God’s Unfathomable Mercy

Ephesus was the capital city of Asia Minor. It was a city which had a rich, commercial history, but the citizens of the city were blind heathens. They served the goddess Diana, believing she was the goddess of light and life. Paul arrived in Ephesus on his second missionary journey, and he established a congregation there.

In the year 58 AD Paul wrote an epistle to this congregation, and in this epistle Paul extols the sovereign grace of God over against the doctrine of those who still claim to find some good in man. In the text he speaks of the attribute of God’s mercy. God’s mercy reveals itself as the fruit of the love of God. This is not a temporal love, but it is a godly love. The Triune God adores Himself above all else. God’s Testimony speaks of that very clearly. The Father loves the Son and has given Him all things in His hand. In His high priestly prayer Christ speaks, “Thou hast loved Me from before the foundation of the world.”

This love becomes visible

It is godly and perfect. “I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” Because of God’s mercy He bears with us in a general sense. He has with much patience borne with the vessels prepared for His wrath. It is often an incomprehensible matter that the Lord bears with a murmuring and hostile person, but it is only to remove all excuses in the day of days, especially from those who have known the way and not walked therein.

Carried and upheld

The mercy of God becomes especially visible in the lives of His children. The Lord upholds them. He did that already before their conversion. Think only of a godless Manasseh, a vexing Lot in Sodom, a David on the roof, and a Peter in the hall of Caiaphas. This mercy also becomes visible in the pity over those that are His. “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.”

The incomprehensible wonder to be adored and to experience love becomes especially visible in the rebirth. The Lord has made them alive. They were dead in sins and iniquity. Dead means to be subject to the terrible results of the fall which we all carry upon us. The fruits of the fall can be seen in the threefold death.

By nature, man has lost God’s image; he is removed from God and is without Him. He is without righteousness, knowledge, and holiness; he is spiritually dead, and he no longer has any longings or outgoings toward the living God. Man has thought out for himself an image of God and he serves Him with a self-learned knowledge and a self-made godliness—a God to whom he still ascribes grace and glory but whom he serves with a self-willed religion. He does not know that he pardons himself and deceives himself for the great eternity. He has never entered through the gate of rebirth into spiritual life.

Not passively but actively

“Dead in sins and trespasses,” the apostle writes. Death is not a passive state but an active one. Man has a will to do evil, but he no longer has a will to do good. That is taught to those who are truly reborn by the Holy Spirit. They are corrupt people, doing the will of the flesh; they are by nature children of wrath, as all other men. Their enmity in their state of death reveals itself in a brute enmity against the doctrine of free grace, but where the Lord begins the wonder of the rebirth, this is experienced with deep sorrow. By the grace of God, they are picked up from the open field and reborn to a living hope; this can be seen in their walk of life. There comes an inward sorrow over sin. The holy law of the Lord is used in their soul by the Holy Spirit. In this manner they learn to know themselves as a transgressor of all of God’s commandments.

At the same time, the Lord shows His people that death beckons and eternity is before them. It is a calling, “today if ye will hear His voice.” Then, how bitter and shameful sin becomes. It becomes impossible to see any avenue of escape. They must bow before God. There the soul begins to experience and bemoan his sin. How will he ever be converted to God? Such totally prostrate souls for whom from their side is nothing else other than death, are now instructed by the administration of the Word.

It is for that reason that there comes such a strong bond to the pure unadulterated truth and also to God’s servants. The senses renewed by the Holy Spirit teach them to understand the difference between life and death.

The knowledge of Jesus

Paul immediately leaves his senders from Jerusalem and seeks communion with the disciples of Christ. Such souls learn that God is righteous, and they are cursed. What a wonder it becomes when the Holy Spirit opens their eyes to the way of free grace and the soul is led to the knowledge of Jesus. Then He becomes the only hope of their life, and their soul longs to possess Him. Even though it is true that the times and the circumstances may differ, yet it is the work of the Holy Spirit to give the soul no rest before one has a solution and is found in Him. Oh, how true Zion can long for that. “Ah, that I might know Him.”

Jehovah will not chide with us forever

Nor always keep His anger, but deliver

His people from their sorrow and distress.

He has not crushed the flock of His possession,

Nor dealt with us according to transgression;

He chastens, but with love and tenderness.

— Psalter 444:4 p

(Rev. P. Blok passed away in early July at the very advanced and blessed age of ninety-nine years. He was installed in the sacred ministry by his brother Rev. M. Blok in 1959 and served the congregations for almost sixty years. He came from a family whose passion was music and entertainment— a family who had no connection with any church. Of the thirteen children, he and his brother Martinus were chosen by God’s electing love from all eternity, not only as objects of His mercy, but also to be His servants and to bring others to conversion. Another notable fact is that their mother made Confession of Faith and was baptized at the age of seventy-six. When he was serving the congregation of Kootwijkerbroek in the Netherlands, at a time when health problems made him consider going emeritus, the Lord promised him length of days, and the Lord is not lax concerning His promises. He has now entered the rest which remains for the people of God, receiving the reward of a faithful servant. The memory of the just is blessed.)

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