Preaching God’s Severity

He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines (Isaiah 5:2)

How God Exercises His Severity

There are some sins or degrees of sinning that neither the holiness, nor majesty, nor wisdom of God can so bear with as to suffer them to pass unpunished or unremarked on in this world. In such cases God is said to exercise his “severity.” And he does so, in extraordinary outward judgments upon open, profligate sinners, especially the enemies of his church and glory. Hence, on such an occasion does God give that description of himself: “God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth; the Lord revengeth and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies” (Nah. 1:2). When God acts toward his adversaries according to the description here given of himself, he deals with them in severity. And two things are required for these judgments of God against his adversaries in this world to be instances of his vengeance.

First, that they be unusual, such as rarely occur in the ordinary dispensation of divine providence (Num. 16:29–30). God ensures that everything that happens in the world aligns with his justice and righteousness. But yet he bears with things so for the most part that he will manifest himself to be exceedingly full of patience and long-suffering and also to exercise the faith of them that believe in the expectation of a future judgment. Wherefore, there must be something extraordinary in those judgments in which God will exercise and manifest His severity. So it is expressed, “The Lord shall rise up as in Mount Perazim; he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work, and bring to pass his act, his strange act” (Isa. 28:21). The work he will do is “his” work, but it is his “strange” work; that is, not strange from or opposite to his nature, for he will do nothing but that which is unusual, which he does but seldom, and is therefore marvelous. Thus, in sudden destructions of persecutors or persons of flagitious wickedness, in great desolations of provoking families, cities, and nations, in fire from heaven, in inundations, plagues, earthquakes, and such sudden, extraordinary, consuming judgments, God gives instances of his severity in the world (Rom. 1:18).

Second, in this case such judgments must be open, visible, and manifest to both those punished and to others who wisely consider them. So God speaks of himself: “God that repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face” (Deut. 7:10); that is, he will do it openly and manifestly so that they themselves and all others shall take notice of his severity therein. This, I say, is one way whereby God acts out his severity in this world. And hereby he pours everlasting contempt upon the security of his proudest and haughtiest adversaries. When they think they have sufficiently provided for their own safety and stopped all avenues of evil, according to the rules of their policy and wisdom, with the best observations they are able to make of the ordinary effects of his providence, and so give up themselves to take satisfaction in their lusts and pleasures, he breaks in upon them with an instance and example of his severity to their utter destruction. So, “when they say, ‘Peace and safety,' then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape” (1 Thess. 5:3). This will be the state one day of the whole Babylonish interest in the world (Rev. 18:7–10). But this is not directly intended in this place, although even this effect of God’s severity overtook these apostates afterward.

In spiritual judgments. By these, God, in his severity, leaves unprofitable, provoking, and apostate professors under the impossibility here intended of being renewed unto repentance. And this is the sorest of all God’s judgments. There is in it a sentence of eternal damnation denounced on men beforehand in this world. So our apostle tells us, “Some men’s sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment” (1 Tim. 5:24). God passes judgment on them in this world, so that there shall be no alteration in their state and condition to eternity. And this severity of God toward sinners under the gospel, shutting them up under final impenitency,¹ consists in these four things.

First, God puts an end to all his expectations concerning them; he looks for no more from them and so exercises no more care about them. While God is pleased to afford the use of means for conversion and repentance unto any, he is said to look for and expect answerable fruits: "I did," says he, "so to my vineyard, and I looked that it should bring forth grapes" (Isa. 5:2, 4). Wherefore, when God takes away all means of grace and repentance from anyone, then he puts an end to his expectation of any fruits. For if a man can have no fruit from his vineyard while he dresses it or from his field while he tills it, he will never look for any after he has given them up and laid them waste. And on the other side, when he utterly ceases to look for any fruit from them, he will till them no more, for why should he put himself to charge or trouble to no purpose? Woe unto the souls of men when God, in this sense, looks for no more at their hands; that is, when he puts an end to that patience or long-suffering toward them from whence all supplies of the means of conversion and repentance arise. This God does by some, and that in such ways as we shall afterward declare.

Second, God will actually punish them with, or inflict on them, hardness of heart and blindness of mind, preventing their repentance and belief: “Therefore they could not believe, because Esaias said again, ‘He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart, that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them’” (John 12:39–40). God will now judicially blind them and harden them, and, by one means or other, everything that befalls them shall promote their induration. So it was with these Jews; the doctrine of Christ filled them with envy, his holiness with malice, and his miracles with rage and madness. Their “table was a snare” to them,² and that which should have been for their good turned to their hurt. So it is with all those whom God in his severity hardens. Whether the outward means be continued unto them or no, all is one; everything shall drive them farther from God and increase their obstinacy against him. Hence, they become scoffers and persecutors, avowedly scorning and hating the truth. And herein it may be they shall please themselves until they are swallowed up in despair or the grave.

