Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Biblical Case for God’s Vindicatory Justice | John Owen

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The Biblical Case for God’s Vindicatory Justice | John Owen · Reformed Thinking

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Think about the most the most flawless sterile environment you
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can possibly imagine. Like picture one of those highly
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secure multi billion dollar silicon chip manufacturing
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facilities. Oh yeah, the ones where the
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workers are completely sealed up in the specialized suits.
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Right, exactly where the airlocks cycle like multiple
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times before you can even get in and the heavy filtration systems
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are just running constantly. Scrubbing the atmosphere.
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Yeah, scrubbing it to a degree that almost defies belief.
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And the entire facility is designed around 1 absolute
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standard, uncompromising purity. Because even a tiny mistake
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ruins the whole batch. Right.
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So put yourself in that room for a second.
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Imagine you're standing there and somehow a single speck of
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dust, just this microscopic foreign contaminant, bypasses
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all the filters and enters that space.
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Well, the environment doesn't just politely tolerate that
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spec. No, the room doesn't, you know,
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evaluate the dust and decide to give it a pass because it's
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small. The system reacts instantly to
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isolate and purge the contaminant, because the very
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definition of a sterile room requires the total violent
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rejection of anything impure. And that reaction isn't, it's
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not a conscious choice the room makes in the moment.
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It's a binary state of existence.
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The environment is either pure or it is contaminated.
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The rejection of that dust is built into the physics and the
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engineering of the space. I mean, when you bring
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contaminate into a sterile field, the resulting friction is
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unavoidable. We all understand this logic
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when it comes to, you know, science or engineering or
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medicine. We accept that two fundamentally
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incompatible states cannot coexist.
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Because the pure system must reject the impure element where
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the pure system ceases to be pure.
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Spot on. But The thing is, the moment we
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shift our focus to theology, and specifically when we start
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looking at the character of God and his relationship to human
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wrongdoing, people suddenly want to blur those hard lines.
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We want to imagine a divine environment that is somehow
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infinitely pure, incredibly holy, yet perfectly willing to
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just, you know, overlook a little bit of contamination here
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and there. Yeah, we want a God who has the
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absolute purity of that clean room, but who operates with the
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casual leniency of a tired parent letting a messy room
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slide. Which creates a massive
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theological collision. It really does.
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You're attempting to mix oil and water while pretending they're
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forming a single cohesive substance.
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When we look at the historical framework of Protestant
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Christianity, particularly from the perspective of the
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Westminster Confession, the attributes of God aren't a
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buffet where we can just pick and choose the traits we find
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pleasant. Right, like I'll take some love,
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but I'll pass on the wrath. Yeah, it doesn't work that way.
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His attributes are unified. His justice and His Holiness
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operate in perfect synchronization.
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When you try to introduce the idea that God can simply waive
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the penalty for sin without a mechanism for justice, you
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shatter the entire logical framework of the Christian
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faith. Well, welcome to Reform
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thinking. Today we are taking a massive
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deep dive into a really heavy set of sources to extract some
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vital theological truths for you.
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And it is a fascinating 1 today. It is.
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We are pulling from a classic, dense piece of literature
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written by the renowned 17th century theologian John Owen.
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Specifically, we're looking at an excerpt from his dissertation
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on Divine justice, Chapter 3. A phenomenal text.
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Yeah, and we want to unpack a massive question for you today.
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Is God's justice, specifically his requirement to punish sin,
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just a choice he makes on a whim, or is it an essential,
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unavoidable part of his very nature?
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Like could he just decide to let sin slide if he really wanted
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to? You know John Owen is the
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perfect guide for this analysis. When you want to understand the
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robust logical scaffolding of reformed theology, you go to
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Owen. Yeah, his stuff is dense.
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Very dense, but he builds his arguments like a master
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architect and to set up the space for you, the listener.
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Understanding God's unchangeable attributes is absolutely vital
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for understanding the cross of Jesus Christ.
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Why is that? Well, if God could simply choose
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to forgive without requiring a penalty, if justice is just like
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a mood or an optional policy, then the whole framework of
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salvation is shifts. If God has the ability to just
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wave his hand and dismiss the penalty, then the cross wasn't a
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necessity. It becomes an arbitrary display
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of violence. Which is a horrifying thought,
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it is. So our goal today is to examine
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Owens proofs which he draws from Scripture and from the
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psychological reality of human nature, demonstrating that
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vindicatory justice, this specific sin punishing justice,
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is entirely natural and essential to who God is.
