Encounter the Truth

Jonathan Griffiths: When we come to God, we come to him not with a net moral worth of something great, we come with a net moral worth of zero. We come in terrible moral debt. We come deserving his judgment and nothing more. But here is where grace and here is where mercy come in.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths. I'm Steve Hiller, glad you're with us today because Jonathan, sounds like you are taking us right to the heart of the gospel message, this gift of salvation and forgiveness that God offers to us.

Jonathan Griffiths: That's right. At the heart of the message of the Bible is the presentation of our Creator God, the God of the universe, as one who is gracious and merciful to needy and guilty people like us. We see his grace and his mercy expressed most clearly and most profoundly in the person of his Son who entered history and at the event of the crucifixion of his Son on the hill outside Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.

We see God giving us what we do not deserve and treating us as we do not deserve to be treated. It is a wonderful thing, a marvelous thing, an awe-inspiring thing.

Steve Hiller: Something that if we'll slow down long enough and truly take a look at all that was accomplished on the cross and then the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, as you said, it is awe-inspiring and something that we'll probably never get over this side of eternity. We're going to continue to look at the gracious and merciful God today. Hope you'll stay with us as we begin the message. Here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: One of the great benefits of my role is that I get to assign myself really what I'm going to speak on, and in a topical series like this on the attributes of God, of course I have unusual freedom. I have to say that I'm very, very pleased with my assignment for today. There's hardly a more wonderful and happy topic to consider than the topic of the grace and the mercy of God.

We're in the midst of this wider series considering the attributes of God. As we've journeyed through this series thus far, we've seen how all the attributes of God are cohesive. In a sense, they're all one because God himself is one. He's undivided. He's totally consistent in himself. Of course, his love cannot be separated from his wrath, his mercy cannot be separated from his justice, and so on.

All of that having been said and those things are true, there is a sense in which the mercy and the grace of God as we explore them, they do give us a particular insight into the heart of God. I was reading the Puritan Thomas Watson this week, as I have been throughout this series. His reflections on the attributes of God are so very, very helpful.

I was interested in his comment on the mercy of God. He went out on a little bit of a limb here, but I think it is actually a biblical limb, and he suggested this about God's mercy: "God is more inclinable to mercy than to wrath. Mercy is his darling attribute which he most delights in." I hope that's not an overstatement, but I think Watson is onto something biblically.

He goes on to declare that God's mercy is one of the most orient pearls of his crown. It makes his Godhead appear amiable and lovely. If we know the Lord, if we have walked with him for any period of time really and enjoyed the privilege of being the children of God for any length of time, I think we know instinctively, don't we, that mercy and grace are integral to his character.

I think we understand that acting in mercy and acting in grace, those things bring him particular delight. All of that is to say that today's subject is a joyful and a rich subject for us to consider. It takes us to the very heart of God. But we need of course to start with foundational matters. What is mercy and what is grace?

I've decided to treat these two words, these two attributes together because they do so clearly overlap conceptually. They're distinct in some ways, but I don't think we can really separate mercy from grace. Key words in the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament can be translated either using the word mercy or the word grace in English.

Sometimes actually it's a bit of a judgment call for the translator which word in English to use. Actually, that just tells us how closely related these two words are, how closely related ultimately these attributes are within God. At the end of the day, mercy and grace are just complementary aspects of the goodness of God.

If there is a distinction between grace and mercy, it is, I think, that God's mercy speaks of God's goodness to us in our misery and in our distress when we're just unable to save ourselves, while his grace speaks of his goodness to us in our guilt when we deserve only his punishment. In mercy, God spares us destruction. In grace, he forgives us and he makes us his children, lavishing his kindness upon us.

There's so much that we can say about the grace and the mercy of God, so much biblical material that we can consider from the Scriptures, but I want to make just two key points. I want to consider this attribute under two simple headings before we go on to apply it, and the first is this: God is gracious and merciful in saving the lost.

God is gracious and he is merciful in saving the lost. We really can't get anywhere in terms of knowing God and experiencing God's great salvation if we don't recognize that we don't deserve anything good from him but instead richly deserve his punishment for our sin. I think as a culture and as an age, we can tend to be very, very entitled in our outlook and our attitude.

I think that may be especially true of my generation, truer of my generation perhaps than older generations. We feel that we are owed a great deal in terms of happiness and privilege and material provision. We easily feel slighted or hard done by. We quickly complain if we perceive that we are not receiving what we are owed.

That's not just true of one or two of us, that's society more broadly, and with very few exceptions, I guess that we are part of the trend. I see it in myself more than I like, and I expect you may see it in yourself too. When we come to God, when we hear his truth and consider our response to his truth, it is very easy for us to come to him with a set of expectations and a set of demands.

