For all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God and are justified freely by his grace. Romans 3:23+

If you only understand one thing from the Bible, this should be it. We stand guilty before God – when we measure ourselves against his law we all fall flat. The good news then is that God justifies us (counts us sinless before him) by faith in the blood of Jesus Christ who died for our sins. This is the only way to be saved – because it does not matter how good we think we have been, we are still unrighteous and condemned to hell if measured by our deeds.

Romans 3:21-25
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.

We continue our discussion of the seeming contradiction between total depravity (that doctrine which expresses that fallen man is unwilling and unable to do any good work apart from the grace of God) and the common experience of seeing good done amongst those who have no faith in the living God.

In the first section, we identified that there is always a sinful motivation behind every work which appears to be good apart from faith, for the purpose of the work is never the glorification of God – which is to say, it is not with the intention that good be done but that good be done for personal reason or benefit. We established that in these cases, the author of the good is God, but the author of the evil is man.

In this section, the question shifts to whether it is a fact of Biblical pedigree that God works through the wicked and evil acts of man to achieve the ends of good, or if it is only by chance that good occurs out of evil. We will do this by discussing a number of passages from the Bible to show how it is that God has so designed things that an evil and wicked man in his wrongdoing might bring about good not through repentance and faith but through continuance in sin.

God so arranges matters so that he authors good even through acts of human wickedness

In the book of Isaiah we encounter God revealing his plan to use the sinfulness of a wicked man to achieve a military victory. The man in question is the Rabshakeh, or field-commander, of the King of Assyria who was ready to invade Judah. This is the design God revealed through Isaiah to King Hezekiah of Judah “Behold, I will put a spirit in him, so that he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land, and I will make him fall by the sword in his own land” (Isaiah 37:7). Indeed, “the Rabshakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria fighting against Libnah, for he had heard that the king had left Lachish”, thus in his wicked zeal for military conquest was he led away – it was his wish to support his evil king in the work of invasion and subjugation which kept him from Judah. That there was good done is undeniable, for Judah was protected and her prayers answered, yet that good was not on the part of the man who decided to do it – for he thought only of evil conquest and never of bringing relief to Judah.

Perhaps one of the most memorable accounts of God’s design to bring about good through the pure evil of man is that of Joseph, sold into slavery to Egypt by his very own brothers out of deep jealousy and greed. Yet, with what words does Joseph comfort them when at last he reveals himself as so powerful a person in Egypt? Truly, Joseph said to them, “as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20). It was truly good to save so many from famine, and to glorify God so greatly, and yet we can in no means imagine that Joseph’s brothers had any intention other than the most terrible of evils when they sold him into slavery. We see here again that God does act to use the evil of man to produce good effect, as testified by scripture.

More than four centuries later, Moses was to bring Israel out of Egypt again, which by time the country had become a place of the most horrific slavery. Now, we know that it was with faith that Moses acted and he did so through the grace of God; yet let us look to the effect of the great evil within Egypt. What has the effect of this brutal treatment and enslavement been throughout history and even until today? Surely, it is not less than that which Moses expresses in “Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the LORD brought you out from this place” (Exodus 13:3). The power of Egypt and the wicked enslavement of Israel stands to demonstrate in the most vivid way the great power of God which exceeds the full power of the greatest nation of that time, and the love of God which brought Israel from the depths of human bondage to the heights of freedom under God. No more notable action is recorded between the time of Noah and the time of Christ than this great deliverance, and it stands above all else to glorify God and as a witness to his name amongst all generations. So, the great blessing of the power of the Lord is revealed not by the evil acts, but in response to the evil acts; the great good of the deliverance being in no way attributable to Egypt for causing the need for exodus but only to God himself.

Indeed, the destruction of evildoers as a means to glorify God is not an isolated theme. For example, Paul writes in Romans 9:22, “what if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction”. Here we gain a glimpse into God’s eternal decrees, and their purpose. First, the wickedness of men fitted to destruction, and secondly that the purpose of his longsuffering is to show his wrath and to make his power known. Here we discuss the reprobate, to whom we can certainly attribute no good works; but yet there is good produced – for through them God will reveal some of his own power and glory. To this we find agreement from Proverbs 16:4 which states that “The LORD has made everything for its purpose,
even the wicked for the day of trouble”; so even the reprobate have a purpose to fulfill for God, and yet their fate verifies immediately that the good work of achieving this purpose (that God be glorified) is not a good work of their own authorship.

Still further, those who work great evil bring glory to God in a most notable way, should God through his grace deliver them and bring them to faith. Take the example of St. Paul himself – he writes to the Galatians of the effect of his testimony of deliverance that ‘they only were hearing it said, “He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” And they glorified God because of me.’ (Galatians 1:23). If God is glorified, then good is done, and yet the cause for this glorification is Paul’s conversion from wicked persecutor of the church to dedicated preacher of the Gospel and apostle to the Gentiles. Nobody imagines that the then Saul did a good work in becoming a wicked persecutor! Although these evil deeds were used by God that He might be glorified, yet those evil deeds remain evil. The author of the evil works remains Saul, the author of the good which came from them is unambiguously God alone.

