MAN THOUGH GUILTY, IS OFFERED GOD’S MERCY

By A. W. Tozer
 

 For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ
died for the ungodly.                     Romans 5:6

    It is vital to any understanding of ourselves and our
fellowmen that we believe what is written in the Scriptures
about human society-that it is fallen, alienated from God,
and in rebellion against His laws!

    There is plenty of good news in the Bible, but there is
never any flattery or back scratching, and what God has
spoken is never complimentary to men.

    Seen one way, the Bible is a book of doom. It condemns
all men as sinners and declares that the soul that sinneth
shall die.

    Always it pronounces sentence against society before
it offers mercy; and if we will not own the validity of the
sentence we cannot admit the need for mercy!

   The coming of Jesus Christ to the world has been so
sentimentalized that it means now something utterly alien
to the Bible teaching concerning it.  Soft human pity has
been substituted for God's mercy in the minds of millions,
a pity that has long ago degenerated into self-pity.

The blame for man's condition has somehow been
shifted to God; Christ's dying for the world has been
twisted into an act of penance on God's part. In the drama
of redemption, man is viewed as Miss Cinderella who has
long been oppressed and mistreated, but now through the
heroic deeds of earth's noblest Son is about to don her
radiant apparel and step forth a queen.

This is humanism-romantically tinted with Christianity!
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Yours in Christ,

Paul N. F.