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So let's start with Owens first major argument, which relies on
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the scriptural proof of God's purity and holiness.
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Oh points to texts that highlight this intense, burning
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purity. Yes.
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He does he. Brings up the prophet Habakkuk
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chapter one verse 13 which states that God has purer eyes
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than to behold evil and cannot look on iniquity such.
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A vivid image, yeah. And when you hear that phrasing,
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purer eyes, it pulls us right back to the clean room analogy
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we started with. God's inability to look at evil
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isn't a lack of ability or power, it's an overflow of his
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purity. Owen draws out the causality in
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that verse so brilliantly. He asks the underlying question,
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You know, why does God hate sin? Is it because he woke up one
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day, looked at the universe, and arbitrarily decided to make a
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rule against certain behaviors? No, the prophet gives us the
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reason. It's the purity of God's eyes.
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God hates sin because of his incomprehensible infinite
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purity. Exactly.
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Owen makes the point that justice and holiness are
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functionally the same attribute, just viewed from different
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angles. Vindicatory justice is simply
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holiness and action against transgression.
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When holiness encounters sin, it manifests as justice.
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Think of 2 completely incompatible elements like light
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and darkness. That's a good.
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Way to look. At it.
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When you turn on a light switch in a dark room, the light
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doesn't pause, evaluate the darkness, and then choose to
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banish it, no. It just happens, right?
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The very nature of light is violently opposed to darkness.
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Its existence mandates the destruction of the shadows.
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If God hates sin by his very nature, then by his very nature
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He must act justly against it. Because if he could alter that
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reaction without injuring his own glory, then his hatred of
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sin would be a massive arbitrary preference, not a true
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attribute. And we see this unbending
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reality in another passage. Owen quotes from Joshua chapter
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24, verse 19. Joshua is standing before the
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people of Israel, giving them a fierce, almost terrifying
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warning. What does he say?
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He says you cannot serve the Lord, for he's a holy God.
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He is a jealous God. He will not forgive your
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transgressions nor your sins. Man, whenever you read that
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verse it just stops you in your tracks.
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He will not forgive your transgressions.
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It feels so absolute. It really does.
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It cuts. Against the grain of how modern
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society likes to talk about the divine, we're conditioned to
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expect a blank check of forgiveness.
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We are. But Owen zeroes in on the reason
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provided right there in Joshua's speech.
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Why will he not forgive? Because he is a holy God.
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The non absolution of sin, the guarantee of a penalty, is
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directly tied to His Holiness. When God exercises this
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universal perfection in punishing the sins of His
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creatures, we label it vindicatory justice.
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But the holiness and the justice are the exact same essence.
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Now Owen brings up a specific theological opponent in his
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writing. To contrast this view, he names
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a guy named Sosinus Ah. Yes, Sosinus and.
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Sosinus was arguing something in the 16th century that sounds
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incredibly modern today. He argued that damnation comes
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purely from God's free will, not his inherent justice.
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So Zionist claimed that when God punishes, he does so out of
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anger or fury. Sasanianism was a massive threat
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to orthodoxy in Owens day and honestly the echoes of that
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thought process are still loud in our modern culture.
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Oh. Absolutely.
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So Zionist wanted to strip away the necessity of the atonement
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by reducing God's justice to mere anger or fury.
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Sasanis makes God look like a reactive emotional being like.
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A guy with a bad temper. Yeah, he turns the creator of
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the universe into a deity who loses his temper.
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It's a terrible lowering of the divine nature.
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So how does Owen handle that? Well, Owen completely dismantles
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this logic. He points out that anger, as
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described in Scripture, is an effect of justice described in
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terms humans can comprehend. To say God punishes out of
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arbitrary fury makes him erratic.
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Right, God doesn't have temper tantrums.
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No, his actions are the calculated, necessary expression
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of his perfect purity coming into contact with moral evil.
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So every time you open your Bible and read about God's wrath
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or anger, you're not reading about a deity who flies off the
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handle because he had a bad day. Definitely not.
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You're reading about infinite holiness responding
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appropriately to contamination. You're watching the sterile room
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purge the dust. Which moves us perfectly into
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Owen's second class, the Scriptural proofs.
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He shifts the lens from God's intrinsic purity to his external
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role as the righteous judge of all the earth.
