The Goodness and Severity of God

Gary Cox

11-16-03

Romans 11:22-23 “Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again.”

The Goodness of God is Inseparable from the Severity of God. Too often, God’s goodness is preached as if it stands alone. It doesn’t. If you proclaim God’s goodness apart from His severity you rob your hearers from the fear of the Lord. A man who has nothing to fear also has nothing that interests himself except the pleasure of his own will.

God’s goodness is magnified in His severity. The severity of God is the backdrop by which we learn of His goodness. God’s wrath is generally revealed by the frustration He has imposed upon fallen man. Rom 8:20 “ For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope. ”

By God’s goodness, the longsuffering and forbearance of God prolongs your opportunity to learn of God’s wrath to come. The forbearance of God prevents His present wrath and is a taste of His goodness, bidding you to come to repentance. There is a lot of opportunity today which God calls the time of his longsuffering and forbearance, so that men might come and receive the mercy of God and avoid his wrath. Romans 2:4 “Or despisest thou the riches of this goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?”

The Forbearance and Longsuffering of God are mistaken by the wicked man to mean that God doesn’t see or care about judgment on sinners. Today there is no wrath for sin because God is extending his mercy so that we do not have to receive the wrath. If God is so readily holding out His mercy, what’s He holding His mercy out against. He’s holding out His mercy against His own wrath; against the fury of His own anger. And its only now, now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation, it is only now that that offer is made.

2 peter 3:3-4, 9  “Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their won lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming?  For since the father fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. ” and verse 9 “ The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”  Scoffing is the nature of the last days. Scoffing is the art of wicked men in the last days belittling the truths of God. How do they belittle the truths of God? They judge based on there natural observation. When we’re relying on our own understand we’re faced with only our natural interpretation.

 Except in Forbearance and Longsuffering, the Goodness of God is not experienced by the lost. The passage from 1 Timothy 6 says “those that believe that gain is godliness’. We think that gain is godliness. God is not blessing us because we are somehow godly. There’s another god that blessing us, and it’s the god of this age.

God give grace to humble but God the resist the proud. In any point in God’s economy if we feel resistance in our life from some form of success of happiness, pay close attention because most likely it’s God pointing out our pride, and in that pointing out of pride He’s drawing attention to a matter of sin that He wants to resolve by His mercy in the cross of Christ.

The unbeliever only tastes of Gods Severity today; the fullest expression of His wrath is yet to come, being reserve for them, being treasures up for them, for the day of wrath. From that there will be no escape. The severity of God is ever present and there’s no turning back from it except that we receive the mercy of God offered to us in Christ. It’s the severity of God that puts us on notice that we’re in serious trouble. Our lot is hell and we cannot escape that lot by any effort or maneuver or action of our own ways. With that reality is there some way to escape and the answer in ‘yes’; there’s a way to escape in Jesus Christ. But to come to Christ we must abandon our every effort; we must abandon our every ideal. We must exchange our idea of glory for Gods idea of glory. God brings to us suffering and persecution as He sharpens and clarifies our understanding of the glory that’s to come. For the believer there is constantly the exchange of our expectations, our preferences, our desires, our dreams, our hopes, all those things that seem so important and so dear to us, God is simply saying that is not for us to pursue any longer. Lay that down and rather pursue Christ and let Him substitute for our pursuits His own. And you know what he brings to us? He brings trouble, He brings hardship, He brings persecution and suffering. Psalm 52:1. The goodness of God is going to outlast any of mans good works or good efforts. It’s the only thing that remains.

God has revealed His wrath to come in His word and in His world. The natural man uses natural observations and he misses the wrath of God. First of all we find that God’s revealed word speaks of judgment. In 2 Peter 3 it says “… I stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance: That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before…” Stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance. We cannot escape the lackadaisical attitude of Gods judgment like the world has unless we are stirring up our minds by the recollection of the word of God. He can take our pure mind, which is singley devoted to Him, and fill it with His perspective which is clearly revealed in His word, so we have the word of God to minister to us. The best way to study scripture is to find where are you practically in your own life? What battle are you facing today where you are being tempted with the natural mind of this world? As you open it up the purity of the holy revelation of God it will contrast itself instantly to the crud and corruption of the reprobate mind of men who are living out of their own lust. We need to take our struggle directly to the word of God. It’s about the natural always being inferior to the revelation of the word of God and lets get ourselves back to the revelation of God. Lets establish our thoughts according to the word of God.

2 peter 3:5-7 “For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”

 What we find here is the willing ignorance of man. When you’re willing ignorant you became blind. When you’re willingly ignorant so that your blind you don’t even bother to ask the questions that are begging to be asked because of the natural observation of the phenomena. Willing ignorance is such that it doesn’t matter what the revelation is; it’s the rejection of God that’s at the root of it. You refuse the knowledge of God, He gives you over to reprobate mind. And when you have a reprobate mind you can’t even reason properly because you take information and you twist it from its narrow perspective and you willing deny the things that are obvious.

