From the MLJ Archive

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: You will remember that we are dealing at the moment with the words found in Paul's epistle to the Romans in chapter 11 from verse 18 to the end of the 22nd verse. Verses 18 to 22 in the 11th chapter of Paul's epistle to the Romans: "Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, the branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in. Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. 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."

Now, this is a most important statement, one of these great crucial statements that are to be found scattered about in the pages of Holy Writ. And this is an unusually important one for many, many reasons. We've spent some time in expounding it, I mean by that in showing the exact meaning of the words and what the statement is in general. And then we have started a consideration of the teaching of this passage. I suggested you could divide it into four sections: exposition, teaching, the problem raised, and general application, especially at this present time.

Now, we are at the moment looking at the teaching. And last Friday night, we saw that the teaching here in the first instance is this: that our greatest danger always as long as we're in this world, even as Christian people, is our pride, our false conceit of ourselves leading to pride. And we saw how the apostle deals with that and teaches us how to deal with it and how to answer it.

The second thing we saw in the teaching was that the apostle emphasizes the constant need of humility, the need indeed of watchfulness and of fear. He says, "Be not highminded, but fear." Now he's addressing Christian people, remember. And that is what he says to them: "Be not highminded, but fear." And he goes on repeating this warning to them to be careful and to watch and to take heed as we look at ourselves and consider ourselves in the economy of God.

The fundamental theme, you see, is the Christian Church and the respective positions and relations of the Jews and the Gentiles in that church. He's been telling them that the first branches, the natural branches, were the Jews. But at this time, they'd been broken off, and the Gentiles had been grafted in. And because of that, this terrible danger had arisen for the Gentiles to lose their heads, to be proud of themselves, to boast against the Jews and to say they were taken out in order that we might be put in. In other words, the danger of falling into the very error into which the Jews themselves had fallen.

Their trouble was they said, "We are the people of God, nothing else matters." They felt there was something peculiar and special about themselves and in their foolish boasting as Jews, they were outside the kingdom of God. Now, the Gentiles are tempted to do exactly the same thing. And that is why this teaching is so important. It's a danger that always besets us. I put it like this last Friday: that we've always got to keep our eye on justification by works, even though we believe in justification by faith intellectually. We find that constantly this other enemy tries to be insinuating his way back again into our thinking. We've always got to be watchful and fearful of that very thing.

Now then, we come now to the third strand, if you like, in the teaching which the apostle gives us at this point. And I'll put it like this: he tells us that the best corrective against pride and all that accompanies pride, the best corrective against pride, or if you prefer it, our greatest need always is to know God. To know the character of God, to know the truth about God.

Now, this is the message of this great 22nd verse: "Behold therefore." This is the antidote to "boast not against the branches." This is the way to do so: "Behold therefore the goodness and the severity of God." Now, this is what I want to consider with you in particular this evening. What is this teaching? Well, putting it generally, we can put it like this: the whole of our thinking should always be controlled by our knowledge of God, by the truth concerning God. That's to be the controlling factor in our whole outlook, in all our thinking, in everything we do. It's all to be dominated and controlled by thoughts of God.

In other words, our greatest need is to know God as he has revealed himself to us in the scriptures. And if we have that knowledge, it will save us from most of our troubles. That's what he's laying down here as a proposition. Or I'll put that in its negative form: our greatest lack as Christian people always is the lack of a knowledge of God. Now that sounds almost incredible, doesn't it? But it's the truth. It's the very thing the apostle is saying here. These Gentiles were falling into this temptation to boast against the branches simply because they were ignorant of God. And this is the main cause of most of our troubles and problems. So I put it positively by saying that the greater the extent of our knowledge of God, the freer we shall be in our thinking, in our practice, in every respect from problems and troubles and failures and sin and final tragedy.

Now, if this is always true, and it is of course the fundamental teaching of the whole of the Bible, I feel that it is especially true at this present time in which you and I are living. And never have we had a greater need of the exhortation with which this 22nd verse opens: "Behold therefore the goodness and the severity of God." Let's look at this. That's what makes this passage, as I say, such a crucial one, such an all-important one. Thank God that the great apostle with his pastoral heart turned aside from the mere statement of prophetic truth, if you like, to apply it to these Gentiles. For we need it above everything else. Let me put it like this to you: let me show you first of all some of the ways in which our failure to realize the truth about God manifests itself in us.

