By God's Word at Last My Sin I Learned

From where do you know your sins and misery?

The knowledge of misery is a knowing by faith

With that we are assured that there is no knowledge of misery,

Faith focuses on the whole of God’s Word and can never accept one aspect of the truth of God without the other.

We can never submit in faith to the judgment of God without that same faith taking hold of the gospel of redemption.
God’s Word and faith are certainly distinct, but faith from its very beginning embraces God’s entire revelation in its various dimensions,
even if it is only in embryo.

Therefore, we cannot possibly address the matter of our misery except in terms of the knowledge of faith.

Without faith, there is no authentic knowledge of misery.
Thus, since an act of believing is one single act, faith bows before the whole Word of God with its entire content.

Outside of faith, which always immediately embraces deliverance, there is no acceptance of the judgment of sin as guilt.

This is illustrated peculiarly by the words of Cain after he had heard God’s judgment.
He says: My punishment is more than I can bear (Gen. 4: 13).
By “punishment”, he does not think of anything else but the penalty.
There is in these words a protest against the severity of the punishment that God has given him: You will be a restless wanderer on the earth (Gen.4:12).
From this protest it is clear that he does not see his sin as guilt before God even though he may speak in a certain sense of guilt;
it is also clear that he does not submit to the judgment.

Such submission is always a deed of faith, which at the same time accepts redemption.

If God had not revealed deliverance as well,
from man’s side there would never have been agreement with or approval of God’s sentence.
Then there would only have been heard a protest against the punishment,
and an attempt to escape the judgment or seek a reduction in the penalty as Cain sought to do.
Sinful flesh always relates to the judgment in this way.

The preaching of the law alone will never result in the conviction of sin.

Law and gospel working together produce the knowledge of faith concerning our misery.
Without the gospel one can indeed be frightened of the majesty of God,
but it is a fear of Him Whom they see as an enemy and from Whom they seek to escape.
From this there will never come the knowledge of misery and a being crushed by a guilt that produces liberty.

Without the gospel there can never be a redeeming knowledge of misery such as is meant here –

no knowledge by which we come to God in genuine repentance and confession of guilt.
That does not mean, however, that such fear of God’s judgment motivating a person to flee from Him has no meaning at all.
Yet in the true sense of the word that fear is not preparatory for the true knowledge of our misery,
and it is not a point of contact for God’s redeeming work in us.

Nevertheless, God is able to use that fear and transform it so that it becomes a means in His hand to overwhelm us.

Then it is however an intervening deed of His grace
and that conversion happens when with the preaching of the law also that of the gospel comes to us.

It is necessary to note that not any redeeming work ever comes to us except this happens through the whole Word of God,

Adapted Excerpt from The True Faith by Simon Gerrit De Graaf (1889-1955)

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