God is perfectly good.
God is perfectly wrathful.
God is perfectly just.
God is perfectly loving.
God is perfectly merciful.
God is perfectly gracious.
The first verse of this song is so sweet to sing. “Father”: O, what a wonderful thing it is to be able to call God Father. When we were in darkness, when we were separated from God and due eternal wrath and punishment because of our sin, this perfectly wrathful and perfectly just God pulled us out of darkness and, because of his mercy and grace to us in his son Jesus Christ, has filled us with peace by giving us peace with him.
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Through his perfect mercy, in our greatest time of need, God provided atonement for our sin by pouring out his wrath on Christ. The punishment due to us was laid on Christ. Not only that, God adopted us into his family through his goodness, kindness and love. We can now call Christ brother and God Heavenly Father. How can we not sing and rejoice over this?
Our greatest gift is reconciliation to and adoption by God; it is salvation! But God doesn’t stop there. He continues to perfectly provide help in our walk with him by sending the Holy Spirit of God to live inside us, to guide us, to convict us of our sin, to constantly turn us back to the source of all blessing, healing and joy: himself.
Christian brother and sister, the promises God made he will keep. He will never leave us, forsake us or break his covenant with us, because he made the covenant with himself (read Genesis 15 for that). This covenant is everlasting. You are redeemed and adopted for eternity, with the promise that you will see Christ face to face one day and, by the power and grace of our God, Christ will look at you and say “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
All the while, we know the only good in us is Christ in us.
We will hear that because of God’s great power to transform a dead sinner to a redeemed child! And for that, we will worship and praise him forever!