Now, the first thing it does is this: it manifests itself even with respect to our doctrine. If we don't start with this knowledge of God, and if the knowledge of God and the truth about God isn't there overarching everything we do and are as Christian people, the first respect in which it's likely to show itself is in the realm of doctrine. Our very doctrine is going to suffer. Now this again may come as a surprise to some of you. You may say, "Well, I'm a Christian and therefore my doctrine is all right." It doesn't follow at all. If that were true, you wouldn't have an epistle to the Romans and you wouldn't have any other epistle.

The idea that the moment you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ you've got perfect doctrine and you're immune from error is, of course, of all the fallacies the most dangerous of all. The New Testament is proof positive that because we start the Christian life as babes and as children, we're always liable, as Paul puts it to the Ephesians, to be carried about by every wind of doctrine. We're liable to go astray. And there is even a phrase which talks about making shipwreck of the faith. Apart from this tremendous warning here: "Goodness toward thee, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off."

Now, how does it manifest itself in the matter of doctrine? Well, I would start by putting it like this: the first way in which it shows itself is in a tendency to ignore God altogether. But you say surely that's impossible. That's impossible in a Christian. Is it? Isn't it the case that so many Christian people today never seem to think nor to speak of God the Father? They talk only about the Lord Jesus Christ, and they pray to him. You rarely hear some Christian people mentioning God the Father. Their thinking seems to be entirely concentrated on the Lord Jesus Christ to the exclusion of God the Father. It's an amazing thing, but it's true. That's one of the ways then in which it manifests itself, that he's really forgotten. If you ask them if they believe in God, of course they'll say they do. But I'm saying that in their normal thinking, they never think about God at all.

The doctrine of the Trinity has been a stumbling block to Christian people from the beginning. All sorts of heresies have arisen with respect to this. I would have thought that this is the common one at the present time. I have sometimes described it as a kind of "Jesus-olatry" which excludes the Father altogether in its thinking. And it's a most terrible thing.

Well, there's the first. Or secondly, it may manifest itself like this, and this again is so common: that if they do think of God and speak about him, their view of God is a false one. It's not the true view of God. It's not the biblical view of God. Now you are aware of how common that is at the present time. These people who tell us repeatedly that God is love, nothing else, only love. They really have constructed a God of their own. That is idolatry, the very thing against which God through his servant Moses warned the children of Israel, who had had such signal manifestations of God and his power and his glory.

The thing that Moses has to warn them of above everything else is the danger of falling into idolatry. And it is a constant danger. You don't take the God as he's revealed himself in the scriptures, but you have your own philosophical ideas of God. You say, "I can't believe in a God who does this or that." In other words, that's idolatry. You've constructed your own God. You've got wrong ideas and views of God. This is most common; I think you'll all agree.

And then going on to a third way in which our thinking is affected of necessity if we don't start with God and if God doesn't control the whole of the thinking is that we will have a false view of sin. And we will have a false view of man in sin. Now what is your definition of sin? I think you'll find that very often we tend to think of sin simply as something wrong which we do and that's all. Something which makes us unhappy afterwards and leads to remorse and so on. Or sin as a man letting himself down or failing to live up to his own moral code and ideas and so on. Or sin as a sort of a sickness and almost a disease. But it's thought of entirely in terms of man.

Whereas obviously in the Bible sin is always defined in terms of God. Sin is transgression of the law. Sin is disobedience to God. But if you don't start with God, your view of sin of necessity is going to be a wrong view. And in turn, as I say, under this heading, our view of man in sin is also false and defective. Now this is clear speaking generally of the Christian Church at the present time. Views of sin are discounted; even they don't like the whole notion. They say they can explain it away psychologically. And man in sin we are told must not be thought of as evil. It's a terrible thing we're told to do that. We mustn't do that. Man just is a bit ignorant. He still doesn't know as much as he should know and he's only got to be encouraged and so on. The whole view of man in sin is involved. The idea of man as a lost, condemned, hopeless sinner is not common today. And it's simply due to the fact that they haven't started with God.