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So we're entering the courtroom dynamic.
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Owen brings up that incredible narrative in Genesis chapter 18,
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verse 25. This is Abraham interceding for
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the city of Sodom. He's standing before God and
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basically negotiating for the lives of the righteous people
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inside that corrupt city. It's such a bold scene it.
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Is, and Abraham asks, A rhetorical question that echoes
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through all of human history. He says, Shall not the judge of
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all the earth do right and. We really need to analyze how we
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interpret rhetorical questions in the text.
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Abraham isn't expressing doubt here, right?
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He's not like, I really hope you do the right thing here, God.
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No, he's stating A universally acknowledged fact to anchor his
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intercession. He's building his plea on a
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solid foundation. Because God is the supreme
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judge, he must necessarily exercise judgment according to
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the merits of mankind. OK, yeah.
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Owen argues that the power and office of a just judge require a
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specific standard of action. I mean, think about the human
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judicial system. You wouldn't tolerate an earthly
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judge who operated entirely on their own free will or arbitrary
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whims. No, of course not.
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If a human judge sat on the bench, looked at a convicted
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criminal and said, well, the law dictates 30 years for this
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crime, but I feel like letting you go today just because I'm in
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a good mood, we'd immediately call for that judge to be
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removed from the bench. We.
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Label that judge corrupt. Exactly.
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A judge is bound by the law. The judge doesn't own the law.
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The judge administers the law. And in God's case, he is bound
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by the law of his own nature. Owen quotes the apostle Paul in
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Romans chapter 3 verses 5 and 6. Paul says, Is God unrighteous?
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Who taketh vengeance? God forbid.
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For then how shall God judge the world?
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So Paul is employing the same logical anchor Abraham used.
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Yes, the very concept of God judging the world relies on his
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inherent justice. Retribution for a crime proceeds
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directly from this vindicatory justice.
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The role of the judge mandates the punishment of the guilty.
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OK. I have to push back on this a
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little because there is a logical hurdle here that trips
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up a lot of people. Sure, go ahead.
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If God is the supreme Creator and the absolute Lord of
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everything, doesn't absolute dominion mean he can do whatever
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he pleases? I mean he owns the universe.
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Let's say you owe me a massive financial debt.
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I have the absolute right to just tear U the IOU right?
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I can absorb the loss and waive the penalty.
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Why can't this Supreme Creator just look at humanity, tear up
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the IOU of our sin and waive the penalty?
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That is the core of the dilemma for so many people, and Owen
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provides a razor sharp theological distinction to
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answer it. There is a massive difference
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between God's right as a creator and His right as a governor or
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judge. We cannot confuse the two roles.
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Break that distinction down for us, because I think that's where
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people get lost. Gladly, as a creator, God
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possesses supreme dominion. He can do what He wants with His
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creation in terms of its form, its function, its existence.
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He can make one vessel for honorable use and another for
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common use. He.
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Can form a mountain or a valley. Exactly.
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But the moment God gives a moral law to rational creatures, He
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establishes A moral government. He takes on the role of a
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governor and judge. While a creator can mold clay
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however they prefer, a moral governor is bound by the law of
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their own righteous nature to punish disobedience.
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The right of a ruler regarding transgressors is nothing else
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than vindicatory justice. If he were to forgive without a
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penalty, he would contradict his own nature as a just judge.
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So using the debt analogy, arson isn't like a friend owing you
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$20, it's like a citizen committing high treason against
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the state. The judge sitting on the bench
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can't just say I forgive you because the crime isn't a
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personal slight against the judge as a private individual.
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The crime is against the law, the state, and the moral order.
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The judge represents the state. God represents the ultimate
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moral order of the cosmos. The appointment of punishment
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flows from his right as the moral governor.
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To ignore the crime would be an act of supreme injustice against
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his own moral order. He cannot deny himself.
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This logic is dense, but it makes so much sense when you
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separate those roles of creator and governor it.
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Really clears up the confusion. So up to this point, we've been
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looking at direct scripture. But Owen doesn't stop there.
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He shifts from special revelation, the Bible, to
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natural revelation. This.
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Is where it gets incredibly fascinating it.
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Does this brings us to Owen's argument concerning the
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universal consent of mankind and the innate concept of justice?
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Owen argues that if vindicatory justice is natural to God, then
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the knowledge of it should be implanted in all human beings
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everywhere, regardless of whether they have a Bible.