The goodness of God is the Provision of Mercy He gives to Believing sinners. As I looked at all the passages relating to Gods goodness, in some way shape or form, every time there was any primary discussion of the goodness of God it was always in the context of him extending mercy to sinners because they repented. The mercy of God is there but it comes to those who repent of their sins. God is angry with the wicked every day and our destiny is hell with no hope of redemption from hell once we are there because that is the nature and condition of man.

We cannot even understand Gods goodness until we first recognize the severity of His judgment, and it’s only in the severity of Gods judgment that we begin to realize that God Himself is really good because He mercifully offers me a way of escape and we never have to once pay the just penalty. The mercy of God is not that He’s unwilling to punish the sin justly. The mercy of God is that He has taken the full payment of that penalty upon Himself and He’s fully received the wrath of His own anger against our sin, He’s received it in the pure sacrifice of Christ on the cross. You may escape the wrath God because God has paid for you’re sin, the payment in full and now you may receive the righteousness of Christ in God and be His very son and daughter. That’s the call of mercy. And we cannot understand that call to mercy unless we understand the tremendous severity of Gods wrath that there surly is a hell that burns forever and ever.

God is merciful but we must receive His mercy on His terms not our own. Those who want to have mercy on their terms God simply sweeps aside. But when we come to God and receive mercy on His terms we have all the hope of all the promises that He’s brought to us in Christ. God’s goodness is magnified by His severity and the goodness of God flows from His mercy upon those who receive it. God is merciful and longsuffering because we have a sin problem; we have a need. God wants to meet that need in Christ and we receive that which He’s provided. 

Goodness is Exclusively Given to the Sons of God Who are Continuing in Faith. God is serious about the relationship that’s established in Christ. When we come into the family of God we’re coming in as a son, we’re not just getting a ticket from hell and then being granted a waver from living for God. God has no obligation to bless us on carnal terms any more than He has any obligations to bless the world on carnal terms. It’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. We have only one hope and that is by humility to embrace Christ as He is revealed, and not to trust in our understanding in any matter at any time. We are going to be exposed to the same kind of temptation that we once had before we were Christians, but in that exposure the truth and the proof of our faith needs to spring forth.

Ministering Gods gGodness in the context of His Severity.

God’s ministers must preach His goodness within the terrifying context of His severity. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. God is good and the spiritual reality is we cannot minister to others if we’re fainting ourselves with respects to the hope we have in the mercy of God. We corrupt the word whenever we leave it exposed to the sense of hope that man by his doing can bring to himself some wonderful blessing of God. We are unable to do good and we have entirely need to God to do the good in us for us.

 Parents, we are not obligated in any way shape or form to our children beyond the extending of the mercy of God on his terms to them. If our children living in our homes refuse the mercy of God, refuse to walk in the house where the mercy of God is honored, without anger, without fury, they need to be allowed, rather encouraged, if necessary forced, to leave our home. We have no obligation to bring to our children certain things that they demand because they’re clamoring for it after the world. We only have the obligation to bring to them the doorway of Gods mercy and to encourage and to coach and to plea with them that they might come in.

Three points for reference:

First. The terror of the Lord is a proper basis for embarking upon vigorous efforts to preach in my home and any other circle of ministry the Lord gives me. ‘Knowing there for the terror of the Lord we persuade men’. God is not a joke; hell is not an imaginary idea.

Second. 2 Cor. 10. We use spiritual, not carnal weapons to tear down every high thing that exalts itself against the name of Christ.

Any form of manipulation is a carnal method. The spiritual reality is that which is exalted against Christ gets taken down. Spiritual weapons do the taking down. The spiritual method of ministry in our home is to first establish the truth; what it means to follow Christ and what it means to follow Christ in this home. Set up that clearly and make it the model of appeal and direction and when that model of appeal is clearly there than that which refuses to conform to Christ clearly opens itself up to correction and punishment and if necessary rejection as it where.

Third. 2 Cor. 10 Be bold in confrontation with those who refuse the truth. When we have a dominion that we’re given authority over, it’s okay and it’s appropriate for us to lift up the banner of Christ, ‘this is Christ home this is his inheritance, we’re pursuing Christ. ‘As for me and my house we’re serving the lord’’. And when that which has been established is plainly mocked and despised by those who chanced to benefit under the roof as it were of that offering. It is necessary to take bold, positive, confrontative action to remove and resolve the matter of rebellion. That is a mercy, how much better that a small amount of turmoil occurs today that might provoke one of our dear ones to salvation because of the experience of that rightful wrath of God.

It’s the mercy of God that has set aside a means of escape from His righteous and just wrath. And the question is will you come to God on His terms? It’s appropriate that you and I have a relationship built upon the goodness and severity of God. We not only should but we must reject every form of relationship that’s based upon some false premise of Gods goodness that seems to force us to extend continually the kindness and mercy of God to those who have no inertest at all in receiving it. Indeed it is a greater kindness to let a small taste of the wrath fall upon those we love presently so that by that experience God might work in them a fear of Him so the they might escape His wrath permanently. The question is which mindset are you living by.