But what glorifies God? Singing to Him, surely, and obeying Him. And worshipping him in various forms like charity toward others in His name, honesty, and respect. All those things seem to us very God-honoring actions. Then how do we account for the great amount of sin in the lives of His creatures? We see hatred for God, worshipping of self and temporary things, hatred for one another, dishonesty, and disrespect. If God refuses to lose glory for His name, how does He permit these things? Is not His justice impugned by His permissiveness? Further, what of the ungodly who prosper on the backs of the godly? What about the guilty who go free while the innocent are convicted?
“Righteous are You, O LORD, that I would plead my case with You; Indeed I would discuss matters of justice with You: Why has the way of the wicked prospered? Why are all those who deal in treachery at ease?” –Jer 12.1
We find another dilemma in the ungodliness of the “godly.” Not only are unbelieving, unrepentant sinners daily declaring the impotence of God; His own people, the repentant and hymn-singing church-goers declare His impotence with their anemic faith, their private sin, their formalism in worship, their dead unfeeling hearts, and their lack of love. Their hypocrisy. While believers have periods of great joy and fellowship in and with their Lord, their lives on the whole fail to compass the promises of God for them in the Bible, and so they join their voices with the mocking cacophony of the godless in declaring the impotence of God. What an awful position for the Christian! While knowing the end for which God created the world – His own glory – knowing the means by which He would gain it from their lives – their obedience and enjoyment of Him – they yet languish in utter inability to effect truly and consistent God-glorifying behavior in their lives. Christians unable to glorify God with their lives are as miserable as the cowardly general in battle: he knows what he ought to do and yet is too weak to do it. Such a general must think, “I am enlisted in the enemy’s forces. I ought to wear their colors, for I am aiding them by my cowardice.” Likewise, I have heard a Christian say, ”I wish, in a way, that I were in Hell right now, for then at least I would glorify God as an object of His wrath.”
Let’s see the situation again.
- God refuses to lose glory from His creation, and the Scripture explicitly states that He is sovereignly ordaining and orchestrating all things (Eph 1.11).
- Yet wicked God-forgetfulness abounds in the regenerate and unregenerate alike.
We have two options for reconciling these contra-tending realities. Either (1) God is not sovereignly ordaining all things, or else does not exist, or else does not care, or else does not first want His own glory, or else we have been deceived by the Bible into thinking we know anything about what His glory means, or (2) God is very patient in gaining glory from the lives of His creatures. I dismiss the first option immediately. While the option raises good questions that deserve time and effort and rigorous thought, I do not have time to argue sufficiently against it here. The second option more closely corresponds to Scripture and satisfies my soul in answering the dilemma.
The wickedness of the wicked for a time seems to conquer God’s plan for His own glory. It goes on, hour by hour, as the beating of a rebel drum in a land once dominated by a great king. As he and his people hear the drum, the din reminds them with agonizing repetition of the king’s impotence. Unless, perhaps, the king is purposefully letting the rebels continue their drumming for a reason. Unless, perhaps the great king has a great plan, which is unfolding perfectly in his time, that includes the rebel drum. Unless, perhaps, he is lying quietly, patiently, with unimaginable self-control, waiting for the situation to ripen like a fruit until it is most delicious, at which time he will pluck it to his greatest satisfaction.
And that is the explanation the Bible gives for the forbearance of God from conquering Satan, sinners, and sin. For Satan and sin, God waits for their last, greatest, and most desperate display to utterly confound them and show them to be fools before all eyes. Defeat when we are trying our hardest is far more humiliating than defeat when we are hardly trying; likewise God waits for the vainglorious voice of Satan and sin to reach such a tenor that it suffers the most humiliating blow when it is silenced by His voice. The rebel voice of Satan and sin will look ultimately contemptible when, at its strongest ever, it is consumed by God’s voice as a birthday candle in a forest fire. For sinners, God waits for a merciful reason and a brutal reason. The brutal reason is the same just put forward for Satan and sin. But the merciful reason is this: that they would have time to repent. God withholds judgment that those about to be judged may have time to repent. In both of these reasons, we see God’s great patience in gaining glory from His creatures.
The wickedness of the regenerate brings God glory in exactly the opposite way. Whereas Satan and sinners are left to soak in the disgusting filth of sin, that sin would become more sinful that God’s victory over it would look more delightful (which is also why the law was given – Rom 5.20), Christians are left to splash in the disgusting filth of sin for three reasons: (1) that they would declare their dependence on God by crying out constantly for deliverance, (2) that they would rejoice strongly in Christ’s atonement for such disgusting sin by remembering how disgusting sin is, and (3) that they would feel the misery of sin so that they will love the pleasures of God more deeply. See Romans 7.13-25 on these points.
Now what makes the difference between God’s reason for leaving the unrepentant in sin and His reason for leaving the repentant in sin? The work of Jesus.
“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” –Rom 7.24-25a
Jesus has paid for the sin of His own; He has paid for it all – past, present, and future sin. In doing so, He conquered the sin and the sinner. Part of the waiting, quiet, patient plan of the great king was to give his son to the enemy in exchange for some of the enemy’s men, then slowly draw those men to love him. He does not enslave them and put chains and fetters on them; he lets them loose among his people. He does not physically force obedience. And when the former enemies do wrong and show their old allegiance, as they invariably do, the king uses the occasion to show his love and not his severity. His severity he reserves for those still beating the drum on the plain. But for those few who have been bought, their malfeasance gives the king opportunity to again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again show his graciousness and love, and say, “remember the price I paid to buy you.”
The king is an illustration; do not take it too far. But the King, it seems, has done something similar for us who are His. He could have miraculously removed every old vestige of our former position; he could have taken a sword and cut out all of our old tattoos when we were bought. But He has not. He leaves our sin to remind us, and to get glory by perpetually revealing His love and grace. He washes our old tattoos until they fade, and as we watch Him wash them, we find ourselves more and more glad not to be in the camp where we got them. And again we see the patience of God in gaining glory from the lives of His creatures.
But while the work of Jesus has turned the sin of the regenerate on its head so that it serves to glorify God, the same work serves to yet further condemn those who reject Him.
“But thanks be to God, who always puts us on display in Christ, and spreads through us in every place the scent of knowing Him. For to God we are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To some we are a scent of death leading to death, but to others, a scent of life leading to life.” -2 Cor 2.14-16
Replace the words “us” and “we” with the words “the gospel” in those verses. “We/us” is believers as they reveal the gospel – the work of Jesus. Thus the work of Jesus is shown to be two fragrances: one sweet fragrance of life leading to life, and one disgusting, fetid, reeking stench of death leading to death. The gospel makes sin smell like life to those who are God’s, while making sin smell like death to His enemies.
We have been speaking of the patience of God only in terms of quantity of opposition, and not at all in terms of years. Years to me seems the less significant of the two revealers of God’s patience. If He can stand for one hour the rebellion of sin in His people and enemies, He must have patience to stand it for a million years. As His people, we must not let our patience fail before His. He has not sent us to hell yet not because He is too soft. He sends people to hell. He has not not sent us to hell because He is letting us increase our sin that He may be shown more just in sending us to hell. He reserves that for His enemies. He has not sent us to hell because He is patient in gaining glory from us. He is sweetly washing away our old tattoos… again. The King has taken time for us, the old rabble in arms, to buy us, and turn us, as slowly as He chooses to turn us, into something beautiful, and that, above all, makes Him look beautiful.
Brothers, do not wish to be in hell. Glory in God because of the great patience with which He gains glory from the lives of His creatures.
