(Heb. 6:13-2013For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself, 14Saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. 15And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. 16For men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. 17Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath: 18That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: 19Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; 20Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. (Hebrews 6:13‑20))
HERE are four great impossibilities in Scripture, the first of which is contained in the passage which stands at the head of this paper shall, at the outset, dwell upon it for a little, not exactly in its own connection in Heb. 6— that we shall have at the close—but simply the solemn fact stated.
I allude to the expression in the 18th verse,
“IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR GOD TO LIE.”
IMPOSSIBILITY, No. 1.
It is a very common remark that “all things are possible with God,” —that “God can do anything,” and the statement has the authority of the Lord Jesus Himself, but I need not say the Lord did not mean thereby to contradict the passage before us, and to imply that the holy God could either utter or act a lie. If that were possible, then He would not be God at all: He would be reduced to what you and I are; so, whilst one would earnestly press the love and grace of God in dealing with the sinner, still it is most important that we should maintain the holiness, righteousness, and truth, of His character, in all their strict integrity. God is one who “can by no means clear the guilty.” God is of “purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and cannot look upon sin.” “God is LIGHT, and in Him is no darkness at all.” Remember, I beseech you, that GOD IS LIGHT. How often one hears that precious passage quoted—GOD IS LOVE, and how seldom comparatively its counterpart; but the very epistle (1 John) that contains the glorious announcement—GOD Is LOVE—opens by the “message” from heaven that GOD IS LIGHT. Now why is it that people like to think of God’s LOVE, and do not feel happy in the reflection that God is LIGHT?
Because light detects darkness—because it is a most unpleasant thing for the guilty sinner to be revealed in all the searching brilliancy of His holy presence.
You hear people say, “I hope to go to heaven;” but let me ask, Do you hope to be in the LIGHT? “God is LIGHT) and in Him is NO DARKNESS AT ALL,” whereas man is SIN, and in him is nothing but darkness. That is what you are, my unsaved reader—the very opposite of what God is. Do you really hope to go to heaven? Could you find any happiness there?
None whatever. Heaven would be perfectly intolerable to you, if you are not consciously fit or the dazzling LIGHT of God’s own glory.
But to return. If it be impossible for God to utter a lie, how much more impossible to act a lie! Deeply, deeply as He yearns over the lost, mightily as He longs for the deliverance and blessing of those held captive by sin and Satan, yet God cannot depart in the smallest degree from what He is in Himself, nor act inconsistently with His nature as a holy God to accomplish these blessed ends. He may not exercise His grace to belie His justice; He will not be merciful at the expense of holiness; He cannot express His love in a way inconsistent with truth; He refuses to sacrifice the dignity and majesty of His throne to satisfy the deep desires of His heart.
Now, you may not like to have this truth pressed upon you, but if you were converted to God you would delight in it, because I don’t know anything that gives a soul more real rest than the blessed fact that he has been saved not only by grace, but through righteousness.
A man once said to me, when I sought to put the Gospel before him, “I don’t understand all this. Is not God able to do anything? and if He loves me, why cannot He save me at once, without all this incessant talk about Christ, and the Cross, and the Blood?”
“Ah,” I replied, “you imagine that God can do anything; but you are wrong, He cannot. It is impossible for God to lie; and were He to save you without the Cross, He would be acting a lie. It would be the very opposite of justice. Justice must punish sin.”
Oh! if people were only to think of this a little more, they would not talk so lightly about their sins. How universally we hear it said, “I know I am very bad, but I do the best I can, and trust in the mercy of God, and I hope to be saved in the end.” It is all a delusion.
If you want to know the certain road to everlasting hell, that is the, road!
Let us analyze it. What is the best that you can do? “Man in his best state is altogether vanity;” all his “righteousnesses are as filthy rags;” and as to trusting in the mercy of God, man’s idea of the mercy of God is the hope that God will think as little of his sins as he does himself. But no; God’s holiness demands the punishment of sin. And His love as well as His holiness require that the sinner shall be made absolutely fit for the glory of God—as fit as the Lord Jesus is Himself—if he is ever to be there.
IMPOSSIBILITY, No. 2.
