The Grace of God For Backsliding Children

It is a special name with which the Lord here addresses the people of Israel. In the word “children” is expressed the mercy and grace of the Lord, while in the word “backsliding” sinful departing from the Lord is pictured.

What is backsliding? Not only is it a turning away from Cod, but it speaks of an aversion to God. Because we have an aversion to Cod, therefore there is a turning away from Cod. This is what the people of Israel had done. They had turned themselves away from Cod and had turned themselves unto idols, and that while the Lord had bestowed so many blessings upon them.

How they were privileged above all other nations! Did not the Lord separate them from all other people upon the earth? He made a covenant with them, gave them His Word and His law. The Poet of Psalm 147 sings of this: “He showeth His Word unto Jacob, His statutes and His judgments unto Israel.” This He did not want to do with any of the other nations. They had to miss His Word and testimony. And now, instead of fearing the Lord, the people of Israel become backsliding children.

Here we can turn to ourselves. We are also privileged above so many. Are we not separated from the world by the sign and seal of baptism? Are we not privileged above the heathens when we are acquainted with God’s Word? It is a Word which speaks to us of three things: (1) What we are — dead in sins and trespasses. (2) What we need — salvation as it is proclaimed in God’s Word. (3) How this is possible only through the merits of Another.

What labor and love the Lord bestows upon us when He comes to call us unto His salvation, when time after time He knocks upon the door of our hearts. And yet so many do not want to hear of Him. True, they go up to Cod’s house; they hear His callings and warnings, but they have no desire to turn unto the Lord. How deeply we have fallen. We were created to love God, but through sin we have become haters of God. We have fallen so deeply that in the heart there is no prayer unto Him, no desire to reach out unto Him. Unable and unwilling, is what we have become.

What a wonder when our inability and unwillingness become our guilt. The Lord says, “Return, ye backsliding children.” This speaks in a special way to the privileged people who have experienced His love. How privileged they are!

From eternity the Lord had thoughts of peace concerning them. In His free, sovereign election, He knew them. That is where their beginning lies. There the root of their existence is found. The Son was willing to deliver them. For this He did not hesitate to pay the price of His precious blood. The Holy Spirit awakened them and drew them out of darkness unto God’s marvelous light.

Would you not say that they are a privileged people? And yet they have a backsliding heart. Is it not true that we keep a backsliding heart? Is it not true that God’s children time and again stand with their “backs” towards God? How we must learn that His way is not our way! Let it be different from what I think it should be, and I feel the enmity against it in my heart. We have a nature which does not want to be broken down; we do not want to be uncovered; we always seek to cover it. We do not want such a poor beggar’s life. To always have an empty hand is against our nature.

All this is because we are lovers of self more than lovers of God. And in trying to maintain ourselves, we bring a darkness over our lives and we do not even notice this. How cold and dark it is, so much so that hell does not frighten and heaven does not quicken.

Oh, that here we could bow our heads! What wretched creatures we are! Would it be a wonder if the Lord would say, “I can have nothing to do with such a people any more”? Must He not say, “It is a people who will never bow before me, who never have a desire after my ways”? But how great is the love of God. In tender mercy, He turns unto such, saying, “Return, ye backsliding children.”

Here He displays the riches of His mercy for a people who are worthy to be cast away into outer darkness. Unto them He opens His arms to bring them back to His fatherly heart. He seeks for such who never seek Him. He comes to those who have only one desire which is to go away from Him.

He says, “Return.” He calls to bring us upon our knees, calls so that we may see our life, and that our hearts may sorrow after what we cannot miss any more.

To return is to experience what was the experience of the prodigal son. We read, “and when he came unto himself”— he came to see the misery in which he had brought himself. What a precious moment it was when his eyes were opened! Then he said, “I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee. I am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.”

To return, that is to come in guilt before God and to confess before Him that I have deserved eternal condemnation. No, then we do not first need to cleanse ourselves. The prodigal son could not do that either. But there we may come as we are.

In His Word the Lord says, “I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners unto repentance.” No, then you cannot say, “The Lord does not mean me.” But how is that possible? Is He then not a God who is angry with the sinner? Who because of His holy justice must condemn sin? Oh, when we truly may become lost sons and daughters, we may learn that He is a God who was moved from within Himself for such sinners, and that He looks upon them in the blood of His only begotten Son.

It is a way which has descended from above. He became the sin-bearer for His people. All their guilt was reckoned unto Him. Christ was viewed as a backslider. When hanging upon the cross, His Cod turned His back upon Him. There He is left alone. Oh, we can never fully comprehend what Golgotha was for Christ! It was God forsaken of God. There He made full satisfaction.

And now such backsliders as we are may hear, “Return ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslid-ings.” He cried out, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me.” As Mediator, so that people who are backsliders (people who have an aversion to God) may be brought back to Him. It is in Christ alone that the Lord can have anything to do with such. Only in Him can He heal their backsliding.

What a comforting message this is for all those who have learned to know that the testimony of my life is that I have an aversion to such a God and such a way. It is a comforting message for whom this has become a heartfelt sorrow. Then not only this or that sin, but the root of my existence is sin. Seeing this, the sinner cries, “Who can deliver such a one?” What an eternal wonder that there is One who can not only take away this or that sin, but can touch the root of my aversion.

Yet this healing is here only in part. How it can storm within in view of what lives there. How much sorrow when with Paul they experience: What I would like to do, that I do not, and what I do not want to do, that I do (Rom 7). Because of this, they experience moments when they long to be delivered from this body of sin, so that this aversion against God and all His ways will not live in them any more. For there will be no sin and no separation between God and His people.

But why does the Lord not give a complete recovery on this side of the grave? Oh, He can! The leper who came to Christ was healed and you could not see that he had ever been leprous. So the Lord can take away and heal completely from all the aversion that lives within. But He does not do this. Why not? So that here below they may learn to sing that it is His grace alone. That is why it is necessary that here they subjectively learn how great their sins and miseries are; so that here they may become less and less — nothing.

And then the grace of God in Christ Jesus alone becomes everything. Then salvation becomes the wonder of God’s free and sovereign grace. And one day they may forever exalt Him who saved such wretches as they.

Rev. J. Den Hoed is pastor of the Netherlands Reformed Congregation of Rock Valley, Iowa.

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