Trust God to handle the sin against you, your family, your neighbor, your community, or others. God will. He does not release the guilty. God’s wrath functions in righteousness and keeps you from the poison of your own. Your wrath spoils. You only hurt yourself.

Possibly you, like so many, have been sinned against in one way or another. Sometimes this desire for justice can seem overwhelming. You long for the person who sinned against you, your family, your neighbor, your community, or a group of people of which you connect to get what he has coming, to get what she is due, or to get a taste of their own medicine. Often other emotions are comingled with this desire. Hurt. Anger. Shame. Guilt. Helplessness. Hopeless. These all work together, at times, to forge a giant crevice through your soul where every day you are affected by these things. If you are one of those who desire justice, I have some good news for you today.
Justice for Your Perpetrator
Listen how God describes Himself in Exodus. Here, God talks with Moses as He prepares to once again give him the Ten Commandments. This text was partially quoted often in the Bible.
Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:5-7)
First, we must point out that to the guilty, God made all the preparations in necessary for you to be forgiven in Jesus Christ. This text emphasizes God’s willingness to forgive. Notice the key words: merciful, gracious, longsuffering, abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. Oh guilty friend, these are good, deep, and meaningful truths for you. God forgives. This truth applies to all of us.
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The most effective way to combat the impact of trials that roll like sea billows is to grow in the love of God before the wind begins to stir the sea around us. The key anchor for believers in Christ is God’s Word. Objective proof of God’s love is the starting point for experiencing or sensing God’s love. That proof was given by Christ and recorded in Scripture: “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

We just passed another anniversary of the day the “November gales came early” when the Edmund Fitzgerald freighter sank in Lake Superior on November 10, 1975 with 29 souls aboard.  I can’t image a more terrifying death than going down in a sinking ship.
Singer/Songwriter Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” depicts the harrowing hours before the vessel sank. Describing the final hours, Lightfoot asks, “Does any one know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?” The song implies there are places of terror and despair that block any sense of God’s love- if it exists at all.
It is possible even for Christians to feel disconnected from God’s love. Our own battle with sin and the presence of sin all around assails us relentlessly. Like the monstrous waves against a ship tossed in a tumultuous sea, the trials of life can beat us into submission. There are moments when we may feel abandoned by God and his love. Yes, even Christians can fall into terrible despair. The Apostle Paul once wrote to the Corinthians, “For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself” (2 Cor.1:8b).
The most effective way to combat the impact of trials that roll like sea billows is to grow in the love of God before the wind begins to stir the sea around us. The key anchor for believers in Christ is God’s Word. Objective proof of God’s love is the starting point for experiencing or sensing God’s love. That proof was given by Christ and recorded in Scripture: “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The love of God for us is verifiable through Christ’s work on our behalf.
People who are Christian and know the historically demonstrated fact of God’s love for them can still feel unloved by God at times. As stated, the prime remedy for fighting these feelings is the truth of the Word. Prayer is another means to stay close to God and his love. Talking to God often and honestly helps (see the Psalms). Christ purchased direct access to our heavenly Father by his death and resurrection, so we should regularly enter the throne room of grace. We cannot love someone or know their love for us without talking to them. As we spend time with God in prayer, we sense his nearness and his love.
In addition to the Word and prayer, perhaps the most undervalued way to stay close to God and his love is through fellowship with other Christians. It is too easy to isolate ourselves from physical nearness with others in these electronic days. Facebooking with each other or texting friends is not the same as true fellowship. We need to be in proximity with other believers regularly. Sometimes we are embarrassed by our situation or maybe we are afraid to burden others. The very thing we need when we are struggling is the supportive presence, encouragement and counsel of others. Do not run away from people! The love we receive from our brothers and sisters in Christ is one of the main ways God shows his love toward us.
There is no “easy” fix for the despairs of this difficult life. I am suggesting, however, that God’s love is real. Jesus demonstrated God’s love beyond any question. It’s more than a sentiment. Even when you do not feel God’s love, it is still solid and true.
I am exhorting believers to avail themselves of the various means God has provided to become built up in God’s love as preparation for the storms of life that will come. By engaging in God’s Word, prayer, and fellowship with his people as much as possible, we stand a better chance of enduring trying times. None of us are exempt from feeling what is behind Lightfoot’s haunting line cited above, however believers have sure promises to call upon in such times.
Our response to the question- “Does anyone know where the love of God goes?” can be the rhetorical, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”
God’s Word directs us: Romans 8:31–39
[31] What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? [32] He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? [33] Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. [34] Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. [35] Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? [36] As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” [37] No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. [38] For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, [39] nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Dr. Tony Felich is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and serves as the Pastor of Redeemer PCA in Overland Park, Kansas.
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Written by Bennett W. Rogers |
Thursday, October 14, 2021
Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots proved to be one of Ryle’s most popular works. It is one of the best presentations of Puritan and Reformed spirituality ever written, and thanks to the simplicity and forcefulness of Ryle’s writing style, it is certainly one of the most accessible. Think of Holiness as The Pilgrim’s Progress stated propositionally. And like Bunyan’s masterpiece, it has proved to be remarkably enduring. It went through five editions during Ryle’s lifetime, and it has been republished regularly since the prompting of Martyn Lloyd-Jones in 1952.

