God Is Most Just
Minister: | Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: | 3/29/2015 AM |
Text: | Deuteronomy 4; Lord's Day 4 |
Psalters: | 6, 20, 201, 232 |
- In His demand.
- We humans want God to change His demand of perfect obedience.
- We must be careful: let us be more concerned about God’s rights being violated than whether man's rights are.
- God is just.
- First, because God’s requirement is what man originally could do.
- Second, because man’s inability to love God is because man does not want to, not because he is unable.
- Also, that God is just in His demand of obedience is seen in that He laid this same demand on the Mediator.
- God is just to punish all and every sin (we want God to allow our disobedience to go unpunished).
- By justly punishing all violations of His will God remains God.
- God punishes both in time and in eternity, justly fitting the punishment to the sin.
- God judges sin in time.
- Eternal judgment is for the reprobate a 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 God is most just in His mercy.
- Mercy is the expression of God's goodness and love to bless those who are inescapably miserable.
- God is merciful and just (not one more than the other)! These virtues never conflict but always harmonize (His simplicity).
- God’s mercy does not overlook sin, but deals with it, for God punishes the sin only in Another.