God Is Most Just
Minister: |
Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: |
9/1/2013 AM
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Text:
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Romans 2;
Lord's Day 4
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Psalters: |
282, 87, 389, 320 |
- In His demand.
- Man is quick to charge God with being unjust for demanding of man what he is incapable of doing.
- Initial cautions.
- This shows that we are more concerned whether man = s rights are violated than whether God = s are.
- If God would drop His requirement, then He would be saying that He is not worthy of our love; He would stop being God.
- Man?s inability to obey God (to love Him) is because man does not want to, not because he is unable.
- The deepest cause is not that we do not have the power to love God, but that we love ourselves more than God.
- Our inability arises from our willful disobedience in Adam.
- Note further that the justice of God?s demand of obedience is seen in that He laid this demand on the Mediator.
- God is just to punish all and every sin.
- Man wonders if God might allow our disobedience to go unpunished.
- God remains God by justly punishing all violations of His will.
- It would be it is an abomination to let sin go unpunished (Heb. 12:29; Deut. 4:24).
- God?s wrath is against every human?s original sin, i.e., the sin with which we are born (Psalm 51:5).
- And God is fiercely angry with each and all of our actual sins (of commission, omission, and corporate).
- God punishes both in time and in eternity, justly fitting the punishment to the sin.
- God = s judgments in time.
- Eternal judgment is the fire that shall not be quenched and the worm that never dies (Mark 9:44,46,48).
- That God is just to punish is seen in that He laid the punishment of our sin on His own dear Son.
- Thus we see that God is most just in His mercy.
- Mercy is the expression of God = s goodness and love to bless those who are inescapably miserable.
- We must not confuse mercy with leniency.
- Leniency indicates weakness, but mercy is strength.
- God is merciful and just (not one more than the other)!!
- God?s mercy does not simply overlook sin, but deals with it, for God punishes the sin only in Another.