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Fathers, if it were your
children,
looking at
a forever in the dark,
who couldn't help themselves,
And if it was only you who
could
make sure they
had a chance to
dance in eternity's longest light,
Who would blame you for
pulling
out all the
stops every step along
mercy's mad march¹ to Golgotha?
The days of Christ's cursed
tree,
and His dark
and emptied tomb,
appointments that just had to be;
Incredible favor to save
His own,
creative license
to let live or die,
the full price of sin must be paid.
In the end stands hope for
us all,
hope for a
life beyond all our sin,
in the arms of our eternal Abba.
Ezekiel 6:8-10
Romans 3:26
¹Many have sought to explain
or even
justify God's violence in
the Old Test-
ament. It has always been
a stretch to
show how the anger of a
judging God is
not inconsistent with the
love of a
merciful and just God in
the form of
Jesus the Christ.
God is love, first and foremost.
You
must start there. He is
good. He is
the definition of both love
and good.
But He is also holy, and
cannot do or
condone sin. Could the explanation
be
that He is our Creator and
can do what
He wants? Could it be we
must simply
trust that God has His divine
reasons,
and we are just not going
to understand
why this side of eternity?
Could it be like when the
rules are set
down by the school principal,
and are
not for him or his staff,
but only for
the students? Or could it
be an incred-
ible mercy, a degree or
level of mercy
that on the face seems harsh
and aggres-
sive, but is in truth a
huge nearly in-
describable gift from God.
Biblical mercy is first and
foremost a
gift of love, a gift of
goodness, a
gift of forgiveness, a withholding
of
a punishment well deserved.
It is a
grand act of leniency offered
in the
complete absence of hope.
The act of
mercy gives rise to the
possibility of
a hope that was otherwise
non-existent.
God's incredible mercy is
a loving and
good mix of giving and taking
life...
a benefit to those to which
it is of-
fered, and a great glory
to the Offer-
er of Impossible Hope.
God's incredible mercy, while
beyond
what we can see or understand,
is never
arbitrary or capricious.
There is al-
ways a godly good goal in
mind. What
if we looked at all God's
actions in
the Bible through the lens
of a father
trying to do what's best
for his kids?
Wouldn't you do whatever
it took to
make sure your kids were
safe, had a
chance to succeed, and live
to be the
loves of your grandfatherly
life?
God does love us. He wants
only the
best for us. And He's going
to do what-
ever it takes for us to
make it through
this worldly life and into
His arms in
the eternal one to come.
That's true
love. That's incredible
mercy! |
