My best post yet

And that's not just an opinion

I have really enjoyed putting together this current series of extracts from Stephen Charnock on the goodness of God. And I have equally enjoyed receiving comments and messages from readers with details of the things that they have been learning along the way. But one thing that I have been telling people is that, if they’ve appreciated the first two newsletters in this series, they were going to love what was coming next. The best was still yet to come.

And here’s the thing. Stephen Charnock would agree. This is because Charnock had a deep-seated conviction that the place where we most clearly see what God is like is not by looking around us at the intricacies of creation or inside of us to the mysteries of our own souls. Rather, it is in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Charnock devoted an entire discourse to exploring this point, which you can find buried in the fourth volume of his works. It’s called the ‘The knowledge of God in Christ’’ and in it he wrote,

As the fulness of the Godhead dwelt personally in Christ, so the fulness of the divine perfections sparkled in the actions and sufferings of Christ.

In reaching this conclusion, Charnock drew on the Bible’s description in Hebrews 1:3 of Christ as ‘the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature’. He continued

The Deity shines out in a clear lustre, which was seen before only in the dusty clouds of creatures and ceremonies . . . but in Christ those vapours are dissolved, the clouds dispersed, and God appears in the sweetness and beauty of his nature, as a refreshing light.

Sure, creation provides a wonderful demonstration of God’s goodness. But what we see in redemption is even better.

Strikingly familiar

To many readers of this newsletter, the idea that we know God most fully in Christ might be a familiar one. But what is striking in Charnock’s writing is how he put it to use across his theology. Ever since I first started reading his reflections on God’s attributes, I have been drawn to how Christ-focused they are. And nowhere is this truer than in Charnock’s discussion of the goodness of God.

Of the 193 pages that Charnock wrote on God’s goodness, he spent 48 talking about how we see it in redemption. That’s longer than his discussion of creation and providence put together! But Charnock’s discussion of the goodness of God in redemption is not only remarkably long, it is also profoundly rich. In their introductory guide to the Puritans, Joel Beeke and Randall Pederson described Charnock’s reflections on God’s goodness as ‘unsurpassed in all of English literature’. I suspect that Charnock’s section on the person and work of Christ has a lot to do with why.

So whilst I cannot aim to give you even a summary of all that Charnock covers in this part of his discourse, I do hope that this post gives you a flavour of what awaits those willing to dive into what is perhaps the most remarkable part of this most remarkable series of reflections on the goodness of God.

Gospel mirror

Charnock begins this section by boldly claiming that ‘[t]he whole gospel is nothing but one entire mirror of divine goodness.’ He goes on to show that it was God’s goodness that was the motive for his redemption of his people. He explained that

When man fell from [God’s] created goodness, God would evidence that he could not fall from [God’s] infinite goodness, that the greatest evil could not surmount the ability of [God’s] wisdom to contrive, nor the riches of his bounty to present, us a remedy for it.

As Charnock continued

It must be only a miraculous goodness that induced him to expose the life of his Son to those difficulties in the world, and death upon the cross, for the freedom of sordid rebels.

Pure goodness

That mention of our rebellion against God leads Charnock to dwell on the implications of our sinful state for our understanding of God’s goodness in the gospel. That is to say that, because we had first rejected him, God’s goodness to us was a ‘pure’ goodness.

He was under no obligation to pity our misery and repair our ruins ; he might have stood to the terms of the first covenant, and exacted our eternal death, since we had committed an infinite transgression. He was under no tie to putt off the robes of a judge for the bowels of a father, and erect a mercy-seat above his tribunal of justice.

Thus, God’s goodness in redeeming us

was not an indigent [or needy] goodness, needing the receiving anything from us ; but it was a pure goodness, streaming out of itself, without bringing anything into itself for the perfection of it.

It as at this point that Charnock connects God’s goodness in the gospel with a point we saw him make near the beginning of the discourse. Namely, that it is God’s goodness, more than any other of his attributes, that kindles our desires for him. ‘What can be desired more of him than his goodness has granted?’, Charnock asked. He then continued

[God] has sought us out when we were lost, and ransomed us when we were captives ; he hath pardoned us when we were condemned, and raised us when we were dead. In creation, he reared us from nothing; in redemption, he delivers our understanding from ignorance and vanity, and our wills from impotence and obstinacy, and our whole man from a death worse than that nothing he drew us from by creation.

Charnock is saying that it is because of his goodness that God hasn’t just saved us from his judgment for our sin but saved our whole person - head and heart thrown in.

