GOD’S GOODNESS, MERCY TOWARDS MAN

Sir,

These days I have been thinking a lot about the birth of Jesus Christ; and the goodness of God towards us in giving us His only Son. God did not have to do so, but in His love He did. But another thought has been crossing my mind; and as I looked back at my own birth, I was shocked to realise that I might not have been born; at all? Yes, at all. Instead of me, there could have been ‘nothing’. I mean just ‘nothing’ – empty space. But in His goodness God made me; He did not have to do so, but He did. ‘He formed my inwards parts’; and by His mere grace ‘I am fearfully and wonderfully made’, Psalms 139: 14. He made me Himself for Himself; and if there had been a manufacturer’s stamp, I would have been stamped ‘Made in His Image’.

Raising

God did not only make me, but in His goodness, He also sustained and kept me. I feel like raising my voice and joining the Psalmist, saying; ‘By thee I have been holden up from the womb: thou art he that took me out of my mother’s bowels; my praise shall be continually of thee’, Ps.71: 6. I am also reminded that God, in His goodness and mercy towards man, later determined to overcome the cause of sin, the serpent or devil; He declared that the seed of a woman would bruise the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15).

Travelled

Then my thoughts also travelled to the birth of Christ, born of a virgin; the seed of a woman; to the angel that announced His birth, saying Joseph should call his name Jesus: “For he shall save his people from their sins,” Matt.21. Reader, my mind could not measure the greatness of such goodness and mercy towards man; I remembered that Jesus came into a sinful world, but said; “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved,” John 3:17. Jesus came to deal with sin and not the sinner like me. He came to condemn no one, but to save everyone.

In fact God ‘wants all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth’, 1 Timothy 2:4. He loves us not because of our sins, but in spite of our sins. Jesus once talked to a woman who had been caught having adultery. After her accusers had failed to stone her, He told her; “Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more,” John 8:11. Without Jesus she would have been stoned to death. That is how good God is. He wants to save the sinner; those who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and saviour are saved. Jesus once told the Pharisees; “I said, therefore, unto you, that ye shall die in your sin; for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins,” John 8:24. That means God would bring a solution to the problem of sin and wickedness through His own Son; that God’s image in man might be restored. But that meant that a righteous and sinless Son of God would be crucified to save me from my own sins.

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