From Grace Immanuel Reformed Baptist Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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THAT OUR RESPONSES IN THIS LIFE TOWARD EITHER THE WICKED, OR THE RIGHTEOUS WHO ARE STRUGGLING WITH SIN, MAY EVER CEASE TO REFLECT THE GRACE OF THE GOSPEL.
Notice first of all the impact which the grace of the Gospel should have upon our attitude toward:
1. The wicked. Although this reality has been alluded to and mentioned in various ways already during our study, it is vitally important that we underscore it – especially when we are talking about loathing the wicked around us with a detesting hatred. Yes, we are to take God’s side and abhor the wicked and their wickedness.
And yes, we should desire the judgment of the impenitent wicked. But we must also never forget that other way which God has provided by which the wicked may cease to trouble the righteous and the earth with their wickedness. As we have seen, there is a gracious path by which the responses of the hearts of those of us who love God may righteously do an about face and begin to delight in the very same individuals toward whom we had previously felt abhorrence and loathing. It’s the same path which all of us who know the Lord have already traveled so that we ourselves have changed from being the objects of God’s loathing hatred to being objects of His delighting love. It is the path of repentance from one’s sin, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the path of the Gospel of God’s grace, a path freely offered to all men if they will but respond and follow Christ (Hosea 14:1-4).
In light of this reality, the possibilities – the potentialities – of the grace of the powerful Gospel should permeate and regulate all our despising of the wicked. We should earnestly and hopefully labor with all our might to see every man brought to embrace that gracious Gospel. An abhorrence of the wicked does not call us to isolate ourselves totally from them in a sort of Christian ghetto. Rather, we should be willing to interact with and rub shoulders with wicked men, women and children – not in order to cave in and compromise our lives in an effort to make them our closest companions – but even as Christ did, eating dinner with publicans and sinners, in order to draw them to Christ by our firm stand for the Lord through our lives and our words. For again, the reality is that we who yet walk upon the earth do not know the eternal decrees of God. Thus we do not know who among the presently wicked men upon the earth will stay that way, and who will be changed by the grace of God through the Gospel of God’s undeserved, unearned, free favor. That very uncertainty, the freeness and sincerity of Christ’s offer of Himself to sinners, and our abhorrence of wicked men and deeds should drive us to rescue lost sinners around us from the hellish-burning with fear. For after all, is that not what others have done for us? Is that not what the Lord has done to those of us who were once a stench in His nostrils?
How can we do any less as debtors to the grace of God?
To those of you who yet remain among the wicked there is a word from what we have seen. We who love God do loathingly hate you. We cannot help but do so for the God we love does the same. Contrary to the first of the so-called “Four Spiritual Laws” so popular among evangelicals a number of years ago – “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life”(22) – God in a real sense hates you and has a horrible plan for your life if you continue as you are. But that does not mean that we have totally rejected you and want to have nothing to do with you. Quite the contrary. We want you to stop being wicked. We long that you would stop being God’s enemy and hating God. We greatly desire to be able to delight in you as a brother in the spiritual family of God.
Do not turn a deaf ear to us. There is good news! Christ has died for sinners like you. He came to the earth to seek and to save those who like you are lost. There is hope. Things can be different. Go to Christ now and be done with your rebellion and plead for mercy. He will receive you, for He has declared, “. . . the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out” (John 6:37b).
In addition to wicked men, the grace of the Gospel should also impact upon our responses toward:
2. Struggling, sinning brothers and sisters in Christ. There is another way in which we must not fail to remember the grace of the Gospel when it comes to the love of delight and hatred of abhorrence. We have seen that there rightly are differing degrees of delighting love toward the righteous depending upon the degree to which they reflect the character and will of God. Christ delighted in some of His followers – Mary, Martha and Lazarus, and the Apostle John – more than others. We will rightly at times wrestle with being able to delight very much in the brother in Christ who is presently struggling and seemingly caving in to sin in his life.
However, in our dealings with the struggling, sinning brother we must likewise not forget the grace of God in the Gospel. May I remind you of a fact regarding the delighting love of God toward His children which we noted earlier? Compare the words of John 14:21 & 23 with those of John 16:27 and 17:6:
14:21 `He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.’. .
23 Jesus answered and said to him, `If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.’
16:27 `for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God.’
17:6 `I have manifested Your name to the men whom You have given Me out of the world. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.’
The Lord Jesus clearly established here that He and the Father delightingly love with a responsive love those who love them, and have and keep their word. But then the Lord Jesus went on to declare that the Apostles to whom He spoke in that upper room did indeed love Christ and indeed did keep the Word of the Father. Yet of whom was He speaking? Of those who only shortly before had been squabbling over who would be greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Luke 22:24). Of those who would slumber while our Lord agonized in the Garden (Matthew 26:40; 43; 45). And of those who would flee when their Lord was arrested (Matthew 26:56). Yet of these the Lord Jesus said that they loved Him and kept the Word of the Father. How our Lord graciously saw a lot where there seemed to be so little in His true children.
As we saw before, this example of our Lord is a great comfort to the true child of God regarding his own case.
The Lord is not a nit-picky perfectionist who can never be satisfied with His children. He is an exceedingly gracious Lord to follow. But there is a further application of this.
Our Lord’s response should be imitated by us in the way in which we view and respond to our brethren struggling with their sin. If you ask, “How could the Lord Jesus speak so approvingly of such faulty disciples?”, there can only be one response ultimately regarding this Savior who is perfectly just and true and righteous. It was the grace of the Gospel. By God’s grace, in many ways these disciples did actually love Christ and obey His commands from the heart. However, this aspect of God’s grace cannot fully explain Christ’s words here. We must also keep before us the further fact that for those who have truly cast their souls and their all upon Christ in faith, and pled for the forgiveness of their sins, there has been the crediting of the perfect righteousness of Christ to their bankrupt moral account before God so that they are declared and treated as righteous before Him.
The gracious evaluation and words of our Lord in John’s Gospel call us to likewise graciously deal with our true brethren even while we are grieved and vexed and yes, abhorred, over the vileness yet appearing in their lives.
If there is good reason to believe that they are true Christians, then we like our Lord should look with compassion on many infirmities, and pass by many defects in the matter of delighting in them as the righteous. For after all, do they not have to do the same toward us. Did not even the Martha whom Jesus specially loved sin in carnal complaining and anxiety while she was so busy serving her Lord? Did not even the specially beloved Apostle John evidently at least initially flee the scene in fear and unbelief when the Lord Jesus was arrested? How can any of us say we have offended less?
In conclusion, a love of delight for the righteous, and a hatred of abhorrence toward the wicked do not mean that our responses in this life may ever cease to reflect the grace of the Gospel – whether toward the wicked or the struggling saint. Closely-related is a final reality which the love of delight and hatred of abhorrence do not mean.
They do not mean:
THAT OUR DUTY TO IMITATE THE OTHER DIMENSIONS OR DEGREES OF GOD’S LOVE FOR MEN ARE IN ANY WAY CANCELED OUT OR NEGATED.
Our duty to manifest a conditional love of delight in the righteous alone especially does not in any way cancel out our duty to manifest an unconditional common or general love of benevolence to all men whether righteous or wicked. We dare not make God’s Word oppose itself in this way, for the living God cannot lie or contradict Himself. All forms of our biblical duty to love our fellow men are always in force as long as we live in this present sin-cursed earth, even if it seems difficult to understand how all together can consistently be our duty, which brings us to a final matter of:
22. Have You Heard of the Four Spiritual Laws? (San Bernardino, CA: Campus Crusade for Christ International, 1965).
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(to be continued)
