God Is Not Obligated

Will God allow such disobedience and apostasy to go unpunished?

• Certainly not. 
• He is terribly displeased with our original sin as well as our actual sins. 
• Therefore He will punish them by a just judgment both now and eternally as He has declared: 
• Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them (Galatians 3: 10).

Imagine if with respect to this our sinful nature could be silenced and that it would recognize divine justice and acknowledge our guilt.

• Would our flesh then not have the courage to call upon and appeal to the sovereignty of God’s justice in this way: 
• knowing that divine justice is a free, sovereign determination of God, 
• and that this justice obligates us in all things while it obligates God to nothing? 

Moreover, is God not free whether or not to connect our guilt with the consequence of punishment? 

• The following escape route of sinful nature is found in the second question: 
• Will God allow such disobedience and apostasy to go unpunished?
• The implication is clear: is it also possible that God would not assign punishment to the guilt? 
• In this way the flesh once again tries to escape the burden of guilt,
• since guilt that is not followed up with punishment is not really guilt.

Imagine furthermore that we succeeded also to refute this argument of sinful nature. 

• It would have yet a third idea on hand to safeguard a person against the judgment of God. 
• It would in fact have the temerity to call upon the mercy of God
• Whose justice it actively opposes by attempting to declare a contradiction between God’s mercy and His justice. 

And if need be, sinful nature would be prepared to accept this inner discrepancy in God, 

• and declare His actions as absurd and deny God as God, 
• rather than to surrender itself and its rights. 
• Thus, sinful nature would ask the third question: But is God not also merciful?

When our sinful nature reasons this way, 

• we consider ourselves first of all detached from God and independent, 
• and from that imagined position we construct entitlements for ourselves. 
• Thus, it is only natural that we come into conflict with divine justice, since that whole supposed independence is a lie. 

Our life itself is founded on the justice God initiated, 

• since man received this divine right at the time of creation even as we receive it at birth. 
• From the very beginning, God has instituted and granted us the right of His covenant 
• and through it, our existence was determined from that beginning. 

It is not as it might appear from the way the first question is phrased,

• namely that the peculiarity of our existence determines justice, 
• but rather the other way around; it is justice that controls our life.

Since now according to our sinful nature we can never think in any other way than from our own point of view, that is, 

• after we have made ourselves free from God, 
• and declared ourselves independent from Him, 
• all our ideas about the right of our existence must be incorrect. 

The Heidelberg Catechism Lord's Day 4

Adapted Excerpt from THE TRUE FAITH S. G. De Graaf Translation by Richard Stienstra