The Goodness and Severity of God

Today's Scripture

Romans 11:22 — "Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off."

Psalm 145:8-9 — "The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The LORD is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made."

The Big Idea

The same God is both kind and severe — lavishly generous to everything he has made, and unflinchingly serious about evil. These are not two moods, and certainly not two gods. His severity is what his goodness looks like when it meets what destroys us. Crop out either side and you no longer have the God of the Bible. Hold both, and you are standing before someone worth worshiping.

Reflection

One verse, both hands

We crop photos all the time. The messy room behind you, the stranger at the edge of the frame, the friend mid-blink — gone with a swipe. It is harmless with pictures. It is fatal with God.

Paul will not let us crop. Romans 11:22 — "Note then the kindness and the severity of God." The word "note" means look carefully, look deliberately. Hold the whole picture in your hands and do not cut anything out.

Every generation trims the photo one of two ways. Some keep only the severity — and end up with a religion of fear, a god who is always scowling, and believers who never exhale. Others keep only the kindness — and end up with a god who is always smiling, never serious, and useless on the worst day of your life. J.I. Packer says the people who actually know God do something different:

"Those who know God have great thoughts of God." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

Great thoughts are not vague, happy thoughts. They are whole thoughts — big enough to include everything God has said about himself, including the parts we would not have chosen.

Good all the way down

Start with kindness, because Scripture starts there. When Moses asked to see God's glory, God answered by preaching a sermon about himself: Exodus 34:6-7 — "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin." When God describes God, he leads with mercy.

But keep reading, because God did not crop his own portrait. The same sentence ends, "...but who will by no means clear the guilty" (Exodus 34:7). Mercy first, and in abundance — yet justice still standing at the end of the sentence. God's own self-description holds in one breath the two things we keep trying to split into two gods.

And his goodness is not rationed out to the deserving. Psalm 145:9 — "The LORD is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made." All. Every sunrise, every taste bud, every good laugh, every glass of cold water, every friendship — these are not accidents of a neutral universe. They are gifts from a giver who did not have to give any of them.

Think through one ordinary morning. You woke up — gift. Hot water came out of the wall — gift. Somebody made the bread you ate, from wheat God grew, under a sun God lit — gift, gift, gift. We move through stacked kindnesses all day and call it "normal." Packer names the heartbeat behind it all:

"Generosity is, so to speak, the focal point of God's moral perfection." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

A focal point is where everything comes into focus. God's perfection is not chiefly that he never makes mistakes. It is that he loves to give. Psalm 107:8-9 — "Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man! For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things." The psalmist's only worry is that we will eat the meal and never thank the cook. Psalm 34:8 — "Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!" Goodness this rich is meant to be tasted, not merely admitted.

Why Santa Claus theology collapses

Here is where the cropping happens. Take all that kindness, delete the severity, and you get what Packer famously called Santa Claus theology — a god whose whole job is delivering treats, who asks only that we be more or less nice, and who would never dream of judging anyone. It sounds comforting. Packer saw the flaw at its core:

"Santa Claus theology carries within itself the seeds of its own collapse, for it cannot cope with the fact of evil." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

Think it through. A Santa Claus god is fine on a sunny afternoon. But what does he say in the oncology ward? What does he do about genocide, abuse, betrayal? Nothing — because a god who is only ever indulgent has no verdict on evil and no power to end it. The first real tragedy snaps him like a candy cane. A cropped god cannot carry real weight.

Worse, a Santa Claus god has nothing to offer the people evil has actually hurt. Tell an abuse survivor that the universe is run by indulgent cheerfulness, and you have told her that what happened to her will never be taken seriously. Only a God with real severity can promise real justice. Strange as it sounds, the doctrine we flinch at is the one the wounded need most.

The God of the Bible is not fragile like that, because his goodness has a spine. Jonathan Edwards — the great preacher of colonial New England — reminded his hearers how serious the situation actually is:

"There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God." — Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

That sentence makes modern people flinch, but read it carefully and you find grace hiding inside it. "Mere pleasure" means nothing forces God to be patient with a rebellious world — and yet he is patient, day after day, because he wants to be. Every safe morning a person spends ignoring God is severity postponed by kindness. The question Edwards forces on us is not whether God is too harsh. It is why he has been so patient with us, for so long, when nothing obligated him to be.

Jesus said the same thing more gently but no less seriously. When a tower fell in Siloam and killed eighteen people, the crowd wanted to know whose sin caused it. Luke 13:4-5 — "Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." Jesus refuses both errors. The victims were not extra-guilty; but no one watching is innocent. The tower is not a puzzle to solve. It is an alarm clock. Jesus loves the crowd too much to let a tragedy become a spectator sport. Every siren we hear and forget is a reminder that life comes with no guarantees, and that the time to turn toward God is now, while his kindness still holds the door open.

Packer summarizes the pattern that runs through the whole Bible:

"Behind every display of divine goodness stands a threat of severity in judgment if that goodness is scorned." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

That sounds harsh until you ask what God's goodness is for. Paul answers: Romans 2:4 — "Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" To "presume" is to pocket the gifts and ignore the giver. God's kindness is not a vending machine. It is a hand on your shoulder, turning you around toward home. Scorn that hand long enough, and what remains is the severity you insisted on.

Notice that Paul calls God's kindness "riches" — riches of kindness and forbearance and patience. Every day you have lived is money out of that account, spent on you. The only truly tragic response is to keep spending it without ever asking why the account stays open.

Where kindness and severity meet

So is God kind, or is he severe? The cross answers: both, at full strength, in the same moment. Galatians 3:13 — "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us — for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.'"

Look at Calvary with today's verse in mind. There is the severity of God — sin actually cursed, actually punished, nothing waved off, nothing winked at. And there is the kindness of God — because the curse falls on Christ, who volunteered, "for us." God did not soften his severity to make room for kindness. He aimed it at himself. The Judge absorbed the judgment so the guilty could go home.

Stand at the cross long enough and the two attributes stop looking like rivals. You will never find a place where God's severity against sin is more visible — and never a place where his kindness toward sinners is more extravagant. The crucifixion is Romans 11:22 written in blood: kindness and severity, one God, one afternoon.

This is why a Christian can hold both truths without being torn in half. C.S. Lewis caught it in a children's story, when the Beavers tell the children about Aslan, the lion king:

"Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you." — C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Not safe. Good. A safe god would have stayed off the cross — and left us in our sins. The good God came down into the severity himself. So Paul's closing instruction in Romans 11:22 — "continue in his kindness" — is not a threat to keep you nervous. It is a direction to keep you near. Stay where the kindness is. Stay in Christ, where severity has already spent itself, and goodness has no end.

Going Deeper

Take five minutes tonight and make a list titled "Good to all." Write down ten good things from today — small ones count: food, a song, a text from a friend, the fact that you woke up. Read Psalm 145:9 over the list, and thank the Giver by name for each one. Then read Romans 2:4 once more and ask one honest question: is all this kindness leading me anywhere? If there is a corner of your life where you have been presuming on his patience, tell him so — today, while it is still called kindness.