The second half of the nineteenth century was not kind to Victorian evangelicals.
Darwin’s ideas, which first appeared in print in The Origin of Species in 1859, began to undermine the faith of some, just as German higher criticism of the Old Testament reached British shores in Essays and Reviews. Meanwhile, the Ritualists were busy unprotestantizing the Church of England, as men of “broad views” were insisting that sincerity — not truth — was the “one thing needful.” To make matters worse, relations between evangelical churchmen and dissenters reached new lows, and attacking (or defending) the establishment became a near-universal ecclesiastical obsession.
But in the 1870s, a renewal movement imported from America seemed to offer new spiritual life to embattled evangelicals. It promised full salvation and complete deliverance from all known sin — essentially a second conversion experience — and all one had to do was simply “let go and let God.” A series of popular meetings was held throughout England to promote this new vision of the Christian life, and the Keswick Convention was born.
Holiness Unfolded and Defended
J.C. Ryle (1816–1900), the “Anglican Spurgeon” and undisputed leader of the evangelical party within the Church of England, was entirely unsympathetic with Keswick spirituality. He, along with other evangelical leaders of the old guard, attempted to redirect this new interest in personal holiness into more orthodox channels. Articles were written. Speeches were made. A rival conference was even held in 1875 to promote scriptural holiness. Even so, the Keswick Movement continued to gain steam, especially among younger evangelicals. So, Ryle published his own response in 1877, which was then enlarged in 1879.
Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots proved to be one of Ryle’s most popular works. It is one of the best presentations of Puritan and Reformed spirituality ever written, and thanks to the simplicity and forcefulness of Ryle’s writing style, it is certainly one of the most accessible. Think of Holiness as The Pilgrim’s Progress stated propositionally. And like Bunyan’s masterpiece, it has proved to be remarkably enduring. It went through five editions during Ryle’s lifetime, and it has been republished regularly since the prompting of Martyn Lloyd-Jones in 1952.
The enlarged edition of Holiness (1879) contains twenty-one papers, as well as an excellent introduction. The first seven chapters are the heart of Holiness and form a book within a book (this was the original edition of 1877). Here Ryle explains “the real nature of holiness, and the temptations and difficulties which all must expect who follow it” (xiii). The rest of the book consists of a series of holiness-related sermons that are arranged thematically: biblical character studies (chapters 8–12), the church (chapters 13–14), Christ (chapters 15–20), and extracts from Robert Traill and Thomas Brooks (chapter 21).
Rather than discussing each chapter, allow me to introduce you to some of the great themes of this spiritual classic.
Holiness
Holiness takes holiness seriously. Personal holiness is essential for final salvation. Such a claim is neither legalism nor a threat to the precious doctrine of justification by faith alone. It is the clear and sobering truth of Scripture: “Strive . . . for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). If Holiness accomplishes anything, it reminds the reader of this critical and potentially uncomfortable truth. Read the chapter on Lot’s wife (chapter 10), or consider this question Ryle poses to the indifferent:
Suppose for a moment that you were allowed to enter heaven without holiness. What would you do? What possible enjoyment could you feel there? To which of all the saints would you join yourself, and by whose side would you sit down? Their pleasures are not your pleasures, their tastes not your tastes, their character not your character. How could you possibly be happy, if you had not been holy on earth? (53)
Expect to be convicted. Expect to be challenged. And expect to be encouraged if you are determined to pursue holiness with greater zeal.
Sin
Holiness takes sin seriously. Ryle argues that he who “wishes to attain right views about Christian holiness must begin by examining the vast and solemn subject of sin” (1).
Sin is a vast moral disease that affects the whole human race.
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