It's easy when exploring the Christian faith within the greater marketplace of religions and ideas and philosophies. It's easy to come asking what it is that God can offer me. What can God do for me? What can God give to me? I'm a consumer of religion, I tell myself. I am the buyer here. What have you got for me? What can you offer me?

It can be like shopping for a new car, going from dealership to dealership. What's your promotion this week? How can you tempt me with the latest model? Maybe you yourself, you view yourself as a consumer on the religious market today. You are exploring. You are inquiring, but you're not quite sold.

It's great to explore. It's great to inquire, but we need to be careful of this attitude which we can all share. We need to be careful because the Bible would tell us that God owes us precisely nothing. In fact, the Bible would tell us that we are in fact the ones who are deeply indebted to God. The Bible teaches us and reminds us that we are creatures made by God according to his will, his plan, his purpose.

He gave us the great gift of life. He gave us a home in this beautiful world, and he gave us all good things that we enjoy. We brought nothing to the table. He is the Creator. We are his creatures. But rather than thank him for his kindness and worship him for his goodness, we human beings have instead rebelled against him.

We've doubted his love. We have charged him with wrong. We have decided to go our own way. That began in the Garden of Eden, and it has continued every day since. As God looked out on this fallen world after Eden, the world now in rebellion against him, he identified the full extent of the problem and he did so with grief of heart.

By Genesis chapter 6, this is what God saw and what he had to say. Genesis 6 and verse 5: "The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart."

That's how things developed. Although God sent a flood in those days, although there was something of a fresh start with Noah, things really didn't improve all that much. The Old Testament is full of story after story, testimony after testimony, of the sheer wickedness of the fallen human heart and the sheer rightness of God's assessment in Genesis 6.

We might wish to suggest that things are better now. But we can hardly look out on a world of boiling anger, of hatred, of discord, of prejudice, of confusion, of grief, of distress. We can hardly look out on today's world and say that things have much improved. You see, we don't come to God with something to offer him. We don't come to him deserving anything from him.

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths, and a message called "The Gracious and Merciful God". Stay tuned, we're going to get back to this message in just a moment. But our message is one of our most listened to of the past year. We went back and we took a look at what have been the most streamed, downloaded, and requested broadcasts, and we've compiled those in a series called "Listener Favorites", and this is the very first one in the series.

If you ever miss a broadcast, you can come and listen online. Our website is encounterthetruth.org. You can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. You could also listen through the Encounter the Truth app. That's free. You'll find it at your app store, and it's a great way to stay connected with Jonathan's teaching when you're on the go.

But one other unique thing about this series, Listener Favorites, we've compiled a study guide to accompany this series. Each guide is going to cover two programs, and you can access this for free at our website. Come to encounterthetruth.org/listenerfavorites. Again, that's at encounterthetruth.org. Let's get back to our message. Once again, here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: I was stunned to read this week in the Washington Post that one in five American households have a net worth of zero or less than zero. When those households come to negotiate with the bank the terms of their loans or their mortgages, they come with nothing to offer. They come with empty hands. They come in a fundamentally helpless position.

Friends, you and I need to soberly acknowledge that when we come to God, the Creator of the world and Judge of all the earth, we come in a position of weakness, of spiritual poverty. We come with nothing, indeed less than nothing. The Bible's never going to make any sense to us, the gospel will never be compelling to you, if we do not first get to grips with the fact that God doesn't owe us but rather we owe him.

We owe him more than we could ever pay. The Apostle Paul's verdict on humanity in sin is particularly clear, particularly sobering. This is Romans chapter 3. You might actually like to turn to it. Romans 3 and verse 9, the Apostle Paul writes this: "What then? Are Jews better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: 'None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God.

All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.'"

I think we'd love to be able to stand up in indignation and tell Paul that he's got everything wrong here. Tell him you've misjudged me, Paul, you've misjudged humanity. But the tragic thing, the fearful thing, is that Paul is exactly right in this. This is exactly what humanity is like. This is just what we are like in and of ourselves apart from the kindness of God.

This is the grim reality reflected in the grim headlines that we see every day. When we come to God, we come to him not with a net moral worth of something great. We come with a net moral worth of zero. We come with an empty bank account. We come in terrible moral debt. We come deserving his judgment and nothing more. But here is where grace and here is where mercy come in.

Down to verse 23: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." You and I face a situation from which we cannot save ourselves. There is no way in which we can clear the record of our guilt and make ourselves right with God. And so God has acted in grace, and God has acted in mercy.

He's taken pity upon us, and he's found a way to help us. He's given his only Son to die in our place and to bear the punishment for our wrongdoing. God offers us his salvation as a gift to be received. As the hymn writer put it in "Rock of Ages", a hymn you might know: "Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to your cross I cling. Naked, come to you for dress. Helpless, look to you for grace. Foul, I to the fountain fly. Wash me, Savior, or I die."

