God's Righteous Mercy
- A seeming contradiction.
- God’s justice is that virtue according to which He maintains Himself as the highest and only Good.
- God’s mercy is the absolutely blessed One blessing Himself and blessing His creatures who agree with Him.
- As the most Blessed One, God is the sole Fount of all blessing for all creatures.
- When mercy is given to creatures it implies that the recipients are in misery.
- It seems to us that God’s justice and His mercy must conflict with each other.
- But there is real harmony between the two. Cf. Ex. 34:7; Ps. 85:10,11.
- Both of these attributes are virtues of the one, simple God, and therefore they cannot conflict with each other.
- This is because God does not possess virtues, but He is them; He is His perfections.
- When man fell into sin, God did not lower His standard, but He maintained Himself as the “Most High Majesty.”
- The Catechism emphasizes that we see divine justice in order to understand how horrible sin is.
- The cross of Jesus Christ is both the absolute justice and the infinite mercy of God (Psalm 85:10).
- It is divine mercy that provides His own Son to bear the punishment to satisfy His justice for the sins of His children.
- The cross is where mercy and truth (justice) harmonize perfectly.
- Wonderful assurance: God’s mercy and justice harmonize at the cross.
- Elect believers must consciously live in the shadow of the cross.
- We should be constantly aware that salvation is only of the Lord’s mercy and we are nothing apart from Him.
- May this increase our hatred for all sin and wickedness, always beginning with mine.
- Implications.