In the same way, of course, it leads to a false view of the atonement. All these things hang together. That's the extraordinary thing about biblical truth and biblical teaching and biblical doctrine. It's a complete whole. And if you're seriously wrong at one point, it'll affect all the rest. And if you're wrong at this preliminary first point, fundamental postulate, well, you're going to be wrong right along the line. The result is that the ideas of the atonement today are so tragically removed from what you get in the Bible. They dislike this notion of sacrifice.

Let me give you an instance. I have it in my mind as it only happened to me this very week. The popular idea today of the atonement is this, as you know. How often has it been said by a certain type of popular preacher that what's happening on the cross is that the Lord Jesus Christ is saying there, "Though you do this to me, I still love you. Though you're even putting me to death, I still love you." Or they sometimes put it like this: that it's God the Father who's speaking and what he's saying on the cross is this: "Though you're murdering my only begotten Son, I still love you." That's the popular view of the atonement today, of the meaning of the death of our Lord upon the cross. Indeed, there is no atonement there, but they call it the doctrine of the atonement. And that once we realize this, it'll break our hearts and we'll just thank God for his love.

Now I say I had an experience which brought this to me very forcibly this week. I was preaching in a certain place and at the end of one of my services, a young curate came to me and spoke to me and showed me something. He is still continuing a certain amount of training and he'd had to write an essay for his examiner in his particular diocese on this whole question of the death of Christ and the doctrine of the atonement. And he'd done so. He was a good evangelical young man. But he showed me what his examiner had said. He had said this: that this idea that God punished our sins in the person of his own Son was not only wrong, not only immoral, he called it mere blasphemy.

Now there's only one explanation of that. The trouble with that examiner is his conception of God. He doesn't believe in the God of the Bible. He's an idolater. He's worshipping a God who has been created by the philosophers. And the philosopher's God is always a God of love and of nothing else. And so the doctrine of the atonement goes by the board.

And in the same way, with this wrong idea of God and the character of God, there's no need of regeneration. You just accept forgiveness and you go on eventually to heaven and all is well. We don't realize that because God is what God is, no man can possibly enjoy heaven unless he's been born again and has a new nature within him. So all that goes. And just to complete my list, you get in the same way wrong teachings with respect to holiness and sanctification.

You will find that such teaching again just concentrates on how I can be delivered from falling into this sin, how I can be given power to overcome this temptation. It's all manward, all directed at man. It's all designed to help me to overcome and to be victorious and so on. Never put in the context of God and my relationship to him. And so it is not the biblical teaching of holiness and of sanctification. There is nothing that is more vital than that we should start where the Bible starts with the doctrine of God. Always, in everything. God and the truth concerning him must be the controlling factor.

Well now, there it is hurriedly and you can fill it out for yourselves in detail with respect to doctrine. But come to the realm of practice. And here again we find that this failure always to start with God leads to certain inevitable consequences. Look at it, for instance, in the matter of evangelism. Evangelism, here's the first great activity of the Christian Church. Evangelism, preaching the gospel of salvation to men, calling them to repentance and of belief on the Lord Jesus Christ. How is evangelism to be conducted?

And all I want to try to show you is this: that if you don't start with verse 22 of the 11th chapter of the epistle to the Romans, your evangelism will show it. And it'll show it in what? Well, in a kind of general breeziness, bonhomie, jokes and laughter, bright and breezy, entertainments. That's what happens inevitably. Because you see you've got the wrong idea. You are going to do something for people. You want to get them to do certain things and you want to do certain things for them. You haven't started with God. And so the atmosphere may at times resemble a music hall much more than a Christian service. But this is designed, you see, to influence people and to get them and so on. It affects evangelism of necessity, and it does do so. There's no question about this. It's all due to a failure to start with verse 22 of Romans 11.

And then you see, it does in particular. It is what it is because its whole emphasis is upon man's need. That's how it starts. What does man need? Well, here's a man who's falling constantly into a particular sin. Right now then, I'm going to tell him how to be delivered from that. That's how you start. You start with man. You start with his need, his need of a friend, need of a happiness, need of joy, need of physical healing, and need of guidance. Always starting with man and man's needs. And then, of course, you're in competition with the other agencies and your whole attitude in evangelism is wrong.