Now let us look at the second impossibility.
The first concerned God, the second concerns the Sinner. We shall find it in Heb. 11:66But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. (Hebrews 11:6), “But without faith it is IMPOSSIBLE to please God.” Connect that verse with another in Rom. 8:77Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. (Romans 8:7), “The carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh CANNOT PLEASE GOD.”
We have been seeing that there is in God’s nature that which prevents His coming down to man, except in righteousness. Now we turn to what a sinner is by nature, and we find it is impossible for him to please God. They that are in the flesh (in contrast to those who are “in Christ” (verse 1), and “in the Spirit,” (verse 9) “cannot please God.” What a dreadful position to be in! But is it not true of my unconverted reader? Do you love God? No; you love pleasures, amusement, anything, everything but Him. Why is this? “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God.” That is what man’s heart is made of morally—and “God is Love.” God and man then are opposites. “For it is not subject to the law of God?” Must not you plead guilty to that indictment also? Not subject, “neither indeed can be!” What terrible material we are made of! No wonder the apostle finishes up this terrible picture with the sweeping statement, “They that are in the flesh cannot please God.”
You may do the best you can, attend your place of worship regularly, read the Bible, say prayers, give charity, be honest and straightforward in your business, and so forth, but remember that all the time, unless you have been converted to God, and are saved through the Lord Jesus Christ, you are not pleasing God. You must be “born again” before it is possible to please God. Oh! how it takes the very ground from under us, and lays us low before Him.
You are perhaps putting your works, your prayers, your good conduct in the place of Christ. You have to put them in the dust and learn that they are nothing but filthy rags. You may be zealously seeking God in this way, but it is the wrong way. It is the very mistake the apostle, in the 10th chap. of Romans, accuses Israel of. “They have a zeal for God,” he says, “but not according to knowledge, for they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.”
Now I ask you, dear reader, have you ever honestly gone down before God and told Him that you are nothing but a thoroughly lost, vile sinner? If not, you have not submitted yourself to the righteousness of God, for that is what His testimony declares you to be, in the 1st, end, and 3rd chapters of Romans. I don’t think there are many moments in the history of a soul more blessed than the moment when he so thoroughly submits himself to God’s righteousness as to acknowledge that he is perfectly LOST, because the more fully a person knows his utterly worthless position in this world, the more thoroughly he is able to appreciate the cleansing power of Christ’s most precious blood.
Now we have looked at the two sides—God and man. We have seen how IMPOSSIBLE it is for God to surrender one tittle of His righteousness, and how IMPOSSIBLE it is for man to leave his sinful state. God and man fixed at the very antipodes from one another. How, then, is the mighty distance that separates them to be bridged over? How are two such opposite beings to be brought together in peace and blessedness? How was God to maintain His holiness, righteousness, and truth in the judgment of sin, and yet give expression to His love, that longed to have poor guilty ones with Himself in glory?
That was the mighty problem that had to be solved! The profoundest human intellect might well stand aghast at its immensity, and confess its helpless impotence. It remains for God Himself to devise means by which His banished be not expelled from Him, means which glorify all His attributes, and at the same time give a channel for His boundless love to flow. God can now be just, and the justifier of the poor ungodly sinner that believes in Jesus.
Let me illustrate a little what I mean. A man is tried for murder. The jury is sworn, the evidence is heard, and the verdict of “guilty” is recorded. The judge, instead of sentencing the prisoner to death, addresses him thus: “You have been clearly proved to be guilty of this murder, but I pity you, and herewith I pardon your offense—you are discharged.” Would not that be a piece of gross injustice? Would it not be an outrage upon even human ideas of righteousness? Undoubtedly such a judge would be pronounced by public opinion to be a disgrace to the judicial bench. But though man is shocked at the bare idea of a human judge acting in such a way, yet he expects God, “the Judge of all the earth,” to deal with him after that very manner Surely you are not going to saddle God with a character that you would not tolerate in a human being! How, then, is God to pardon, bless, and save in a righteous way the man who is thoroughly guilty and lost?
This question our third Impossibility will answer.
(To be concluded in our next).