It's important for us to see that God's grace to us in salvation completely excludes the possibility of our contribution to our salvation. Grace, by its very definition, means God giving us something that we have no claim upon. Later in Romans in chapter 11 and verse 6, Paul draws a very hard line between grace and works, grace and earning, when it comes to salvation.

He insists that God's salvation is based on grace and grace only. Listen to what he says: "But if it is by grace, if God's salvation is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, if it were, grace would no longer be grace." It's one or the other, and praise God it is grace, not works. If you add good works into the equation, if you try and add good works into the equation, grace is actually excluded altogether.

If we were to come to God and say, "I understand that Jesus died for me, and I'm thankful for that, that's good. But I'd also like you to notice, God, how very, very nice I have been to my little sister this week. I'd like you to see and recognize how kind I have been to my spouse, how honest I was on my tax return this year." If you try bringing that into the equation, grace is lost.

Salvation now is excluded. Grace is all about God's unmerited, undeserved, unearned favor. Every other religious system in the world depends upon the principle of works. Do something for God and he may accept you. Every other religion in the world is in some way a version of the religion of "do". Only Christianity works on the basis of "done". Christ has done everything for us.

All that we need do now is receive his grace as a gift by faith. I wonder if you've understood that before. I wonder if you've made that response of faith yourself to the finished work of Christ. The fact that salvation depends upon the grace and mercy of God, it means that salvation is available to anyone. It's available to you, whatever your history, whatever your record of wrong.

It may be actually that today you are someone who you would love to know the assurance of the forgiveness of sin. You'd love to know acceptance by God. But here is your fear: You fear that you are not worthy of God. Not worthy of his grace. Not worthy of his favor. Let me assure you today: You are not worthy. No one is worthy.

But here's the good news: Our ability to receive salvation has absolutely nothing to do with our moral goodness and our moral worth. Salvation rests entirely upon the death of Christ and the mercy of God. It rests upon nothing more. The only prerequisite, the only requirement, is our willingness to come. And with empty hands, to receive.

The great Puritan theologian Thomas Watson once wrote that God's mercy is a fountain opened. Let down the bucket of faith and you may drink of this fountain of salvation. It's wonderful, isn't it, in the heat of summer to let down a bucket into a cool well and to draw refreshing water. I wonder if you would, to use Watson's image, let down a bucket of faith into the fountain of God's grace and mercy to receive the refreshment of soul that he offers you.

Steve Hiller: Jonathan Griffiths with part of our message "The Gracious and Merciful God". We'll continue next time, so I hope you'll make it a point to tune in. If you ever miss a broadcast, come and listen online. Our website is encounterthetruth.org. You can stream the program or download an MP3 for free.

By the way, this message has been one of the most listened to of the past year. We went back and we looked at what had been the most streamed, downloaded, and requested broadcasts, and we've compiled those in a series called Listener Favorites. We've also put together a study guide that goes along with this series, and you can listen to these broadcasts and get the study guide at our website.

Come to encounterthetruth.org. Again, that's encounterthetruth.org. Encounter the Truth is a listener-supported ministry. We're able to be on this station, make the podcast and the app available because of your generosity. And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you a book entitled "The Final Lap", written by John Wyatt. Jonathan, I have a friend who likes to say, "What you read isn't necessarily as important as who you read." So that begs the question for me then, who is John Wyatt?

Jonathan Griffiths: John Wyatt is a medical doctor who's a leading Christian ethicist in the UK. John's made a wonderful contribution to thinking about practical Christian living and significant choices we make in Christian discipleship. I've used John's resources over the years when I've had opportunity to teach Christian ethics at different times. I've relied on John's thinking a huge amount.

Just recently, he's been working on the whole area of aging and retirement and dependency and the final years of life, and how we think about that as Christians and how we steward that time well as believers. I had an opportunity to speak alongside John at a convention in the UK, the Keswick Convention, not so long ago, and John's seminars on aging and retirement and ill health and dependency in older age were just gold and people appreciated them so much. So I think this particular resource that we're making available this month will be a tremendous help to many people.

Steve Hiller: It is called "The Final Lap", and it's our thank-you gift to you as you financially support Encounter the Truth this month. You can call and give a gift over the phone. Our number is 1-833-99-TRUTH. That's 1-833-998-7884, or go online to encounterthetruth.org. You can also write to us at Encounter the Truth, PO Box 5513, Ottawa, Ontario, K2C 3M1, or in the US at Encounter the Truth, 215 North Arlington Heights Road, Suite 102, Arlington Heights, Illinois, 60004.

For Jonathan Griffiths and our producer Mark Brudda, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us next time.