46. The Nature of Mercy
The Nature of Mercy
Chapter VI Our thinking thus far has brought us to the inescapable conclusion that it is God’s love acting as justice which demands the execution of the penalty on sin. Also that it is that same love acting as mercy which equally demands the rescue of the sinner from that penalty. And so our thought is faced with the problem of the salvation of those already condemned, and who therefore have nothing ahead of them but the execution of the penalty. When we try to think our way back, therefore, to that place where the work of such a salvation must begin, we are again compelled to commence with—“In the beginning, God” (Genesis 1:1). Just as the protection of the sinless from the peril of sin must begin with and be accomplished by God, so also with the salvation of the sinful from the penalty on sin.
Then as we ask where, in the Being of God, the movement for such a salvation must begin, it is obvious that it must originate in His holy love, that final active moral attribute which expresses all His relations with the moral beings in His universe. For out of this grows His attitude of love as justice on behalf of the sinless, and also His attitude of love as mercy toward the sinful. As our thought penetrates sufficiently into the depths of the moral situation created by sin so that its unspeakable crime begins to dawn upon us, we become humiliated, shocked, overwhelmed, at last fairly dazed beyond all power of expression, to find that sin—our sin, was of such a nature as to threaten to wrench God’s love in twain, and literally break His heart! For its tendency was to set His justice and His mercy each to demanding of the other what neither could give, thus threatening an antinomy that would have reached to the very depths of the divine Being, and which, if the problem of sin could not be met in a way to satisfy both justice and mercy, must tear His love asunder. For justice, demanding that sin’s penalty be executed, and mercy equally demanding that it be set aside, could neither one abate its demands one iota. For then love in one direction or the other would have been denied expression, and an omnipotent God thwarted, and such a thing could never be.
What a situation! When the arrow of sin sped out into the everywhere from the heart of man, it did not stop until it had reached to the very heart of God, threatening to set up such a perfect antagonism between the demands of His love for the sinless, and the demands of that same love for the sinful, that the final success of sin must have meant a brokenhearted God forever, with the perfect and unhindered flow of His love rendered eternally impossible.