At length then, we arrive at the most powerful of all events. Nowhere in history is there a more powerful example of God using pure evil and wickedness to bring about good than in the cross of Christ. The crucifixion of Christ came to pass in such a way that evil was committed by all classes of man; Roman and Jew, Priest and Peasant, Governor and Governed, King and Solider, Disciple and Doubter. Never was such an injustice before committed as the putting to death of the Son of God, that is, God himself. Such an evil had the world never committed beforehand, even before the time of Noah or at any time since. Yet, such good had the world never seen either; for it was through the cross that we are reconciled to God through the forgiveness of sin.

No man defended Christ, for by the end all of them had turned out of the way, even Peter denied him. No man can claim to have been the author in any way of the good of the cross, although so many men contributed to the work of the cross. What man contributed to the cross was pure wickedness, and so the good of the cross is entirely and undeniably the work of God. As Peter said to the men of that day, “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23). Yet, even as it came to the time of the greatest of evil and men were plotting the very event, Christ looked to the good, as he declared “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23).

I hope that we have, through discussing this selection of events, demonstrated that God does work through the evil that man designs to bring about the good which God designs. If it were alleged that this is a small selection of events and not representative of the whole of the Biblical record, the point would be well conceded. Whilst we have established that such a means of action exists by showing that it is used, we have not discussed the frequency or nature of its use or the application of this doctrine to us today.

Therefore, in the third and final part of this series, we will discuss the doctrine often termed ‘common restraining grace’ in more detail as we investigate ways in which God oftentimes acts to restrain fallen and faithless man from causing evil despite man’s continued and consistent design to cause evil. In it, by referring to Biblical texts, we will tie together our inability to do good apart from faith and the work of God in bringing forth good (even from evil) to discuss whether (and if so how) God presently intervenes in the world even today.

We sometimes feel it unfair to forgive, and I think in many ways this feeling is right; it is unfair to forgive. When you forgive someone who has wronged you, then on an economic level you are coming out at a loss. Someone has wronged you, and you have been content to remain wronged. This is true for emotional wrongs just as much as physical acts.

If it’s unfair, then it follows that we don’t forgive because it is fair; rather, we forgive in spite of it being unfair. It is to be expected that we should not want to forgive others, for we do not wish to be unfair to ourselves. So, if we come to terms with the idea of forgiveness being essentially and fundamentally unfair then I suggest it becomes easier to think about the true reasons, motivations and limitations for forgiveness.

Often-times we delay forgiveness. We put off forgiving others until we come to a decision that the matter is so far past, better explained, and half-forgotten, so that it somehow feels easier to forgive. It’s harder to forgive when the wound is fresh; we feel that the cost is too high, that to forgive too much too soon would be too hard or too charitable for us.

Now, the root of forgiveness is love; to forgive someone we do not want to forgive is a pure, certain and direct statement of love. Yet, more than that it is a gloriously and mightily unfair act of love. To forgive in opposition to our own knowledge of what is just and fair is to make a real and costly sacrifice, to deny ourselves retribution and vengeance for the sake of the love we have for our fellow men.

The question then is not how we might forgive others, but where we might look to find that great love, to fill our hearts until they overflow with charity. The more perfectly we love, the more perfectly we will forgive, not through our own work but through the work of that love which is within us.

This, interestingly, is something that differentiates Christianity from the major religions; for it is this very story, a history of a love so deep that it could not bear to see just judgement on mankind. It is an account of a sacrifice so great and so very deeply unfair that not just one person was forgiven, but the sins of the whole world. The Gospel of John puts it in this very simple way “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son”. Is it possible for there to be an act more unfair than for Jesus Christ to be rejected, persecuted, beaten, mocked and put to death by hanging on a cross amongst thieves?

God could have stopped what happened at Golgotha at any time. God could have saved Jesus and spared him from death. It would have been fair and just to send angels to defend him. He didn’t; and that he didn’t was for you and for me, because he loved us so much that he was willing to pay such a price to achieve our forgiveness. God, our perfect judge, just punisher, and omnipotent creator came to earth as man to be judged unfairly, punished wickedly and destroyed even to death so that he could take onto himself the punishment and judgement of our sins. What Jesus did on the cross was to pay the greatest price of the greatest love. Jesus said “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep”; and this was his intention from the very beginning.

The Prophet Isaiah, writing around seven hundred years before Jesus was born, wrote movingly about what Jesus was to do for mankind. I’ve included an extract from Isaiah 53 below, although the whole chapter is deeply meaningful:

He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.

Here then, at the foot of a Roman cross, do we find that deep and pure love, that perfect charity from which comes true, perfect, and very very unfair forgiveness. Here then, in the midst of perfect love do we find perfect forgiveness. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him (John 3:16-17).

Perhaps when we feel we don’t want to forgive others, or want to to put it off until it seems less of a challenge, we might do well to remember the deep love that God has for us, that whilst we were yet sinners, he died for us (Romans 5:8). How dreadfully unfair, how terribly costly, how very humiliating – but yet, how gracious, how merciful and how loving – that God who is the very definition of righteousness should sacrifice so much for desperate sinners such as us. God didn’t wait until our sins were half-forgotten, nor did he wait for us to first apologise and mend our ways; rather he saved us when we did not seek him and in spite of our hatred and rejection of him.

Forgiveness then is not a matter of difficulty, but a matter of love. To forgive one another is never wrong, but as we’ve discussed, it is usually deeply unfair. But, let us rejoice in this very unfairness, for it is in this unfairness that we reflect the glow of the love our creator has for all mankind, that love that drove God to commit the most unfair act of all eternity to take away the sin of the world.