But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say?
Man’s sin and God’s righteousness
1. Our unrighteousness may possibly commend the righteousness of God.
2. This result is involuntary, not meritorious.
3. Hence to suppose that sin is less punishable because good follows is a grievous error.
4. To persist in sin that good may come, is positively blasphemous and wicked.
5. Therefore God will righteously punish those who do so. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
Man’s sin and God’s righteousness
1. Man’s sin has occasioned the displays of God’s righteousness.
2. Does not thereby lose its enormity.
3. Must, if not repented of, be avenged.
4. Otherwise all righteous judgment must cease. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
Is God unrighteous that taketh vengeance? (text, and Genesis 18:25).--
God’s attitude towards sin
1. God makes the wickedness and unbelief of men subservient to His glory.
2. Holds them responsible for their sins, notwithstanding the result.
3. Teaches that the morality of an action depends not upon the consequences of it, but upon its agreement or disagreement with His law.
4. Condemns the slanderous importation that the gospel sanctions the principle of doing evil that good may come. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
God’s attitude towards sin
He--
1. Overrules it;
2. Judges it;
3. Utterly condemns it. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
The heart’s rest in the righteousness of God
Thousands of years part those two questions, yet in substance they are the same. The first occurs in a tender, sublime intercession; the second in a hard, fiery argumentation. Note--
I. That both refer to the retributive providence of God as declared in particular and decisive acts. Both acts were determined by the moral conditions of men, though their effects operated in different spheres. One was temporal, the other a spiritual judgment.
1. Let us try and get their position. Think of Abraham when God divulged to him tits appalling purpose. Think of Paul writing with the full knowledge that God had placed Israel under a ban. In different ways these two men were bidden look into the treasure house of Divine wrath. They had to stand on the shadowed side of the providence of God. And the hand of Him they knew as love placed them there.
2. Both felt the moral pressure upon their reason and conscience, and were compelled to ask, Is it right for God to do this? One tried to turn judgment aside, so forcibly did the difficulty press itself home. Paul’s perplexities were more intricate, and his endeavour to extricate his reason and conscience is one great wrestling with the Spirit of Truth.
3. Now, looking into these difficulties of Abraham and Paul, do we not recognise our own? Our thoughts and feeling form themselves, almost without our will, into the old interrogation, “Wilt Thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?” Are we not ready to expostulate, “That be far from Thee to do after this manner”? In how many sweeping calamities the righteous are slain with the wicked. Earthquake, storm, flood, fire, make no elections; they take any and all alike. In a commercial crisis often some of the best men are among the wreckage, ignominiously huddled with the rogues. Where is the answer to this? I do not find one in the Old Testament narrative. There is one streak of light. Lot was saved. Yet, in view of the after history, one is ready to ask, Why? And if we take Paul’s questions of sin, responsibility, and punishment, our bafflings are, if anything, increased. The impenetrable facts are with us. The fact of sin: what theologians call original sin, and men of science heredity. Millions are born castaways, come into the world under wrath. What about their responsibility? What about their destiny?
II. The ultimate truth upon which those who put them relied for a solution. God did not leave them without answer; nor has He left us without one. Their answer is ours, for the Bible is for all time. We shall find our answer in the questions themselves; for they contain a truth quite equal to the removal of doubts, though not of difficulties.
1. Abraham and Paul grasped the eternal righteousness of God. That became a formulated conception of God’s character. Reason and conscience built on it, and could not he shaken. It is for us to make that our own. Before we pass judgment, or seek to form a judgment on any section of human history, or any problem of human life and destiny, let us take fast hold of the manifested truth--God is righteous. That is larger than the statement--God does righteously. It means more than He does no wrong things. It means, He cannot do a wrong thing. And then, moreover, His wisdom is such that He cannot commit a blunder.