Third, God usually, in his severity, gives them up unto “sensual lusts.” So he dealt with the idolaters of old: he “gave them up to vile affections” (Rom. 1:26), as described by the apostle, and in pursuing them, “gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do things that are not convenient” (Rom. 1:28). Whence they were “filled with all unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:29). So does God frequently deal with apostates from the gospel, or from the principal truths of it, unto idolatry and superstition? And when they are engaged in the pursuit of these lusts, especially when they are judicially given up unto them, they are held assuredly as under cords and chains unto final impenitency.

Fourth, God gave such persons up unto Satan to be blinded and led by him into pernicious delusions: “Because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved, God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned who loved not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:10–12). This was the state and condition of the persons here prophesied of: The truth of the gospel was preached unto them and for some time professed by them. They received the truth, but they received not the love of it so as to comply with it and improve it unto its proper end. This kept them barren and unprofitable under their profession. For where the truth is not loved, as well as believed or assented unto, it will bring forth no fruits. But this was not all; they had pleasure in their sins, lusts, and unrighteousnesses, resolving not to part with them on any terms. Whereas, therefore, these are all of them absolutely and without limitation judged and condemned by the truth of the gospel, they began to dislike and secretly to hate the truth itself. But whereas, together with their lusts and unrighteousnesses wherein they had pleasure, they found a necessity of a religion one or other, or the pretense of some religion or other, to give them countenance against the truth, which they rejected, they were in a readiness to do anything that should offer itself to them. In this condition, in the way of punishment and as revenge for their horrible ingratitude and contempt of his gospel, God gives them up to the power of Satan, who blinds, deludes, and deceives them with such efficacy that they shall not only readily embrace but also obstinately believe and adhere to the lies, errors, and falsehoods that he shall suggest unto them. And this is the way and course whereby so many carnal gospelers are turned off unto Romish idolatry every day.

Other instances of God's severity on this occasion could be given, but these are sufficient to declare how he deals with those described in the text, and thus their renovation unto repentance is impossible. For what hopes or expectations should we have concerning those such as God has utterly forsaken, whom he has judicially smitten with blindness and hardness of heart, whom he has given up not only to the power and efficacy of their own lusts and vile affections, but also immediately unto Satan to be deluded and led captive at his pleasure? In vain shall the repentance of such persons be either expected or endeavored.

And this severity of God ought to be preached and insisted on in the declaration of the gospel. Let the reader consult what has been already offered concerning the use of gospel threatenings and comminations in the third and fourth chapters.³ There is a proneness in corrupted nature to despise the riches of the goodness, forbearance, and long-suffering of God, not knowing that the goodness of God leads them to repentance, and thereafter their hardness and impenitent heart treasure up to themselves wrath against the day of wrath, as our apostle speaks (Rom. 2:4–5). They consider only God's mercy and long-suffering, as well as the gospel's grace and pardon, which makes them ready to despise these gifts and turn them into lasciviousness, or to use them as an excuse to justify their sins. By this means, on such mistaken apprehensions, suited to their lusts and corrupt inclinations, heightened by the craft of Satan, do multitudes, under the preaching of the gospel, harden themselves daily to destruction. And there are others who, although they will not give themselves up to their lusts and carnal affections on such wicked pretenses, yet, for want of constant vigilance and watchfulness, are apt to have sloth and negligence, with many ill frames of spirit, increase and grow upon them. Both sorts should be stirred up by being reminded of the severity of God. They are to be taught that there are secret powers accompanying the dispensation of the gospel, continually in a readiness to “revenge all disobedience” (2 Cor. 10:6); that God is not mocked, but “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." For he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting” (Gal. 6:7–8).

This article is adapted from Apostasy from the Gospel (Volume 14) by John Owen.

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Notes:

1. I.e., lack of regret or penitence.

2. Ps. 69:22.

3. Exercitations on the Epistle concerning the Person of Christ. Wherein the original causes, nature, prefigurations, and discharge of that holy office are explained and vindicated. . . . With a Continuation of the Exposition on the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Chapters of the Said Epistle to the Hebrews (London: Nathaniel Ponder, 1674), commentary on Heb. 3:7–11 and 15–19; 4:1–2 and 12–13. Owen provides both a summary of his points on Hebrews 3–4 and a full commentary on these chapters.

4. I.e., a mindset for lustfulness

John Owen (1616–1683) was vice-chancellor of Oxford University and served as adviser and chaplain to Oliver Cromwell. Among the most learned and active of the Puritans in seventeenth-century England, he excelled in both doctrine and practical theology.