ahead and think of an earthly situation. If it was your child, in our illustration, if it was your child that was hit by a drunk driver, and the judge listens to the facts, and he says to the drunk driver, you deserve, let's say, 10 years in jail for this, whatever the penalty would be for manslaughter.

And the judge looks at him and says, but, you know, just a few minutes ago, I had a kid in here that stole an apple, and I showed mercy to him. So, really, I feel like, I don't know, I feel like I should, I owe mercy to everybody.

I showed mercy to him, so I'm going to have to show mercy to you. So, you're off the hook. You know, the family that, whose child had been killed would rise up and say, I don't understand this, you know, ruling.

Justice is required. Why are you saying, because you showed pity in one case, you have to show pity in every case? One thing we don't understand about mercy is we kind of combine mercy and justice in the wrong way.

Mercy is the refusal to give the negative consequences that we deserve, but that is a free gift. When we think about the justice and the mercy of God in His character, they're both there, essentially.

But when we think about the exercise of those things, the nature of justice is such that God must always be just, or else He would not be God. So, He must always express justice, but He does not always have to express mercy, because mercy is the kind of thing that is freely given.

So, God can be perfect and not give a free gift. You know, He gives you what you deserve, what you've earned. If He doesn't give you something above and beyond that, it does not impugn His character. When we say that, we talk about grace and mercy as being free, not that it doesn't cost anything, but that it is unobligated.

It is free. God is free. His hand is not bound. He is not obligated to give mercy to anybody. If He gives mercy to anybody, it is a pure gift. But also, we need to understand that mercy and justice in God, they always go hand in hand.

That is, mercy is always accompanied with justice. So, the only way for God to look at us and say, you, you will not be charged with that crime, is for God to look at our representative, Jesus of Nazareth, whom He has provided, and to say to His Son, that sinner will not be charged with this crime because I have charged my Son with this crime.

So, justice has come and been satisfied. And then, mercy can reach us. So, we can think of it this way. Mercy crosses a road paved with justice through Jesus Christ's life and death in order to reach any one of us.

So, understanding the nature of mercy helps us to understand that an infinitely, perfectly, morally pure and loving God is still the same God that has designed the punishment for an infinite sin to be an infinite misery.

Thank you for watching the clip. We hope that it was helpful for you. If you want to hear the full audio of that podcast, you can find it on any of your favorite podcast apps.