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And here Owen leans heavily into the psychological and historical
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evidence. He unpacks the Greek concept of
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prolepsis. OK.
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For the listener who hasn't studied Greek philosophy, what
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is prolepsis it? Translates roughly to an innate
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conception or anticipation. It's a primary, absolute idea
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that exists in the human mind beforehand.
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Beforehand, like before they learn anything, Yes.
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This isn't a concept people learn in a classroom.
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It's not created by a specific course of training, and it isn't
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the result of cultural conditioning.
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It's interwoven into the human mental constitution.
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It's hardwired into the machinery of our minds.
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Like an operating system that comes pre installed on a
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computer before you ever download a single piece of
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software. That's a great analogy, yes.
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Owen points to Romans chapter one verse 32, which describes
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nations that were given over to a reprobate mind.
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Yet even of these abandoned, thoroughly corrupt societies,
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Paul writes who knowing the judgement of God, that they
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which commit such things are worthy of death.
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They know it, they do. Even the most wicked societies,
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completely disconnected from the God of the Bible, have an
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underlying, undeniable sense that evil deserves A destructive
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response from the divine and. Owen gives fascinating examples
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from history and classical literature to prove this point.
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I really love the historical narrative he pulls from Acts
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chapter 28. The shipwreck, yeah.
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The Apostle Paul is in a shipwreck.
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The boat is torn apart and Paul washes up on the shores of the
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island of Malta. It's cold, it's raining, and
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Paul is gathering wood for a fire.
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A venomous Viper comes out of the heat, bites Paul and hangs
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onto his hand. Such a crazy scene, right?
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And the barbarian inhabitants of the island see this happening,
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and they immediately assume something very specific.
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They don't say wow, that guy has terrible luck.
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No, they say, no doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he
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has escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffers not to live.
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Think about the internal logic of the Islanders.
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There they argue straight from the effect to the 'cause they
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see an apparent punishment, the snake bite, and immediately
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assume a moral crime. Murder preceded it.
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They. Personify vengeance or justice
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as a literal force actively pursuing the guilty man.
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These Islanders had no access to the Old Testament law.
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None. They didn't know the God of
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Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Yet the prolepsis, the innate
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conception of divine justice, was operating perfectly in their
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minds. They demanded A moral balancing
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of the scales. And Owen brings in the heat,
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even poets, to show how widespread this was across
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different civilizations. He quotes Hesiod, a Greek poet
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writing about the chief God Jupiter.
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Hesiod says Jupiter married the fair Themis who brought forth
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the Hours. And you know Mia and Justice,
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who should watch over the actions of mortal men?
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He also quotes Orpheus. Yeah, Orpheus sings about the
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Eye of Justice sitting on the sacred throne of sovereign
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Jupiter as the avenger of the unjust.
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Even in the middle of Pagan idolatry, surrounded by false
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gods and mythological chaos, the undeniable reality of divine
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retribution remains completely intact.
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They just map the reality of God's justice onto their own
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false mythology, which. Proves Owens's point incredibly
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well. The cultural dressing changes,
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the names of the gods change, the specific rituals change, but
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the core human conviction that the universe is morally governed
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and crimes will eventually be punished is static across human
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history. You.
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Really can't find a civilization that doesn't have some concept
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of cosmic retribution, OK. But I want to and push back on
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this from a modern perspective. If this knowledge of divine
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justice is so hardwired into humanity, if it is an innate
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conception, why do so many people today seem totally
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unbothered by their own wrongdoing?
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That's a fair question. I mean, you look around and
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there are people committing terrible corrupt acts who sleep
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like babies, corporate criminals, corrupt politicians,
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abusers. Many of them show 0 signs of
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internal distress. Doesn't that break Owen's
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argument about this universal hardwiring?
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It's a vital question, and Owen actually anticipates it.
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He provides A crucial caveat about human nature.
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He notes that this observing principle, this innate sense of
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justice, can become languid. Languid.
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Yes, it can be overwhelmed by a bounding wickedness.
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Paul says in Romans that people suppress the truth and
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unrighteousness. When a society or an individual
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gives themselves over entirely to corruption, the voice of that
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innate conception becomes muffled.
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They actively train themselves to ignore the alarm bells.
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Like a guitar player building up thick calluses on their
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fingertips, eventually you don't feel the sting of the steel
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strings anymore. The callus analogy is highly
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accurate, but Owen insists the nerve endings underneath that
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callus never actually die. The prolapses can never be
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entirely eradicated from the human soul.
