THE HOLINESS OF GOD AND THE GOSPEL

I have come increasingly under the conviction that I have been deceived as to a right understanding of God.

The first few weeks of summer have been an enormous blessing to me. Over the past three years I have spent time struggling with teacher certification requirements (long hours early in the morning and late at night completing course work), raising a son with special needs, taking care of the needs of a baby, helping a wife who has a chronic illness, and nursing a stomach ailment. This summer God has blessed and refreshed me with a life of great contrast. We spent the first few weeks in Louisiana where we attended Grace Presbyterian Church, a wonderful PCA church just south of the Shreveport airport. The beauty of this fellowship was their emphasis on the gospel in all parts of the service, especially in the sermon. (I’ve included a link to the church where a glorious John Piper video may be viewed through Youtube, declaring the gospel in a fresh and yet well-known way). This church included as part of their worship of God weekly communion and the singing of the Psalter. At the time, I was reading through Jeremiah. I was reminded of God’s destruction of Jerusalem, the holy city, despite His constant warnings to the people to repent, which admonitions they ignored. There were plenty of warnings to the people and yet they turned their backs to the Lord and ignored His holiness and their call to it. This last point is what I would like to bring to our attention to.

Do we consider the holiness of God in our daily lives, or is this some doctrine that we learned from afar, and presently gloss over. I’m reminded that the First Great Awakening in this country in the mid 1700’s sprung from a Jonathan Edwards sermon, Sinners in the Hand of An Angry God. In our society and culture, we spurn the suggestion that “God is angry with the wicked”, that He punishes sin and sinners, that God is just or that He has wrath. We hear of a God of love who forgives. Even in Evangelical circles, the gospel is presented to the lost with “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” (as if we, and He, were selling something) and to the one who has confessed Christ with God loves you and will bless you (as if we could live our lives any way we wanted). We truly are a Biblically illiterate people (forget being called a Biblically illiterate nation).

Why would God be angry at nice, moral, American, traditional people who want to spread democracy anyway? Let’s look at God’s character first. Do we not understand that He is infinitely just, that recompense is required for all and every sin? Do we not comprehend that He is perfectly pure and holy in every way and despises that which has even the slightest degradation because it assaults His character? All is His since He made it, and He has authority over it. On the other hand, though beautiful and glorious in our original state, we have rebelled and have become traitors like Benedict Arnold, or worse, Judas Iscariot. We have committed treason against His Majesty. We have taken what He has entrusted to us (ourselves and all that we have) and polluted it, corrupted it, like maggots in a corpse. What an offense our actions, our words, our thoughts, even the deepest dreams of our hearts are to Him. Even our “good” thoughts are fraught with impure and sinful motives. This, my friends is called the Bad News. There is no Good News unless we can first acknowledge the Bad. But what glorious news is that which is “good”, for God in His holiness and mercy has sent His Son to be the propitiation (the payment in our stead) for our offenses against the High Throne of Heaven. Through the gospel He suffers our infamy (corporately, the church, each and every one of us) to the fullest degree and drinks the dregs of the wrath of His loving and merciful, and yet holy Father). This is indeed the Gospel, the Good News. We don’t have nice news, or interesting news, but the Gospel.

Now for the main point of consideration, why would God be angry with nice, moral, American, traditional Christians who want to spread democracy? Though we are hidden in Christ, in the Beloved, and are fully accepted in Him, though we have been given the robe of His righteousness and are fully reconciled to Him through His Son, have we cast off His holiness? Is He no longer holy? Does He no longer have wrath or become angry just because we have accepted His Son and are His people? Have we not considered the history of the Old Testament, which is a record of God dealing with His People, or the history of the New, where, in the Book of Acts, He judges Ananias and Sapphira, professors of Christ? Should we not also consider the first few chapters of Revelation where He threatens to remove entire churches for their continuing disobedience? Are we so naïve to think that God is only angry with those outside His covenant since we are no longer “vessels of wrath fit for destruction”? Has God ceased to be angry with the Christian Church? Though I would agree that we are no longer “children of wrath, like the rest of mankind”, I would still warn that God’s anger can stir against His people, if we insist in our ways and continue in our obstinance and stubbornness of heart.

Brothers and Sisters, we must consider the deceitfulness of our hearts as Jeremiah pleads with us. We must recall with Paul that we are “chief among sinners” and “wretched men”. We must take heed to the admonition of Hebrews to not “harden our hearts”. Do we not consider that our hearts so easily wax cold, that they often avoid the preaching of Scripture like those in Isaiah, that “our righteousness is like filthy rags (a menstrual cloth)”? Though we have been given a new heart, we must still deal with a putrefying sinful nature that is decaying. Paul says, “The outward man is perishing while the inner man is renewed day by day”. We like the latter part but pass over the former. We are decaying! May we not be deceived into thinking that we can live for ourselves, like the rest of humanity any longer just because we are His. “What is in your mind shall never happen--the thought, Let us be like the nations, like the tribes of the countries, and worship wood and stone.”


Again, Brethren, what must we do? What should be our response, but to run to the gospel! Run into the arms of Jesus, His grace and mercy as a Christian. The gospel is not just for those who do not know Christ but for us, especially us who know our sinfulness and yet know His deep abiding love and peace, His joy and kindness, as well. Let us run to Him. Let us not try to fulfill the call to live for Him in our own filthy strength but let us flee to the cross, rather flee to the One who hung on the cross, Who is no longer there, nor in the grave, but resurrected and seated on the right hand of Majesty, whose coronation has arrived, who rules and reigns and has authority over all flesh!!!