Mercy and Truth
1 By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil.” — xvi. 6.
10 object can well be more dull and meaningless than the stained window of an ancient church, as long as you stand without and look toward a dark interior; but when you stand within the temple, and look through that window upon the light of heaven, the still, sweet, solemn forms that lie in it start into life and loveliness. The beauty was all conceived in the mind and wrought by the hand of the ancient artist whose bones now lie mouldering in the surrounding church-yard; but the beauty lies hid until the two requisites come together, — a seeing eye within, and a shining light without. We often meet a verse on the page of the Old Testament Scriptures like those ancient works of art. The beauty of holiness is in it, — put into it by the Spirit from the first; and yet its meaning was not fully known until the Sun of Righteousness arose, and the Israel of God, no longer kept in the outer court, entered through the rent veil, and, from the Holy of Holies, looked through the ancient record on an illumined heaven. Many hidden beauties burst into view on the pages of the Bible, when faith’s open eye looks through it on the face of Jesus.
One of these texts is now before us. There is more in it than met the reader’s eye before Christ came. The least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than the Baptist. The feeblest of the faithful after the incarnation sees more meaning in the Bible than the eagle eye of the mightiest prophet could discern before it. “By mercy and truth iniquity is purged:” that line of the Scriptures becomes thoroughly transparent only when you hold it up between you and Christ crucified.
The subject is the expiation of sin. The term is the one which is employed in connection with the bloody sacrifices. It intimates that sin is purged by the sacrifice of a substitute. The two clauses of the verse, balanced against each other in the usual form, seem to point to the two great facts which constitute redemption, — pardon and obedience. The first clause tells how the guilt of sin is forgiven; the second, how the power of sin is subdued. The first speaks of the pardon which comes down from God to man; the second, of the obedience which then and therefore rises up from man to God. Solomon unites the two constituent elements of a sinner’s deliverance in the same order that his father experienced them: “I have hoped for thy salvation and done thy commandments” (Ps. cxix. 166). It is when iniquity is purged by free grace that men practically depart from evil.
How then is iniquity purged ] By mercy and truth, The same two things are repeatedly proclaimed as the grand distinguishing fruit of Christ’s incarnation by the disciple that leant on his breast (John i. 14-17). “Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ,” whether you take the term “truth” in its most general sense, or in its specific application as the fulfilment of the types. The law, according to the thunders of Sinai, gives one of these; and the gospel, according to the imaginations of corrupt men, gives another: but only in Christ crucified both unite. The law from Sinai proclaims Truth without Mercy, and the unrenewed heart desires Mercy without Truth. The one would result in the perdition of men; the other in the dishonour of God. Truth alone would honour God’s law, but destroy transgressors: mercy alone would shield the transgressors, but trample on the law. If there were only truth, earth would no longer be a place of hope: if there were only mercy, heaven would no longer be a place of holiness. On the one side is the just Judge; on the other the guilty criminals. If he give them their due, there will be no mercy; if they get from him their desire, there will be no truth. You may get one at the expense of casting out the guilty multitude; you may get the other at the expense of putting to shame the Holy One; but apart from the gospel of Christ, both cannot be.
They meet in the Mediator. In Christ the fire meets the water without drying it up: the water meets -the fire without quenching it out. Truth has its way now, and all the desert of sin falls on
Him who bears it: mercy has its way now, and all the love of God is poured out on those who are one with his beloved Son. Iniquity is punished in the substitute sacrificed, and so purged from the conscience of the redeemed. “There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin. This is the gospel. There is no salvation in any other. The Scriptures from beginning to end testify of Christ. All their promises are yea and amen in him. We shall never discover the meaning of “mercy and truth” until we “look unto Jesus.” We shall never get our “iniquity purged” until we “behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” All the power lies in the great fact, that Christ died the just for the unjust; and all salvation comes through the simple act, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”
This purging of iniquity is the first and great constituent of the gospel; and the second, which is like unto it, is, Let the pardoned depart from evil. Only “by the fear of the Lord” can this command be obeyed. In preceding expositions we have pointed out that the fear of the Lord means the mingled awe and confidence of a dear child. Fear of the Lord is a very different thing from fright at the Lord. The reverential love which keeps you near tends to practical holiness; but the terror which drives you to a distance permits you to wallow there in everything that is unclean.
The fear which produces obedience is generated by mercy and truth united in the manifested character of God. Mercy without truth would beget presumption: truth without mercy would beget despair. The one manifestation would not touch the conscience of the transgressor, and therefore he would not obey; the other manifestation would crush him so that he could not. It is by the fear of him who is at once a just God and a Saviour that men depart from evil. The emotion that fills a disciple’s heart is, like the atmosphere, composed mainly of two great elements in combination. These are love and hate. Together in due proportion they constitute the atmosphere of heaven, and supply vital breath to believers on the earth. Love of the Saviour who forgives his sin, and hatred of the sin that crucified his Saviour, — these two, in one rich and well-proportioned amalgam, make up the vital element of saints. Separated they cannot be: to dissolve their ur; —”
change their essence. As well might one of the atmosphere’s constituent gases sustain the life of a man as one of these emotions satisfy a saved sinner. The separation indeed is impossible, — perhaps we should say inconceivable. Hatred of sin is but the lower side of love to the Saviour, and love to the Saviour is but the upper side of hatred to sin. In the new nature there is a twofold strain or leaning, acting constantly like an instinct, although much impeded in its exercise, — a strain or bent of heart towards the Lord and away from sin. They who are near to God depart from evil; and they who really depart from evil draw near to God. The man in the Gospel (Luke xii. 45) “said in his heart, My Lord delayeth his coming;” and then began in his practice to “beat the men-servants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken.” At the two extremities stand the “Lord” and “evil;” in the midst, this man. He cannot move nearer this side without departing further from that. If he draw near the Lord, he will depart from evil: if he draw near to evil, he must put the Lord far away. When a man determines on a course of actual transgression, he puts God out of all his thoughts: when he desires to escape the snares of Satan, he must walk closely with God. A people near to him is a people far from wickedness: a people far from wickedness is a people near to him. Absolutely and in origin, there is none good save one, and that is God: comparatively among men, the more godly, the more good. In their course over a parched land, those streams continue longest full which maintain unimpeded their union to the fountain. Our goodness will dissipate before temptation like the morning dew before the sun, unless we be found in him and getting out of his fulness.