• Title Page
• Introduction
• The Nature of God
• The Nature of Moral Being
• The Nature of Sin
• The Nature of Moral Government
• The Nature of Justice
• The Nature of Mercy
• The Nature of Substitution
• The Nature of Grace
• The Nature of Salvation

The Nature of Mercy

Chapter VI

Our thinking thus far has brought us to the inescapable conclusion that it is God’s love acting as justice which demands the execution of the penalty on sin. Also that it is that same love acting as mercy which equally demands the rescue of the sinner from that penalty. And so our thought is faced with the problem of the salvation of those already condemned, and who therefore have nothing ahead of them but the execution of the penalty.

When we try to think our way back, therefore, to that place where the work of such a salvation must begin, we are again compelled to commence with—“In the beginning, God” (Genesis 1:1). Just as the protection of the sinless from the peril of sin must begin with and be accomplished by God, so also with the salvation of the sinful from the penalty on sin.

Then as we ask where, in the Being of God, the movement for such a salvation must begin, it is obvious that it must originate in His holy love, that final active moral attribute which expresses all His relations with the moral beings in His universe. For out of this grows His attitude of love as justice on behalf of the sinless, and also His attitude of love as mercy toward the sinful.

As our thought penetrates sufficiently into the depths of the moral situation created by sin so that its unspeakable crime begins to dawn upon us, we become humiliated, shocked, overwhelmed, at last fairly dazed beyond all power