The Knowledge of the Holy: The Mercy of God
[Editor’s Note: This is a 23-Day Series exploring different aspects of God’s nature and personality, using Tozer’s “The Knowledge of the Holy” as a discussion starter. You can read the introduction of the series here.]
Yesterday’s post ended talking about this crazy paradox that believers in Jesus are called to navigate: We serve a just God who shows justice and at the same time is completely full of mercy. This idea is so hard for us that Christians for centuries have tried to understand how God’s justice and His mercy mingle together. But make no mistake, the fact that we are not immediately consumed when we sin, the fact that there are more chances to repent and change, and the fact that Jesus died to save us from sin all point to a God unfathomably rich in mercy. Our job is to respond to that mercy appropriately.
Tozer tells us early that the mercy God has is a deep motivation from inside the Godhead to show compassion to those who do not deserve it. He spends time talking about how only mercy can take a man or woman who was once God’s enemy and show that man or woman goodness. We should live in the wonder of God’s mercy.
But because of our human nature we spend a large amount of time confused about God’s mercy. We sometimes feel like the God of Israel (or the Old Testament) was a the just judge whose judgment is only held back by the mercy of Jesus as demonstrated and taught in the New Testament. But Tozer reminds us of the ground we have already covered. God is one and not conflicted. He is eternal and not prone to divine mood swings. Mercy emanates from Him because He is eternally merciful, not because He had a change of heart.
The challenge for us, then, is to live as if mercy from God is real and constant. We cannot believe in mercy but exist as if it’s some kind of heavenly lotto we hope to win one day. We have to begin to live lives that reflect having tasted God’s mercy. This is harder than it sounds. It starts with believing that God is truly merciful. We have to renew our minds with the idea that mercy isn’t God’s temporary disposition. It’s who He is. As we renew our minds, we begin to walk in the experience of God’s mercy. The sins and regrets of the past slowly have less and less power over us.
This is the area where I need to grow significantly in. Over and over I’m struck by Tozer’s description of God as someone who isn’t merciful on a whim. My mercy is short-lived, but God’s mercy is constant and we can grow in our ability to live in freedom by believing God’s mercy is ever toward us.
Can we, by faith, walk in a greater experience of God’s mercy? I believe so. Let’s not (as Tozer says) “starve outside the banquet hall.” This was never God’s heart for His children. He desires that we know Him as the God of all mercy and comfort. Pray for me today, that I would know God’s mercy as a truth of who He is and not a divine mood swing.
That’s my takeaway today. What’s yours? Leave a comment so we can all grow together!
Day 1: Why We Must Think Rightly About God
Day 3: A Divine Attribute: Something True About God
Day 5: The Self Existence of God
Day 6: The Self Sufficiency of God
Day 9: The Immutability of God
Day 10: The Divine Omniscience
Day 12: The Omnipotence of God
Day 13: The Divine Transcendence
Day 15: The Faithfulness of God
Day 18: The Mercy of God
Day 19: The Grace of God
Day 20: The Love of God
Day 21: The Holiness of God
Day 22: The Sovereignty of God
Day 23: The Open Secret
The Knowledge of the Holy: The Justice of God
[Editor’s Note: This is a 23-Day Series exploring different aspects of God’s nature and personality, using Tozer’s “The Knowledge of the Holy” as a discussion starter. You can read the introduction of the series here.]
We all want a God who gives us our fair share and protects us from who would wrong us. We also deeply want a God who forgives us for the evil that we participate in. And if we have a bad view of God, one who is injust, we will either be terrified of God because of the wrong we have done or we will attempt to take advantage of Him for the forgiving God that He is. Either way, at the end of the day, only by understanding God as a God of justice will we relate to God as He truly is.
To understand God’s justice, we first have to understand that righteousness and justice are the same thing. God is just because He is righteous in all He does. Psalmists and prophets of the Old Testament called out to God to judge the world and when they did they made an appeal to God to make the whole world right again. Justice, as Tozer tells us, contains the idea of moral equity. God’s judgments (and therefore His justice) are His way of setting the world right.
Tozer is also faithful to point out where we have elevated someone or something above God. He takes aim at the places where we have constrained God and said “he must do such and such because it’s just.” And it’s in this place where we have made justice something God is bound to. God is not bound to justice. Justice is bound up in God. Justice is the way God does things. Its part of His nature that we have learned and applied to things, but nothing is just if it isn’t found in God. God acts the way He acts, and we on the outside view that and call it justice.
All of this talk of justice, of God acting just all the time, could be used to persuade us that God is only just and never merciful. It can produce a kind of fear of God that would dread Him but never run to Him, that is to say, an unbiblical kind of fear of God. But God’s justice is never at odds with His mercy. To quote Tozer “goodness without justice is not goodness.” And whenever God acts justly, He is also acting with mercy. No more clearly is this seen than in the cross of Jesus. Justice was done and mercy was given, but neither justice nor mercy was diminished. Both attributes of God’s nature are in full force simultaneously manifested without the least bit of contradiction. And the result was the justification of you and I.
And this is where I feel like the real meat of our discussion is today. God is just and He makes just decisions. So many today say things like “only God can judge me” or “judge not, lest you be judged,” and in the ultimate sense these statements are true. But they tare an attempt to escape God’s judgment and treat Him as if He is not just. They treat Him as if He does not see sin or as if the sin doesn’t matter to Him. But sin matters deeply to God. It cost Him you. It cost Him His son. It’s not a light thing. So we must tremble before God. We must believe that He really takes this issue called iniquity very seriously.