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It's. Always there.
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Always. You might suppress it when times
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are good, when your health is strong and when your bank
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account is full. But mankind must cease to exist
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before they can all together lose this innate sense of divine
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right and judgement. It always flares up under the
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right pressure. Which brings us to Owen's
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analysis of the courtroom, of the conscience and the dread of
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the divine. This is some heavy material.
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It is. If you want proof that this
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innate conception exists even in the most hardened, callous
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people, just look at what happens when the conscience is
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finally triggered. Owen talks about the dread, the
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horror, the massive tremor the guilty mortals feel.
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It's evidence that they know deep in their bones a debt is
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owed to a just God. And we have to understand that
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this fear isn't a biological survival instinct, it is deeply
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theological. How so?
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An animal feels fear when a predator is near right because
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it's aiming to preserve its physical life.
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But human guilt is entirely different.
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When the thought of a holy deity burst into the mind of a Sinner,
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the Sinner instantly stands confessed as a debtor.
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It's a legal moral terror, Owen says, that fetters, prisons,
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rods, axes and fire rise to their view.
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They are anticipating a sentencing.
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And the historical details Owen pulls out here are incredibly
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vivid. He speculates on the Mark of
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Cain from the Book of Genesis. Yes.
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I found that fascinating. Right after Cain murders his
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brother Abel, God puts a mark on him.
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And Owen suggests this mark might not have been a physical
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tattoo or a brand on his skin, but a visible horrible tremor of
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guilt. Just physically shaking.
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Imagine a man, continually shaken and agitated, known to
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everyone who sees him by his physical manifestation of pure
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terror. It's a terrifying thought, but
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it aligns with the psychological reality of severe, unresolvable
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guilt. The body reacts to the crushing
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weight of the conscience. Bowen also brings up the Roman
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Emperor Adrian. Let's put Adrian in context for
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a second. He was the most powerful man on
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the planet at the time. Absolute power.
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He commanded massive armies. He had limitless wealth,
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absolute authority, and every physical comfort known to the
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ancient world. Yet on his deathbed, as his
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physical power fails, Adrian wrote a mournful little poem
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about his soul. What did he write?
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He called his soul his fleeting spirit.
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He is pleasing companion. And he asks, Whither art thou
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flying? To what unknown scene, all
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trembling, fearful, and pensive? Unbelievable.
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Here's a man who answered to no earthly judge, reduced to a
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trembling, fearful state, terrified of the unknown shore
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he's about to face. Adrian's poem is a pristine
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example of the natural conscience reacting to the
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approach of the divine courtroom.
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He had no Christian theology to guide him.
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He had no pastors preaching to him, but the innate dread of
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accountability, the knowledge that he was about to face a
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standard he couldn't manipulate, was fully present.
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Oh. And also details Suetonius's
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historical account of Nero. Oh.
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Nero, he was an absolute monster.
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Yeah, he murdered his own mother, Agrippina.
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He murdered his wife, Octavia. He lived a life of unchecked
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indulgence and cruelty. Yet just before his death,
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Suetonius records Nero descending into madness, crying
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out that his wife, his mother and his father were forcing him
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to his end. He was haunted by visions.
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The furies of his own conscience were pursuing him.
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This proves Owen's assertion that punishment is Co evil with
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injustice. Co evil meaning they exist at
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the same time, right? The executioner takes up
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residence in the mind. The guilty person is never
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acquitted in their own judgement, no matter how much
22:09
earthly power they possess to insulate themselves from human
22:12
laws. Think about a fugitive who has
22:13
committed a major crime and gone on the run.
22:16
Even if the police aren't actively looking for them at
22:19
that moment, the fugitive constantly jumps at the sound of
22:22
every siren. They.
22:22
Look over their shoulder every time a door opens unexpectedly.
22:25
They. Sweat when a stranger looks at
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them for too long. The conscience creates its own
22:29
courtroom. They're prosecuting themselves
22:32
continuously. It's exhausting.
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And Owen points out that this explains why humans throughout
22:35
history have panicked at unusual natural phenomena.
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Why did ancient people tremble at thunders, lightnings,
22:42
eclipses or comments? I mean, logically an eclipse is
22:45
just celestial mechanics. The moon passes in front of the
22:48
sun. A comet is just a ball of ice
22:50
and dust traveling through the solar system.