The answer to all that is this: man's only need ultimately is to be reconciled to God. Nothing else. I think I was putting it here last Sunday night: these things are so much needed at the present time. You see if you start with men and men's needs, you will find there are a large number of people in this country today who are not interested in your evangelism. They say, "But I never do that. I've never been guilty of that sin." Highly moral, intellectual people living a good life and trying to help others. There they are sitting in their self-contained homes and they don't see any need of coming to Christ.

There's only one explanation. They know nothing about God. There is only one way to show that everybody needs Christ, and that is to hold them face to face with God. Then the whole world lieth guilty before God and there is none righteous, no not one. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. You see how it affects of necessity our whole approach to the unbeliever, the whole method in evangelism.

And so you get wrong appeals. You actually get evangelists sometimes saying, "Come, God needs you." Haven't you heard that? It's quite common. "God needs you." Or it's put in the form of the benefits of salvation. "How foolish you are. Come, if only you came this is what you'd get." And so the things are put before them. And the result is that you get people coming forward to give testimonies. I've heard it, I used to hear it very frequently at one time, and it was thought to be so wonderful.

I remember a man who used to get up and he always gave this same bit of testimony. He said, "I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ 25 years ago and I've never regretted it." How patronizing, how nice of him. "I've never regretted it." As if there was even a shadow of a possibility of ever regretting it. But you see, this is all because it doesn't start where evangelism and everything else should start. And of course when you get to the point of pressure being brought to bear upon people to take an immediate decision, it's still further wrong. No, no, this isn't New Testament evangelism. You don't find things like that in the New Testament. The one thing that matters is our relationship to God and our need to be reconciled to him.

That's why I've always said true evangelism is not interested in particular sins. Doesn't matter what the sin is. Everybody's a sinner and we mustn't particularize about these sins. It puts the emphasis in the wrong place. It creates a false interest. No, no, what we've got to realize according to the Bible is this: God and man, any man, and the need of reconciliation.

Well there it is in evangelism. But come on this practical point to something further. A thing that follows as I've just been hinting is this: that you get a false emphasis placed upon experiences of necessity. See, if you start with men and think of salvation as something that does something for men, well then of course testimonies help because here it is, a man gets up and says, "I was once like that, I'm no longer like that. This is how I am now. You can be the same." And he's only interested in being the same as you or in having a particular experience.

But you see that isn't the object of the preaching of the gospel. It isn't the object of the whole message of the Bible. It is to bring us to a knowledge of God. The Apostle Peter puts it in a memorable phrase. He says that our Lord died in order to bring us to God, to this knowledge of God. Don't misunderstand me. Thank God for every experience whatever form it takes. But you know the primary business of the gospel is not to give us experiences; it is to put us right with God.

And then as I say, these false ideas of holiness tend to come in and they come in in practice also. And we think of holiness in terms of deliverance from particular sins, but that's not its object. The object of holiness is to bring us into fellowship with God, that we may enjoy this fellowship, to prepare us for heaven. It must all be thought of always in terms of this fundamental relationship to God. Not some feeling you are going to get or not some experience you may get. No, no, but to give you this deep knowledge and to lead to a communion that goes on ever deeper so that eventually you shall have the beatific vision. "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God."

That's the object of holiness. Of course it includes deliverance from sins and so on, but you don't stop at that because that's negative. You're always looking back. You look forward, the vision of God. That's the motive for holiness and there is to be no other.

And then in turn you see, failure to start at the right place leads, as the apostle is emphasizing here in particular, to all sorts and forms of pride. Pride, this devastating thing. Pride in our own activities. Oh of course, and how clever and subtle we are. We say, "I'm not advertising, I'm saying I'm reporting this for the glory of God. Of course I'm not doing it that you may know what a wonderful preacher I am or what a great worker I am. No, no, I'm doing it all to the glory of God." All right. We're not ignorant of his devices. So you get men boasting of their activities, boasting of their holiness even, boasting of their experiences, calling attention always to themselves in some shape or form and not to God. This is how it works out in practice.