Better than creation

Before we go any further, I should mention that the reference which Charnock made to creation at the end of that last quote prepared the ground for what would became a major point in this part of the discourse. Over the following pages, the 17th century pastor and theologian was at pains to show that ‘we may consider the height of [God’s] goodness in redemption to exceed that in creation’. Charnock did this by demonstrating that God’s goodness in redemption was greater than that in creation in regard to (among other things) the difficulty of causing it, the cost of paying it, and by comparing it with the type of goodness God otherwise shows to others.

Whilst the detail of these different points might seem rather pedantic to you and me, it is worth knowing that it was whilst making them that Charnock wrote what may well have been some of the most beautiful lines that were to ever come from his quill. Let me share some of them with you.

Whilst making his second point about the cost of redemption, Charnock explained:

This was a more expensive goodness than what was laid out in creation . . . for this God must be made man, eternity must suffer death, the Lord of angels must weep in a cradle, and the Creator of the world must hang like a slave. He must be in a manger in Bethlehem, and die upon a cross on Calvary ; unspotted righteousness must be made sin, and unblemished blessedness be made a curse. He was at no other expense than the breath of his mouth to form man ; the fruits of the earth could have maintained innocent man without any other cost ; but his broken nature cannot be healed without the invaluable medicine of the blood of God. View Christ in the womb and in the manger, in his weary steps and hungry bowels, in his prostrations in the garden and in his clotted drops of bloody sweat ; view his head pierced with a crown of thorns, and his face besmeared with the soldiers’ slabber ; view him in his march to Calvary, and his elevation on the painful cross with his head hanged down, and his side streaming blood ; view him pelted with the scoffs of the governors, and the derisions of the rabble : and see in all this what cost Goodness was at for man's redemption. In creation his power made the sun to shine upon us, and in redemption his bowels sent a Son to die for us.

Most famous verse

Those words are remarkable aren’t they? But as remarkable as they be, it was in that third section, where Charnock compares God’s goodness to us in redemption with the goodness that he shows to others, that Charnock made probably his profoundest point. After explaining that God's goodness in redemption was a greater goodness than he expressed towards angels, Charnock argued that ‘[i]t was a greater goodness to us than was for a time manifested to Christ himself.’ Citing that most famous of verses, Charnock wrote

The particle so [in] John 3:16 seems to intimate this supremacy of goodness: ‘He so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.’ He so loved the world, that he seemed for a time not to love his Son in comparison of it, or equal with it. The person to whom a gift is given is in that regard accounted more valuable than the gift or present made to him. Thus God valued our redemption above the worldly happiness of the Redeemer, and sentenced him to an humiliation on earth, in order to our exaltation in heaven. He was desirous to hear him groaning, and see him bleeding, that we might not groan under his frowns, and bleed under his wrath. He spared not him, that he might spare us ; refused not to strike him, that he might be well pleased with us ; drenched his sword in the blood of his Son, that it might not for ever be wet with ours, but that his goodness might for ever triumph in our salvation.

The beauty of God

It is difficult to know where to go after a quote like that. And, in any event, I had planned to leave what Charnock says in the application section of his discourse for another newsletter. But after quoting those words it seems appropriate to highlight just one of the 16 implications that Charnock identified at the end of his essay (yup, I really do mean 16!). And its this: the goodness of God renders God beautiful to us.

So often in the Christian life, our hearts can feel cold. Cold to God, and cold to his gospel. But, as Charnock says,

All things are beloved by men because they have been bettered by them, or because they expect to be the better for them. Severity can never conquer enmity and kindle love. Were there nothing but wrath in the Deity, it would make him be feared, but render him odious, and that to an innocent nature. As the spouse speaks of Christ [in Song of Songs chapter 5] so we may of God. Though she commends him for his head, the excellency of his wisdom; his eyes, the extent of his omniscience ; his hands, the greatness of his power ; and his legs, the swiftness of his motions and ways to and for his people ; yet the ‘sweetness of his mouth,’ in his gracious words and promises, closes all, and is followed with nothing but an exclamation that ‘he is altogether lovely’. His mouth, in pronouncing pardon of sin, and justification of the person, presents him most lovely. His power to do good is admirable, but his will to do good is amiable. This puts a gloss upon all his other attributes.

Oh that we would always know that our God is good, and so our hearts would always treasure him above all things! As I have been reflecting on God’s goodness to us in redemption, that has been my prayer.

So please join me again next week as we continue to explore together the goodness of our God.