37. God the Supreme Public Magistrate

God the Supreme Public Magistrate

God is not the Supreme Private Being of the universe, but the Supreme Public Magistrate, and so all our relations to Him are relations through Him to the welfare of every other moral being in existence. This must be so, for the only relations possible with God are relations with Him in Person, and the fundamental thing in His Person is a life of such a nature that its expression is through a character of holiness and love, and the active expression of His character is His will, and His will is the law of His moral government, and His government has the welfare of the whole moral universe as its object.

There can therefore be no private relations with God that are not also public and universal. David saw this when he cried: “Against thee, thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight” (Psalms 51:4), though his sin was against human beings living on this earth. No ruler may forgive in his public office as his subjects may forgive in their private relations. And so God cannot deal with our sin against Him, which is also against His universe, as He asks us to deal with wrongs against one another, and which affect our private relations only. When we forgive one another it is a matter of private adjustment to a fellow being. But when God forgives us, it is a matter of public adjustment to the whole moral universe. Such a forgiveness as Priestley suggests would completely wipe out the distinction between right and wrong, and thus wreck all moral values. If God forgives a sinner at all, it must be on a far different basis from this. What must it be? The Bible tells us that God deals with sin on the basis of the death of Christ. Is this statement to be considered true because it is in the Bible, or is it in the Bible because it is true? Was the death of Christ such a strange thing that it had no essential relation to the forgiveness of sin, or does the reason for it lie back in that inescapable nature of things which required the infinite suffering of the cross before forgiveness was possible? If Christ had to die before our sin could be dealt with in mercy, why was it? If the unspeakable tragedy of the cross was necessary before God could forgive the sinner, what is the reason? How is it possible for the death of God’s Son to open a way for salvation which could not have been opened in some other way? How does the death of Christ save us?

These questions are the most profound that ever occupied human thought, and their full answer, if it can be found, contains the solution of every moral problem whatsoever. And so it is of infinite importance that we refuse all answers that do not lie back in those axiomatic and self-evident first truths that are, because whatever is brought forward to deny or disprove them is obviously untrue. So we find such truths as these in the Word of God because they are true, for that Book tells nothing but the truth. The speculations of science which are nothing but philosophic guesses are of no use in such a problem as this, and neither is an arbitrary dogmatism that has no harmony either with Scripture, or with logic and reason. But somewhere there is a reason why for the death of Christ, which is in such perfect harmony with what both the nature of a holy God and the needs of sinful man demand, that it was true before the Bible was ever written or even the world began, and would continue to be true though every Bible should be destroyed and the world should pass away. And that reason why, when it is found, must not only be a perfect foundation for the simplest faith, but also a complete answer to the deepest demands of reason. As we now move forward to find the answer to these profound questions, it must not be forgotten that both justice, which is love acting on behalf of the sinless, and mercy, through which love acts on behalf of the sinful, must be in continuous and unabated action in the presence of sin. In the nature of things, therefore, the equal exercise at all times of both justice and mercy creates a two-fold problem. First, how can the demands of justice be met without denying the demands of mercy? And again, how can the demands of mercy be satisfied without denying the demands of justice? This is the very heart of the problem that must be solved in any program of salvation for the sinful. The statement that justice is love acting on behalf of the sinless may be difficult to see, at first thought. But the perfect correctness of this statement will appear as we inquire into the nature and enforcement of justice, and then follow with an unfolding of the nature and demands of mercy.