This article is part of our weekly series, “Our Life’s Comfort: One Year of Being Shaped by the Scriptures.” Read more from the series here.
(12) Q. According to God’s righteous judgment we deserve punishment both now and in eternity: how then can we escape this punishment and return to God’s favor?
A. God requires that his justice be satisfied. Therefore the claims of this justice must be paid in full, either by ourselves or by another.
(13) Q. Can we make this payment ourselves?
A. Certainly not. Actually, we increase our debt every day.
(14) Q. Can another creature—any at all—pay this debt for us?
A. No. To begin with, God will not punish any other creature for what a human is guilty of. Furthermore, no mere creature can bear the weight of God’s eternal wrath against sin and deliver others from it.
(15) Q. What kind of mediator and deliverer should we look for then?
A. One who is a true and righteous man, yet more powerful than all creatures, that is, one who is also true God.
The start of the second part of the catechism—on believers’ redemption in Christ—might not seem as invigorating as you would expect. It feels cautious as it explores the possibility of redemption.
But this is okay. In fact, the catechism gets to Jesus the way the Bible gets to Jesus. The promise of redemption comes early in Scripture. But the Old Testament is an extended study on human misery. The flood, the cycles of sin and judgment in the time of the judges and kings, and the exile of God’s people in Assyria and Babylon are just a few examples of how tenuous the hope of salvation appeared before Christ’s coming. Two loud messages of the Old Testament are these: People are very bad, and God is faithful in executing justice.
A circumspect approach to Christ challenges a nonchalant view of the gospel. “Jesus saves” is old news even for many who say they believe it. “Of course he does; why wouldn’t he?” But salvation didn’t come easily or quickly on God’s timeline. Prior to the gift of Jesus, Scripture made it abundantly clear: For people to be saved, God would have to powerfully intervene. He has! But never forget the total impossibility of salvation apart from Jesus.
God’s Justice Is a Problem for Sinners.
We need Scripture to wreck our assumptions about how we can be righteous. Apart from Scripture people know they do bad things (Rom. 2:15) but cannot understand the fallout of their sin or conceive of an appropriate cure. We tend to minimize “the seriousness of God’s anger and the predicament of fallen creatures; God’s love is romanticized, and his justice is cheapened. The cross of Christ as God’s remedy scandalizes human reason.”[i] And so the common notion of salvation is little more than imagining away our badness or exaggerating the value of our goodness. But Scripture doesn’t allow that. It tells us that God is just.
We can’t bend God’s rules: “God requires that his justice be satisfied.” Justice is “strict adherence to the law.” When justice, or righteousness, is applied to God it is “that perfection of God by which He maintains Himself over against every violation of His holiness.”[ii] God is “of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong” (Hab. 1:13). He demonstrates his justice by penalizing injustice. “The claims of this justice must be paid in full, either by ourselves or by another.” If God ignored sin he would not be good or just. He wouldn’t be the kind of God we would care to believe in.
To truly receive God’s grace in Christ we need to put ourselves in Adam’s shoes after the fall, prior to hearing God’s promise; Adam knew that his sin had separated him from God and that to see his face again would be dangerous (Gen. 2:8).
But God’s plan never failed.
God’s Justice Can Be Satisfied!
Listen to the question again: “How then can we escape this punishment and return to God’s favor?” We deserve condemnation. But God’s justice doesn’t guarantee our demise! There is hope for sinners.
For the gospel to become beautiful we must believe that salvation is an escape from deserving punishment and an undeserving return to God’s favor. Ezekiel 18 is one of the clearest Bible chapters on God’s justice. The sinner “shall die for his iniquity … The soul who sins shall die … the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself … for the treachery of which he is guilty and the sin he has committed, for them he shall die” (Ezek. 18: 18, 20, 24). God will judge his people! (Ezek. 18:30). But the chapter ends like this: “Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin … why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live” (Ezek. 18:30–32).
The Old Testament is largely a record of sin and judgment. But it also invites sinners to return to God’s favor. There would be no need for a Bible if justice was unappeasable. God gave us his word because it’s “able to make you wise for salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15). Know this about God: He delights to save!
Who Can Satisfy God’s Justice?
The catechism explores possible options for how God’s judgment against us might be averted.
Can we satisfy this justice? No. And for two reasons. First, we cannot endure God’s justice. “His justice demands that sin, committed against his supreme majesty, be punished with the supreme penalty—eternal punishment of body and soul.” Those who fall under God’s judgment are sent “away into eternal punishment” (Matt. 25:46). If serious crimes against other humans warrant a life sentence, sins against an eternal God warrant eternal punishment. And second, we cannot merit the satisfaction God’s justice requires because we “increase our debt every day.”
Can another creature satisfy this justice?Perhaps animals? Animal sacrifices in the Old Testament symbolized the satisfaction of God’s justice. But the animals were obliterated through sacrifice; “it was impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Heb. 10:4). What about angels? Angels are “ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation” (Heb. 1:14). But, unlike Jesus, they are not like us in every respect and cannot propitiate for our sins (Heb. 2:17–18).
So is there any other hope? Next time we’ll study the details of the only mediator who can satisfy God’s justice for us, Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man. But it’s okay for us to get into the doctrine of redemption slowly. It’s good for us to take the knowledge of the depth and extent of our misery into the hopeful study of God’s redemption of penitent sinners.
Maybe this will help. As a kid I worked for dear friends as a farm hand. One day I drove a massive steel point through the radiator of another tractor (don’t worry if you can’t picture that; there is no good explanation). As radiator coolant gushed to the ground, I thought, “I should be fired for this. And I probably will be.” I didn’t have the knowledge or competence to fix what I had broken. And the damage looked expensive.
I wasn’t fired. But reflecting on my disqualification made not-being-fired more special.
We are completely disqualified to be called children of God. If you’re a Christian, it’s not because you were even slightly more qualified than others (Rom. 3:12). Believing that truth doesn’t make you less special. It makes your salvation in Jesus more special.
[i] Fred Klooster, Our Only Comfort: A Comprehensive Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Faith Alive Christian Resources, 2001), 153.
[ii] Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1939),74, 75.