2. These questions not only express a truth of God’s character, but also the moral requisition of the creature consciousness. Reason and conscience both demand that the Judge of all the earth shall be righteous. And God has not so constituted man that he may mock Him. And notice in connection with this that “The Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?” Does not that look as if God craved the sympathy and approval of man? He would not have those intuitive demands which He has put into souls violated by deeds of His. The Creator would be justified in the eyes of His creature. God does not rebuke the demand that He shall do right. And when we fully apprehend, as did these men, that God is righteous, every special act of His will be tried by that conclusion. The thorniest questions that can ever arise must have their answers in the righteousness of God.
III. The profound moral acquiescence in the Divine will which the texts reveal. The harassed reason of patriarch and apostle found rest in the eternal righteousness of God.
1. We must always start there, and take it as our lamp to light our feet along winding and perilous paths, and seldom shall we stumble or lose our way. It is not a truth for reflection alone, but for practical guidance, and should command our acquiescence in the Divine will.
2. Not that we are to cease inquiry. Only we should question with faith in our hearts; especially the faith that God is righteous.
3. The acquiescence spoken of does not mean unconcern as to the fate of men. It does not mean indifference to sin and sorrow, and suffering and destiny. Abraham cared. How he pleaded! Clearly we are now amid the overwhelming mysteries of moral government. We see that men may become so bad that nothing is left, even for God, but a determining stroke of wrath. But we must not be content to leave men to their doom. There must be no willingness that they should perish. God’s will is that they should be saved. Paul said, “I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart concerning reprobated Israel.” (W. Hubbard.)
God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world?--
God’s righteousness and future judgment
God’s righteousness--
I. Is the basis of the hope of future judgment. Things are not right now if viewed from a strictly temporal standpoint; for the good often get the worst of it, and the bad the best of it. The hope that these inequalities will be adjusted at the Judgment has been the comfort and mainstay of God’s saints under both dispensations.
II. Necessitates this judgment.
1. If the world’s affairs are administered by a Righteous Governor, then the things that are now manifestly wrong must at some period be put right, and the date assigned by the Righteous Governor of the world is the Day of Judgment.
2. Having assigned that date, God’s righteousness pledged Him to keep it. God is, so to speak, committed to it, and He is not “the son of man that He should repent.”
III. Will govern its decisions. Men will be judged equitably. Judicial decisions are now often inequitable--because some legal technicality stands in the way; or because all the facts are not forthcoming, or some of them are not placed in their true light; or because the eloquence of the advocate, or something about the accused, influences the jury. But then the awards will be according to the merits of the case, all the circumstances of which will be naked and open. Conclusion: We may take comfort from this doctrine--
1. Amid all the perplexities of the present. We do not estimate things by their momentary appearance, nor a man by a solitary action. We must therefore estimate God and His procedure comprehensively. He has all eternity to work in, and when we take the larger view we shall acknowledge that the Judge of all the earth will do right.
2. Amid all the perplexities concerning the future. Whatever becomes of the wicked the Judge of all the earth will do right. (J. W. Burn.)
Justice and judgment
The following story is told of Judge Gray, now in the United States Supreme Court:--A man was brought before him who was justly charged with being an offender of the meanest sort. Through some technicality the judge was obliged honourably to discharge him, but as he did so he chose the time to say what he thought of the matter. “I believe you guilty,” he said, “and would wish to condemn you severely, but through a petty technicality I am obliged to discharge you. I know you are guilty, and so do you; and I wish you to remember that you will some day pass before a better and a wiser Judge, when you will be dealt with according to justice, and not according to law.”
The standard of God’s justice
In the reign of King Edward the First there was much abuse in the traffic of all sorts of drapery, much wrong done betwixt man and man by reason of the diversity of their measures, every man measuring his cloth by his own yard, which the king perceiving, being a goodly proper man, took a long stick in his hand, and having taken the length of his own arm, made proclamation through the kingdom, that ever after the length of that stick should be the measure to measure by, and no other. Thus God’s justice is nothing else but a conformity to His being, the pleasure of His wilt; so that the counsel of His will is the standard of His justice, whereunto all men should regulate themselves as well in commutative as distributive justice, and so much the more righteous than his neighbour shall every man appear, by how much he is proximate in this rule, and less righteous as he is the more remote. (J. Spencer.)