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There is no moral weight to a rock in space.
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But the guilty mind doesn't interpret it that way.
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The guilty mind interprets any strange grand event in nature as
23:03
a sign that the final judgement has arrived.
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They project their guilt onto the universe.
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Yeah, they read moral vengeance into natural anomalies.
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They exclaim like the widow of Zarephath in the Old Testament.
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What have I to do with thee? Art thou come unto me to call my
23:18
sin to remembrance? When the sky goes dark in the
23:20
middle of the day, the guilty conscience assumes that judges
23:23
finally arrived to collect the debt.
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So we've looked at Scripture, we've looked at the innate
23:27
hardwiring of human nature, and we've analyzed the psychological
23:31
terror of the conscience. Now we turn to the historical
23:34
and anthropological evidence Owen presents.
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Sacrifices and the global confession of debt, right?
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Owen quotes the Roman author Pliny, who noted that all the
23:44
world agreed on the practice of sacrifices, even tribes that
23:47
were completely isolated from one another by oceans and
23:50
continents. Think about how bizarre the
23:53
concept of animal sacrifice is from a purely natural
23:56
standpoint. You take the very livestock you
23:58
depend on for survival, your wealth, your food source, and
24:02
you slaughter it, burn it and waste it, hoping to appease the
24:06
sky. It makes no economic sense how?
24:08
Does a practice so bloody, so costly and so counterintuitive
24:12
pop up in every corner of the globe?
24:14
Owen traces the theological lineage of this massive global
24:18
phenomenon. He states that this universal
24:20
practice has a divine origin. Where does it start?
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It starts right at the beginning with the promise made in Eden
24:25
regarding the seed of the woman, and it is made visible in the
24:28
sacrifice of Abel. These early sacrifices were
24:31
designed by God to point to Christ the Lamb slain from the
24:34
foundation of the world right. They were meant to be a physical
24:37
representation of the theological truth that without
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the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.
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So the practice started with true revelation.
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God established the system, yes. But as humanity multiplied, as
24:50
nations migrated across the earth, fractured into different
24:54
languages and fell into idolatry, they lost the true
24:58
plan and purpose of the institution.
25:00
They forgot the identity of the true God.
25:02
Exactly. They lost the traces of the
25:04
things signified the promised seed.
25:07
But the shape of the ritual remained.
25:09
The general notion of appeasing the deity by sacrifices survived
25:13
all the Dark Ages, the downfalls of cities, and the changing of
25:17
empires, because a consciousness of sin and a sense of avenging
25:21
justice took deeper root in the heart of man than could ever be
25:24
eradicated. The need to pay a debt survived
25:27
even when the identity of the creditor was lost.
25:29
That is heavy, and Owen breaks down the types of Pagan
25:32
sacrifices to prove this point. He specifically talks about
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propitiatory sacrifices, which are meant to make peace and
25:38
avert the anger of the gods, and expiatory sacrifices which are
25:42
meant to cleanse and purge the Sinner.
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He quotes from Home Resilient. The Greeks are suffering from a
25:47
terrible plague, and they conclude that the God Apollo is
25:50
angry with them. So they say, let altar smoke and
25:54
hecatoms be paid, hoping to atone for their broken vows so
25:58
Apollo will stop shooting his arrows of disease at their camp.
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A. Hecatom was a massive sacrifice
26:03
of 100 cattle at one time a. 100 cattle, yes.
26:07
The sheer scale of the bloodletting shows the
26:10
staggering scale of the guilt they felt.
26:13
They believed the debt was so massive it required a mountain
26:16
of death to balance the scales. He also mentions the Roman
26:19
emperor Otho. Otho overthrew the previous
26:22
emperor Galba and saw him killed.
26:25
Otho then tried to use all kinds of sacrifices to propitiate the
26:28
spirit of Galba. He knew blood had been shed
26:31
unjustly and he believed only blood could balance the scales.
26:34
He was. Trying to buy off the vengeance
26:35
he knew he deserved. And here we find another massive
26:38
theological opponent Owen has to refute.
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A highly respected writer named Samuel Rutherford raised an
26:44
objection against this entire line of reasoning.
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OK. What was Rutherford's argument?
26:47
Because Rutherford was a serious thinker, he.