And let me sum it all up by putting it like this: what a failure to realize the truth of this 22nd verse in the 11th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans always leads to is a lack of godliness, a lack of the fear of the Lord. It leads to a lightness, a glibness, a superficiality, a self-contentment and finally this ugly boastfulness. My dear friends, am I not right when I say that this is the greatest trouble at the present time? We don't even use the word "godliness" as our fathers used to use it. How often do you hear about people talking about the fear of the Lord? But you see those are the terms that are used in the Bible.

Take for instance in that most lyrical book, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. I read this in chapter 9 and verse 31: "Then had the churches rest throughout all Judaea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied." Why is this so true of us today that there isn't much evidence of the fear of the Lord? We all must be bright and breezy, backslapping and happy and wonderful and laughing. My dear friends, it's not in the Bible. The fear of the Lord. You start with God. Godliness. These terms have gone out.

And I suggest to you that they've gone out because our thinking has gone wrong. We've forgotten this verse. We've forgotten the fundamental message of the whole of the Bible. We are so subjective and so interested in what I can get and what I've become and what I am and so on. The approach is so subjective and manward. But it leads inevitably to these consequences which are so evident amongst us, alas. God have mercy upon us.

Very well. Now there are the manifestations of this failure to behold. Now then, let's consider the answer to all that as given here by the apostle. And the way he puts it as I say is "Behold therefore." Don't forget this "therefore." That "therefore" means my doctrine, what I'm going to put before you, is obviously the conclusion you must arrive at if you can think clearly from what I've just been saying. "Behold therefore the goodness and the severity of God."

The answer to all our troubles is to know the truth about God and to believe it and to be subjected and subjugated to it and by it. Well, what is this and how do we obtain it? Well, the answer is we obtain it alone through God's own revelation. You've got to start with that. You mustn't start by saying, "Now I cannot believe that God can." The moment you say that you've left the Bible, you've left revelation, you're thinking yourself, you're making your own God, you're guilty of idolatry. And it's the only word to use about these scandalous books that are still being published, your "Honest to Gods" and "Down to Earths" and all the rest of them. It's sheer idolatry. It's what they think, not what God has revealed concerning himself. That is idolatry.

Very well, we start with this revelation. But, and this is the thing that the apostle emphasizes here and which we must emphasize: you must not only submit yourself utterly, absolutely to the revelation which God has so graciously been pleased to give of himself and record it in the Bible. You must not only accept that utterly and become a little child and stop your own philosophic speculations, but you must take the revelation as it is. What do I mean? Well, I mean that you must believe the word "and." That's all.

Most of our troubles arise in this realm because we forget the word "and." What do you mean says someone? Well, let me tell you what I mean. "Behold therefore the goodness of God" is the modern cry. But Paul says, "Behold therefore the goodness and." And it's because the modern world and the modern church is leaving out this "and" that things are as they are. And I see no hope of restoration until we've restored this "and." I don't see any hope of revival until people have got hold of this "and" in this verse. Then they'll be humble.

We've got to take the revelation as it is. If you pick and choose with revelation, you might as well be a philosopher because you still really are acting as a philosopher. The philosopher as such is not interested in the Bible at all. He starts with his own thoughts and works it out. You say, "Oh no, no, I believe the Bible." But do you believe the Bible? If you believe the Bible, you believe it as it is, you believe it as a whole. And you bring in this "and." You don't take one aspect only. You don't say, "I believe in the goodness of God." No, no, you've got to believe also in the severity of God. Goodness and severity.

Doesn't this search us? How much do we know about the severity of God? How much time have we given to a consideration of the severity of God? What do the terms mean? Well, goodness means of course kindness and compassion. What does severity mean? It means, this isn't my idea, this is the authorities are all agreed about this whether they're Christian or not, it means severe and exact justice. That's what severity means, severe and exact justice. It's exactly what the apostle has already told us in the 18th verse of the first chapter of this great epistle: "For the wrath of God" has already been revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men that hold down the truth in unrighteousness.

That's what severity means, this wrath of God. He repeats it here. It's everywhere; it's of course the message of the whole Bible. But this is the thing that men neglect. And alas, many men who say they believe the Bible, indeed it seems to me this is creeping even into evangelicalism. Only one side is represented: the goodness, the love of God, the mercy, the kindness and the compassion. And we're hearing less and less and less about the severity, the justice, the righteousness, the wrath of God upon sin. That's where all our troubles come from. That's why the church is as she is.

