Anecdote No. 6: Deserving Justice, Receiving Mercy
I recently watched a segment on Dr. Phil about the horrific acts of a father and mother towards their daughter. The atrocious injustices experienced by this now eighteen year old girl left me speechless at the sinfulness of humanity and the evil that lurks behind closed doors and within families. The father raped his daughter over the span of five years. She was pulled from school and locked in the camper of a truck where she was held against her will. Over that span of time she gave birth to four of his biological children. One child survived, two died of negligence, and one was stillborn. The mother knew of the abuse and did nothing to protect her daughter. She was finally rescued when her younger sister, amidst murderous threats from their father, spoke out and informed the police of what was going on in their home.
This is just one of the countless stories of horrific abuse, violence, terror that flood the media on a daily basis. As I watched this girl tell her story publicly for the first time since she was rescued, I couldn’t help but ask God why this terrible thing happened to an innocent child. For the Christian who believes wholeheartedly in the sovereignty of God over all life, questions such as these are hard to ask. They are even more difficult to try to answer.
My delve into R.C. Sproul’s writing has unveiled an unprecedented glimpse of God’s holiness and God’s mercy. I feel like I’ve only just begun to truly understand the gravity of depravity that pervades the human existence. The Bible essentially reveals that no part of humanity has been unaffected by the Fall. No one has an ounce of righteousness. No one even desires to seek God, much less actually seek Him. Granted, we know of people who seek (and perhaps even we ourselves) the benefits that knowing God gives such as peace, purpose, selflessness, and the like. But ultimately, we don’t seek to know God. To be fair, we can’t even if we wanted to. But the catch is that we, guided by our sinful human nature and inclinations, don’t want anything to do with a Holy God. As Sproul writes in “The Holiness of God”:
“The struggle we have with a holy God is rooted in the conflict between God’s righteousness and our unrighteousness. He is just, and we are unjust. This tension creates fear, hostility, and anger within us toward God. The unjust person does not desire the company of a just judge. We become fugitives, fleeing from the presence of One whose glory can blind us and whose justice can condemn us. We are at war with Him unless or until we are justified. Only the justified person can be comfortable in the presence of a holy God.”
But
God justifies. God justified. Romans 5:1 says “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.”
Wow. Peace with God. Justified through faith and now standing in grace. I should add (from Ephesians 2:8-9), it’s by God’s grace that we are given the faith to believe what He says about who we are, who He is, and what Christ has completed on the cross. Without truly attempting to understand (by His grace, of course) that my salvation is entirely dependent upon God’s grace and mercy and not upon anything I have done (even in “choosing” Christ – this is inaccurate because I didn’t choose Him! He chose me!), I had never truly appreciated and truly awed at the grace of God towards me. This revelation has me awestruck at God and His mercy, His love, His wisdom.
So, what remains is the connection between all this and my initial words on evil and innocence. I believe that God is sovereign over all, even over the evil desires within a person’s heart. He is sovereign over free will (the strongest inclinations we have at each moment which directs our choices) and although we may struggle, as I have and do, with this notion, His divine counsel uses the evil inclinations and evil intentions of sinful people to bring about His own redemptive purposes. It’s easy to call God “unjust” when He allows people to continue in their free-will-driven-joy-ride of sin, when in fact it is justice that prevails. God has mercy on whom He will have mercy. The rest receive justice (Romans 9:14-16). Believe it or not, we are already condemned to a life of spiritual death because of the sin in us. Our choices always lead us to gratify the desires of our sin nature. Until and unless God so chooses to have mercy on us.
Friend, it’s a hard truth to grasp, yes. But for those who have been made righteous, it is truth that changes, or should change, the way we live and pray and interact with God and others in this life. Stories are still being written and God’s mercy still pursues. The "unless" still remains on the rest of creation, according to God's divine wisdom. Persistence in intercessory prayer and pleading don't go unnoticed (recall the widow's story in Luke 18) - God is merciful. Let us press on to acknowledge Him.
“I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people; and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one...unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.” (Romans 9:25, 29).
