“Pray for mercy in your head, mercy in your heart, mercy as a parent, mercy with your spouse, mercy in your session, mercy in the flock, mercy in your outreach, mercy in your speech, mercy in your giving, mercy with the poor, mercy with the sinner – let your life be a sponge soaked in the holy water of the mercy of God.”

An Offer Too Good To Refuse

What a wonderful surprise! That’s was my reaction to the very kind and generous offer made by one of the older members of my congregation. He is a retired missionary who possesses a deep theological knowledge. I couldn’t believe my ears: ‘Take any books you like – you can have first pick from my library!” So on the appointed day, and at a pre-arranged time, I went round to my friend, with some sturdy cardboard boxes, and filled my car boot [trunk] with dozens of weighty tomes.

The Secret Workings of Providence

This all happened around the time when we recently moved house, so half of my library is still in boxes. This explains why I haven’t had much time to survey the contents properly or the leisure to digest their accumulated wisdom. Yet, as providence would have it, I recently read a quotation from Thomas Goodwin in a Banner of Truth magazine (it was either imbedded in a magazine article or just the bare quote and nothing else). The quotation was something along the lines of (my heavy paraphrase) “Salvation will not be withheld from any penitent sinner who comes to God truly believing that the Lord is full of mercy.”

Isn’t is just marvellous the way God works in sovereign grace – very quietly & gently, a seed was planted in my heart, which stirred this simple thought: ‘As soon as I get a moment, I need to read Volume 8 of Thomas Goodwin’s ‘Works’ and find out a little more.’

Rich Pickings From The Library

Now, if I can press the rewind button, and return to my library appointment, I had a sense of mild surprise, when I started picking through his books. Among other volumes, I noted, was (you’ve probably by now guessed) Volume 8 of Thomas Goodwin on ‘Justifying Faith.’ All this took place 6 or 7 months ago. When I brought the volume home, I set it near the phone, one of a number of ‘faithful friends’, I mused, that I must not forget or fail to consult.

Dusting Down The Puritans – Finally!

There Goodwin sat, an old, neglected, friend, dust-gathering and yet-to-be-leafed-through. There was a fitful start, about 3 weeks ago, when I read the opening chapter: ‘Great!’ I thought that day ‘as I squinted at the print’ [8 font and my eyesight is not that great]; ‘This won’t be a very easy read’, but I sensed from the start, the Banner quotation was not misplaced. Yet as time was marching on, back went Goodwin to his shelf, with a bookmark now in place. He sat, patiently waiting, alone and forlorn, till yesterday morning, when I picked him up again.

Happy Days!

Frankly, the venerable Mr G is, spiritually speaking, blowing my socks off!

‘O.K., O.K., you’ve got me interested now, so tell me a little more about this ancient author! ‘What, then,’ you ask ‘is Volume 8 of T.G. about?’ I haven’t read it all yet, we’ve just begun the conversation. But thus far, so good – Book One of this Volume 8, rather fascinatingly I think [I don’t think I would have started a treatise on justifying faith here but in Psalms, Romans or Galatians], is an extended, in-depth, fulsome, exposition of Exodus 34.6-7:

“The LORD passed before Him [Moses] and proclaimed ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

It is not until p.139 that he rounds off the exposition with application or uses. With force, light and heat, Goodwin confronts us persuasively with the truth that this text “…is the main article of the Old Testament Creed,” p.24.