So I would put this point in the third instance in this way: that we've got to realize, says the apostle here, that God always acts as a whole. May God forgive me for using such an expression. I'm bound to use it in order to bring out this point. God always acts, if you prefer it, unanimously. When God acts, the whole of God acts. God doesn't act in parts. God acts always in the light of all his attributes and they're all in energy and in operation at exactly the same time. All the attributes of God are always displayed together. The goodness and the severity of God. And we must never isolate any one of the attributes of God. That's the modern heresy, that the love of God has been isolated from all the others. And it's a form of idolatry, it's a form of unbelief, it's a form of philosophy and speculation.

We must not only not isolate any one of the attributes of God, still less must we ever play one of the attributes against the others. That's equally bad. Often men have done that. They've played the righteousness of God against the mercy of God and the mercy of God against the righteousness of God. They've played the goodness of God against the severity and the severity. You mustn't play them against one another. Not only not isolate them, don't play them against one another. God is always and God is everything that he is. God is goodness, God is severity, God is love, God is holy, God is light. All these things are always true of God and they're always true at the same time. Goodness and severity, justice and mercy, righteousness and peace, holiness and love and so on.

And this is of course the very special point that the apostle is making here and is emphasizing. He said, "You know if you begin to extract certain things as it were out of the character of God, you'll soon be in trouble. You'll go astray. And it'll happen to you as it's happened to these Jews against whom you are now boasting." But you're travelling the same road. That's exactly the mistake they made. They said, "Oh, God has chosen us and because God has chosen us we're all right." They had forgotten the justice and the righteousness of God. They had forgotten what God had said to them through Moses recorded there in the book of Deuteronomy. "I'm leading you into this land; don't rest on your oars and say we're all right forever. If you don't keep on, then that's God."

Very well then, then to drive his argument right home, the apostle puts in the word "therefore." "Behold therefore." He says is it possible that there is anybody who isn't clear about this, that God is all these things and always all these things together and at once at the same time? He says for the thing is seen so plainly. How is it seen so plainly? Well, verse 21 gives us a part of the answer. Listen: if you think that God is only goodness, and if you think that because God in his goodness has ever chosen a people that therefore it doesn't matter what they do, they're always going to be safe and all right. That if you're a Christian you can play fast and loose with God and defy him and do things you know to be wrong, listen: "For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee."

This is a great demonstration in history of the character of God. It is one of the most amazing manifestations of God's justice and righteousness and of compassion, the way in which he's handled the Jews. You see it in the Old Testament. They thought that because they were his people, they could do what they liked. He soon showed them that they couldn't. He'd raise up enemies and attack them. God would actually do that. He caused them to be carried away into captivity. It was God who did all that. He punished his own people though they are his own people.

And he puts it in very strong and striking language at times in order to enforce this particular lesson. Listen to what he says to them through the prophet Ezekiel, for instance, writing remember in the captivity of Babylon in Ezekiel 14. Let me read two verses to you. Verse 14: "Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord God." He repeats it in verse 20: "Though Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness."

The Jews were always falling back on Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Noah, Daniel, Job and so on, as if that was going to. No, no, not with a righteous and a holy God. God cannot do that sort of thing. God cannot lie, God cannot contradict his own nature. And he's given this amazing demonstration of this in the history of the world, in his handling of his own people. Though they're his own people, he punishes them. And here at this point, he's actually as it were cast them off temporarily, plucked them off the tree, thrown them aside as branches that are useless and worthless.

But that isn't the most striking illustration in history of this principle. There is something that rises even above this. There in the Old Testament is the most amazing thing of all, and in this dealing of God with the Jews as regards the church, you get it as I say repeated. But if you really want to see the goodness and the severity of God being manifested together, do you know where you find it? On the cross on Calvary's hill.

And there of course the apostle has already been putting it before us. You remember the great statement in the third chapter verses 25 and 26: "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood." It's God who hath set it forth, it's God who put him there to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past through the forbearance of God. To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness. Listen: "That he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." Goodness and severity. He's always got to be just even when he's forgiving.

