I read recently of a speaker who preached on the mercy of God 'until it seemed there was nothing in God but mercy.' But I fear he misrepresented God. Such misrepresentation is easy, and to people who do not think deeply, and who do not want to take life seriously, it is pleasant, but it is unspeakably dangerous.
If we are to win souls and save our own, we must not distort the picture of God's character which we hold up to view. It is life eternal to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent (John xvii. 3); but it must be the true and holy God, as He is, and not some false god who conforms to our poor little warped human desires and opinions.
Some religious teachers misrepresent God by making Him utterly savage and cruel, and they gloat over unutterably horrid pictures of Hell, where they imagine God delighting in the most exquisite tortures of the damned, and thus men are embittered against God until they feel there is no hope of His mercy.
Others misrepresent God by making Him appear as a sort of goody-goody God, who fawns upon sinners with mawkish sympathy and looks upon worldlings and triflers and lukewarm professors with weak, sentimental, old-womanish pity. Nothing can be further from the truth concerning God. We find God Himself bitterly rebuking those who, living in sin, thought He did not disapprove their ways. He sets before them a list of their sins (Psalm 1. 17-20), and then says: 'These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself; but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes. Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.' (vv. 21,22.)
The truth lies between these extremes. There is mercy in God, but it is mingled with severity; there is wrath in God, but it is tempered with mercy.
The great soul-winners from Bible times till now have recognized this; they have held an even balance between the goodness and the severity of God, because the Bible does so; and the Bible, of all the innumerable books written, is the only one which gives us an authoritative representation of God.
The book of nature reveals to us the goodness and the severity of God. Fire will not only bake our food, and bless us, but it will also burn us; water will not only quench our thirst and refresh us, but if we trifle with it, it will drown us; if we recognize God's ways of working in nature, and take heed and obey, we shall find nature's laws most kind and helpful; but if we neglect or refuse to obey we shall find them most terrible and destructive.
But if we want to know God in all the richness of His character, and all the fullness of His self-revelation, we must study the Bible and compare Scripture with Scripture.
The Bible tells us of God's unutterable love leading Him to seek sinners in mercy; but His righteousness requires of the sinner penitence, faith, separation from evil, and obedience to His will.
Various Bible descriptions show how God holds an even balance between His mercy and His judgments.
'Behold the goodness and severity of God,' writes Paul: 'on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in His goodness; otherwise,' he says (showing that God's goodness does not destroy His severity), 'thou also shalt be cut off.' We must beware! Then he adds a touch of tenderness -- making clear how even in His severity God waits to show mercy -- 'And they also,' though they have been cut off, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graffed in, for God is able to graff them in again.' (Romans xi. 22, 23.)
Again Paul writes, 'I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto Salvation to every one that believeth..... For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, the just shall live by faith.' And then he adds, 'For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.' (Romans i. 16-18.)