Our Sinnership, God's Mercy

Quote of the Day

“Christians are in themselves no wiser than are other men. What they have, they have by grace. They must be ‘all things to all men.’ But it is not kindness to tell patients that need strong medicine that nothing serious is wrong with them. Christians are bound to tell men the truth about themselves; that is the only way of bringing them to recognize the mercy, the compassion, of Christ. For if men are told the truth about themselves, and if they are warned against the false remedies that establish men in their wickedness, then, by the power of the Spirit of God, they will flee to the Christ through whom alone they must be saved.”

– Cornelius Van Til

God is Merciful Not to Tell Us Everything

There is more mercy than we realize when God chooses not to tell us everything. When the disciples were with Jesus on the Mount of Olives just before his ascension to the Father, one of them asked a question that must have been on everyone’s mind: “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6).

It had been a long wait. 2,000 years had passed since Abraham had been promised a seed that would bless all the families of the earth. It had been 1,500 years since Moses foretold that a great prophet would arise to lead the people and 1,000 years had gone by since David had been promised an eternal heir to his throne.

Now, after Jesus's glorious, triumphal resurrection they finally understood why the King had to suffer and die before the kingdom could really come. Jesus was the sacrificial Lamb of God whose death would atone for all the sins of all his people for all time.

It all made glorious sense.

So the stage looked set. Having conquered death, this King was invincible. What threat was the Sanhedrin or Herod or Pilate or Caesar? Surely the time had come for the long-awaited King to assume his earthly reign, right?

Jesus’ answer: It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:7-8).

In other words, “Now is not the time. And you don’t need to know when it will be. But for now, I have work for you to do.”

Can you imagine how the disciples might have felt if the Lord had explained to them that he would not assume his earthly reign for another 2,000-plus years, during which the Church would gradually and with great struggle and sacrifice spread around the world? 2,000 years?

God is merciful not to tell us everything. He tells us enough to sustain us if we trust him. But often it does not feel like enough. We really think we would like to know more.

In her book, The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom recalls a time when, as a young girl, she was returning home on the train with her father after accompanying him to purchase parts for his watch-making business. She asked him to explain how children are conceived. Her father stood up and took out the suitcase he had brought along:

"Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?" he said. I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with the watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning. "It's too heavy," I said. "Yes," he said. "And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It's the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you."

God is also a wise Father who knows when knowledge is too heavy for us. He is not being deceptive when he does not give us the full explanation. He is carrying our burdens (1 Peter 5:7). If we think our burdens are heavy, we should see the ones he’s carrying. The burdens he gives to us to carry are light (Matthew 11:30).

God is very patient and merciful with us. Someday, when we are older and stronger, he will let us carry more of the burden of knowledge. But until then let us happily keep letting him carry our burdens.

Mercy

Mercy is God withholding the just punishment of sin from those who deserve it. While grace lavishes on; mercy puts off, or holds back. God’s mercy is propelled into motion by His love:

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us (Eph 2:4).

The love of God—His goodness in action—moves Him to not give us what we deserve. This mercy, not our goodness or works, is what leads to our regeneration, salvation, and justification:

“He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:5-7), and causes the new birth: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of JesusChrist from the dead” (1 Pet 1:3).

The Apostle Paul put himself forward as an illustration of one who was rescued from spiritual blindness and the tragic consequences of unbelief by the mercy of God and for the glory of God.

“And yet for this reason I found mercy, in order that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience, as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life” (1 Tim 1:16);

“…even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. And yet I was shown mercy, because I acted ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Tim 1:13).

The conversion of any sinner is sheer mercy.