And yet simultaneously, we cannot run away from God because we have sin. The justice of God is most fully displayed in the death of His son. He crushed sin in His Son to draw us closer to Him. How awful would it be to know remorse for your sin but to hate it so much you never received its cure?! In Jesus we have both Judge and Attorney. He helps us and vindicates us. And our victory over sin is never accomplished until we run to the judge who will stand in our place for us.
So acknowledge today both the places where you have treated sin lightly and where you haven’t run to Your judge with Your sin. If you deal with both issues, You will find a just God who gives mercy. And in that place, we find freedom.
That’s my takeaway today. What’s yours? Leave a comment so we can all grow together!
Day 1: Why We Must Think Rightly About God
Day 3: A Divine Attribute: Something True About God
Day 5: The Self Existence of God
Day 6: The Self Sufficiency of God
Day 9: The Immutability of God
Day 10: The Divine Omniscience
Day 12: The Omnipotence of God
Day 13: The Divine Transcendence
Day 15: The Faithfulness of God
Day 16: The Goodness of God
Day 17: The Justice of God
Day 18: The Mercy of God
Day 19: The Grace of God
Day 20: The Love of God
Day 21: The Holiness of God
Day 22: The Sovereignty of God
Day 23: The Open Secret
The Knowledge of the Holy: The Goodness of God
[Editor’s Note: This is a 23-Day Series exploring different aspects of God’s nature and personality, using Tozer’s “The Knowledge of the Holy” as a discussion starter. You can read the introduction of the series here.]
Sometimes the attributes we are studying in this journey seem so simple and so uncontested that we have a hard time thinking God was any other way. And yet, when we get past the immediate statement “God is _______,” we find there are a hundred different scenarios where our belief in these attributes is tested and we find ourselves acting as if that quality wasn’t true. The attribute of God’s goodness fits nicely in that category. All of us like to believe God is good. Very few have probably trusted in God’s goodness in a way that satisfies their heart in the hour of testing. And that is the journey in front of us as we look at God’s goodness.
In fact, goodness is such a common word, so easily spoken and believed, that Tozer begins the chapter defining “goodnesss.” What is it? What do we mean when we say it about God? Many think it means God is right or holy or pure. But when we talk about God’s goodness, we are actually talking about His capacity to do good to mankind. He is full of good will towards the most sinful of us and this reality should stagger us and change how we live.
There are tremendous implications of a God dedicated to doing good to mankind. All of our relationship to God and our hope in securing His favor is based on the fact that God is good. Something about God caused Him to want to do good toward us rebels. And because of this fact, we are able to enter into a relationship with this good God through the sacrifice of His Son and access an innumerable amount of prosmises. Because God’s goodness is part of His nature, it is “self-caused, infinite, perfect, and eternal.” God’s reason for being good has nothing to do with us or our merit. He does it because He wants to be good to us.
This is why we can trust that when we come to God, He will not despise us or act unfavorably toward us. Quoting Meister Eckhart, Tozer reminds us that a man who repents of a life full of more sin than all the sin of every age could come to Jesus in repentance and find God as being good towards him. In our day, we can say that Hitler, the most vile abortion doctor, the greediest Wall Street Banker, and the man who traffics women and young boys could all find mercy from this good God, if they come to Him in repentance.
Tozer’s response to the sinner who comes to Christ wondering how God will treat him is to point the sinner to Christ. In Christ we see how God acts in every circumstance. To the hypocrite and the poser, Jesus may remain distant. But to the broken, the poor in spirit, the self-hater, and the destitute, they will all find Jesus welcoming them into the goodness of God. Tozer closes reminding us that our relationship with God is a paradox: because God is great, we tremble in holy fear, but because God is good, we draw close, knowing God will be good to us.
I thoroughly enjoyed today’s chapter, because this is one of those chapters that gets to the heart of the gospel and our own hearts. Jesus calls us to be good to everyone because our Father is good to everyone, even His enemies (Matthew 5:44-45). But so often I find myself running out of goodness to give to others. So often I find myself being overcome by the poor response of others. But God has called us to not base our responses to them on how they respond to us, but on how God responds to us. And because God is an infinite source of goodness, we should have a never ending source to pull from.
For that reason, I want to call you, dear brothers and sisters, to taste the Lord’s goodness (Psalms 34:8). When we taste the refreshing goodness of the Lord, it’s easier to be good to those around us. When we aren’t encountering the Lord’s goodness, it’s easy for us to become bitter and disappointed with the actions of others. Instead, we remind ourselves of the Lord’s goodness. We remember that we didn’t deserve goodness, but Christ showed it to us anyways. As we do, we become thankful and see more of the Lord’s good hand in our lives. We begin to acknowledge what has already been good and we see more of it as well. The goodness that flows from God to us as we renew our minds in this way will naturally flow to others.
But friends, we cannot sit back and resist the Lord’s goodness. We have to become hearty souls hungry for the Lord’s goodness.To the degree that we don’t, we will become like the older brother in the story of the prodigal son, always trying to do well and living at the Father’s house, but at the end of the day very distant from our Father’s heart. Let’s fear that reality and know that by simply being willing to receive God’s goodness, we can have the Father’s heart and be filled with joy.
That’s my takeaway today. What’s yours? Leave a comment so we can all grow together!
Day 1: Why We Must Think Rightly About God
Day 3: A Divine Attribute: Something True About God
Day 5: The Self Existence of God
Day 6: The Self Sufficiency of God
Day 9: The Immutability of God
Day 10: The Divine Omniscience
Day 12: The Omnipotence of God
Day 13: The Divine Transcendence
Day 15: The Faithfulness of God
Day 16: The Goodness of God
Day 17: The Justice of God
Day 18: The Mercy of God
Day 19: The Grace of God
Day 20: The Love of God
Day 21: The Holiness of God
Day 22: The Sovereignty of God
Day 23: The Open Secrett
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 