Justice and holiness are always there and they must always act together and they always do act together. That is why there is only one doctrine of the atonement, not only in the Bible but which is true to the biblical revelation concerning the character of God. God's love, let us never forget, is a holy love. I say it to the glory of God that God cannot forgive anybody by just saying "I'm going to forgive." He cannot. There was only one way in which God could forgive: it was by putting our sins on his Son and by punishing them in him. He poured out the vials of his wrath against sin on his own Son. He hath set him forth as a propitiation. God's done it. That's his severity working with his goodness, the two together.

It's a holy love, it is a righteous forgiveness. God must always be just, and he's never more just than when he justifies him who believes in Jesus. Oh, my dear friends, never try to separate the goodness and the severity of God. They're all there and they're all there together at the same time. Any other view of the atonement is hopelessly defective. You cannot understand the sacrificial teaching of the Old Testament, you don't know what John the Baptist means when he says, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." You don't know why Jesus set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem. You don't know why he said, "I have come for this hour. I'm not going to say save me from this hour; for this hour came I."

You don't understand what he meant when he said, "The Son of man is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." You don't understand why he was ever baptized. You don't understand indeed anything in connection with him, why he came into the world at all, because of the goodness and severity of God. It is because sin must be punished that the incarnation and all that followed had to take place. Goodness and severity, not one without the other. Don't separate them. Don't even put your emphasis on the severity alone without the goodness, otherwise you're putting yourself in hell, my friend. In your reaction against the glibness and the lightness of today, beware lest you go to the opposite extreme and say that God is only severe. Don't forget his goodness, don't forget his grace and mercy. They're all there together at the same time. Believe the revelation as it is.

Very well, shall I try and bring this aspect of the teaching to a conclusion tonight by putting it like this? The object of salvation always is to bring us to God and to a knowledge of him. The ultimate object of salvation is the glory of God, not primarily anything in man. The way of salvation is God's way of salvation, not man's. And whether man understands it or not, it is God's and that's what it is. The object of salvation is not just to give us forgiveness but to make us holy, to make us righteous. He "gave himself for us" as Paul to Titus in Titus 2:14, "that he might separate unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." That's the object of forgiveness, not an end in itself.

And therefore in the light of this, we must never presume on the love of God or on the forgiveness that we have received. If you presume on the fact that you're a Christian and a child of God, oh I tremble for you and what may happen to you. Complacency or self-satisfaction in the Christian life should be impossible. And it is impossible if you realize this. Whatever a man may have had by way of forgiveness, whatever experiences he may have had, whatever God may have enabled him to do, when he puts himself in the sight of God, who is he, what is he? Complacency, self-satisfaction, still less pride, is unthinkable.

This is the great antidote to such tendencies. Carelessness, thoughtlessness, glibness, and lightness are impossible in the light of this reminder of 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." "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." That's it. It is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Work it out with fear and trembling. Don't think of salvation in terms of yourself and your subjective states and conditions or your benefits. Think of it in terms of your relationship to him and remember his goodness and severity. Never presume. But walk circumspectly, walk carefully, walk with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.

Very well, as we are tempted of the devil along these lines, the word of the apostle to us all is this: "Behold therefore. Behold therefore the goodness and the severity of God."

O Lord our God, we come to thee again and we come, O Lord, to acknowledge our folly and our ignorance and our failure above all to believe thy word. Thou hast revealed it so plainly and clearly to us. Thou hast set before us this example of thine own people, the children of Israel. And yet, O Lord, we are ever prone and ready to fall into the self-same error and trap of the devil. God have mercy upon us.

We thank thee that with thee there is mercy that thou mayest be feared. Keep us ever, we pray thee, in the knowledge of these things and give us all a heartfelt desire to live only to thy glory and praise and honor. Whatever may happen to us, whatever men may do with us, whatever the world, the flesh, the devil and hell should do with us, give us, O Lord, a single eye to thy glory and to thy praise. Let nothing please nor pain us apart, O Lord, from thee.

And now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship and the communion of the Holy Spirit abide and continue with us now this night throughout the remainder of this short, uncertain earthly life and pilgrimage and until we shall see God. Amen.