The Divine Name Declared

For Goodwin, he explains, there are two key pillars that prop up the tabernacle of Mosaic faith, namely: first, the promise of the Messiah and, second, the proclamation of the nature of the LORD, as a God of incredible mercy. He proceeds to note 13 separate elements of the text which enumerate names for God (which some reckon as 11). Of the two names which initially seem to look a little unmerciful, even punishment for generational sins can be classed as ‘merciful discipline’, the aim of correcting descendents being to restore the generations to Himself. That, according to Goodwin, only leaves one single wholly negative element, ‘refusal to clear the guilty’: this he notes is a necessary warning, accidental to the merciful Name, in light of amazing grace, to counteract the sin of presumption. Mercy, he concludes, heavily outweighs justice by a score of 12 to 1! Listen to Goodwin again:

“But here in this gospel declaration he plainly sets no number either of thousands or millions of thousands, none at all; for of His mercy there is no end. And at this very time [the Golden Calf incident where Moses shattered the Tables of the Law] whilst God renewed that law and those words in it with his own hands, he utters with his own mouth this proclamation of grace so far excelling, professing to pardon all sorts of iniquities, transgressions, and sins which he knew and foresaw the sons of men would commit against that law.”

Gleaning Fruit From Goodwin

Having started to gather my thoughts, and reflecting on my own initial reactions, I want to share some applications that have dawned upon my soul:

1. Forgiveness of Sin.

What amazing encouragement this truth gives the rebel sinner and sinning saint, to come to the LORD, on the basis of His Word, for remission of their sins, pardon of their transgression, washing of their defilement, cancelling of their debts. What is the function and purpose of the revelation and declaration of the character, words and nature of God, as He lays bear His heart to rebel lawbreakers like us, who have incurred an infinite guilt? This opened-arm proclamation invites, beckons, welcomes condemned creatures to come fearful, trembling, penitent, with a hope of pardon that will in no way be disappointed. Are your foul, filthy, naked, burdened, defiled, disobedient and now brokenhearted for your crimes – run as prodigals to the Father with tears and words of confession! As Goodwin stresses:

“What heart guilty of the most heinous sins, that is now humbled for them, should not this move and encourage to come in unto such a God.”

2. Object of Faith.

This is how God wants Himself, most basically and fundamentally, to be known by the Church, by saints of all sorts and by sinners of all stripes. Later Goodwin expounds the protest of Jonah ‘who knew what God was like’ as he cites this Mosaic text in his complaint to the LORD. The most wicked, brutes of Nineveh, would find Him ‘full of mercy and compassion.’ One of the dangers in Reformed circles, is that we are hypersensitive to liberal teaching on God’s love which is emptied of holiness, justice and wrath. We are wrong however, in upholding the truth, to overemphasize punishment or judgment at the expense of mercy. In seeking a corrective we can create a kind of lopsided, distortion of Yahweh, whose character is a balance of Justice and Mercy in 50:50 proportions (in the worst case scenario this god of our own making-distortion is more 85:15). We must always remember Jesus wept over recalcitrant soon-to-be-destroyed Jerusalem, and still holds out his hands all day to a stubborn, wicked, people. We are not called to preach a Gospel which is sparing with kindness and stingy with compassion. Has your preaching lost power? Can your eyes no longer weep? Has compassion shrivelled up in your heart? Perhaps sinner-saint, you need to redirect your gaze to this 12:1 Mercy-Justice LORD, and fall in love with Him again, with bowels of mercy, with the Father of all Compassion, the true object of Gospel faith.

3. Praying for Revival.

It is this ‘foot of Sinai’ text, Exodus 34.5-6, that forms the basis of the cries of the rebellious, backslidden, nation who are crying for relief. Goodwin goes on to show how Nehemiah, after nearly 1000 years, distills all the dealings and ways of God, into a prayer which has Yahweh’s revelation to Moses as its heartbeat. He cites Nehemiah 9.17-21; even when they stiffened their necks, even when they made the golden calf:

“You are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them …you gave them your good Spirit to instruct them …40 years you sustained them …and they lacked nothing.”

Faced with the fact of God’s overwhelming mercy, even though God has dealt righteously and Israel has done wickedly, the Governor cries out, 9.37, for mercy to God, vocalizing their plight to beseech pity and stir God’s compassion: “We are in great distress.” The bible makes it plain, throughout the Law and Prophets, whenever the Church finds itself in crisis or extremis, they turn back to this Name, as their confidence and hope. In these days of decline Goodwin urges us to turn to God for revival of the Gospel.

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