26:49
Was Rutherford argued that mankind knows through natural
26:53
conscience that God does many good things freely without
26:57
necessity. Like what, for example, God
26:59
created the world. He makes the sunrise every
27:01
morning. He gives rain to water the
27:03
crops. None of these actions are forced
27:06
upon God by His nature. He chooses to do them freely out
27:09
of His goodness. OK.
27:10
That tracks. Therefore, Rutherford argued,
27:12
just because mankind universally acknowledges that God punishes
27:16
sin through sacrifices and conscience, it does not prove He
27:19
must punish sin by necessity. I see.
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Rutherford claimed justice might just be another free choice,
27:26
exactly like making the sunrise. God could do it or he could
27:29
choose not to do it that. Sounds like a solid logical
27:32
trap. It uses the reality of God's
27:35
free grace to undermine the necessity of His justice.
27:39
How does Owen get out of it? Owen rebukes Rutherford by
27:42
pointing out a flaw in his understanding of the argument
27:44
itself. When Rutherford talks about the
27:46
egresses of justice, think of the word exit.
27:48
He is talking about how justice exits God and enters the world,
27:52
the outward action, Owen says. We are not just debating God's
27:55
outward actions, we are debating his internal essence, Owen
27:59
writes. We do not use this argument to
28:01
prove that the egresses of divine justice are necessary,
28:04
but that justice itself is necessary to God.
28:07
OK. Unpack that distinction for the
28:08
listener, because that sounds like splitting hairs, but I know
28:11
it's not. It's vital mankind acknowledges
28:14
from God's works that He is good and bountiful.
28:18
From that universal recognition, we conclude that goodness and
28:21
bounty are essential attributes of God.
28:24
Goodness is who he is. In the exact same way, because
28:27
mankind universally concludes through conscience and
28:30
Providence that God is a punisher of sin, we contend that
28:34
justice is natural and essential to God.
28:36
OK. That makes sense.
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God doesn't have to create a world.
28:38
He has free will and creation. But if He does create a world
28:41
and govern it, He must govern it justly, because he cannot be
28:45
anything other than just. His hatred of sin is as much a
28:48
part of His essence as His goodness.
28:51
If he acts, he must act according to his nature.
28:54
So let's synthesize all of this. We've covered a massive amount
28:57
of theological ground today, moving from ancient texts to the
29:00
psychology of guilt to the global history of blood
29:03
sacrifice. It's.
29:04
A lot to take in. It is, but the core take away is
29:07
this vindicatory justice. God's requirement to punish thin
29:12
is not a mood swing of the Almighty.
29:15
It isn't an arbitrary rule he decided to enforce to show off
29:20
his authority. No, it is the very essence of
29:22
His Holiness. It's demanded by his role as the
29:25
moral governor and judge of the universe.
29:28
It's written onto the innate conscience of every human being,
29:31
causing dread and trembling in the face of guilt.
29:33
And it's loudly declared by the blood of millions of sacrifices
29:36
across all of human history, as disconnected cultures
29:39
instinctively tried to balance a cosmic scale they knew they had
29:42
tipped for you, the listener, Understanding this gives immense
29:45
weight to your theology. It reveals that the universe
29:48
operates on an unbreakable moral foundation.
29:51
God's hatred of sin is as reliable, as consistent, and as
29:54
unavoidable as the laws of physics.
29:57
Gravity doesn't take a day off, and God's justice doesn't look
30:00
the other way. It's.
30:01
Terrifying, but also beautiful. Recognizing the absolute
30:05
necessity of God's justice is what makes the gospel actually
30:09
make sense. The cross isn't a backup plan.
30:12
The cross is the only possible solution to the unstoppable
30:16
force of divine justice colliding with human sin.
30:19
It. Brings us full circle to that
30:21
sterile room we talked about at the beginning.
30:23
The room can't lower its standards to accommodate the
30:25
dirt. The dirt must be dealt with.
30:27
The contamination has to be addressed it.
30:29
Has to be purged. And that leaves you with a
30:31
lingering thought to consider as we close If human history is
30:35
defined by a desperate, instinctive drive to offer
30:38
sacrifices to clear our guilty consciences, and if God's
30:41
perfect justice demands A flawless, complete payment, what
30:45
happens when you realize that your own attempts to pay the
30:47
debt are entirely bankrupt? That's the real issue if the.
30:49
Debt is that vast, and the judge is that unbending.
30:52
Who steps in to pay a debt you can never afford?
30:55
That is a question worth pursuing.