Malcolm Yarnell, Research Professor of Theology at Southwestern Seminary, preached from Luke 6, verses 32-36, in SWBTS Chapel on April 3, 2025.
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Appreciate Dr Dockery mentioning how our faculty care for one another, but I’ve got to tell you, some of the care for one another is displayed in friendly contest. For instance, Dr Osborne is known for his sense of humor, so I displayed some sense of humor on this morning by seeing him and Dr McKellar together and referring to Dr McKellar as my favorite preaching professor.
I thought it was funny. Then Dr Adam Dodd the other day referred to a little Bible that Dr Dockery gave him to preach from, rather than the electronic version, and he brought out from this pulpit a slightly larger version, and referred to it as this bad boy. And I thought to myself, this is bravado. This requires a bravado of a response, something with no mercy. So if you think that was a bad boy, you meet your granddaddy, 1611, King James, Bible, facsimile, no mercy, Dr Dodd, when Dr Dockery asked me to speak in chapel on one of the Christian virtues, I was hopeful he would ask me to speak on something.
I had some strength in, you know, love, humility, gentleness, or one of these other excellent graces of God for His people. And I was ready to speak from something, maybe I had some strength in about the hidden power in the emulation of the divine character. But then I continued to read his email, Mercy. Our president said, Malcolm, you must preach on the Christian verse two of mercy. Now my wife’s reaction to my assignment is a classic response of a wife who knows her husband but chooses to allow only a hint of pleasure at his hypocrisy to be highlighted. And when she asked me, What did David ask you to preach on? I told her, mercy. And like Sarah hiding behind the tent from the angels, she turned aside and silently smiled. My colleagues were less generous.
They had a good laugh. Dr Arnel mercy, lol, I felt like Donald or like Rodney Dangerfield, I get no respect. So this gentleman, whom I have treasured as a lifelong friend, has a most interesting sense of humor. To be honest, it reminded me of the time he invited me to write an essay on my least favorite person in all of Scripture, Satan. And I asked him, Can I write the essay on Jesus Christ? And he said, No, that’s for somebody else. But thankfully, later, he actually asked me to write an essay on Jesus Christ, and he asked me also to co write a book with him on the Word of God, and so I was very thankful for that mercy, to be honest, is not my strength. It is a weakness. This has been a difficult text for me to approach from a personal perspective.
Those who know me well understand that I have been engaged in personal skirmishes, political battles and spiritual warfare my whole life. I was born into an abusive home. In high school, I was threatened for my skin color, surrounded by an angry gang because I broke their leader’s nose. There’s a story behind that. Trust me, I could see why they felt that way. He had bloody eyes and this huge X on his face with a bandage in the middle of it so I could see why they were upset. Later, as a teenager, I was beaten badly after keeping a couple of boys from raping a girl. Four times in my life, I’ve had a weapon pointed at me. One actually pulled the trigger.
Four times in my ecclesiastical career, I’ve had faced concerted attempts to get me fired each time, because I refuse to say or do what powerful men wanted me to say or do, and Christian politics prepared me to detect perverse public uses of sacred doctrine for profane purposes, and I just have a reaction against that. So when my beloved, if smirky loved ones, what they understand is that, after a while, such a life begins to harden the soul, I am saddened that I have become adept at detecting a challenge, knowing that I should cut it off before it has a chance to develop in a foolish direction you want a piece of me became a refrain as I faced every new petty power player. I’ve reached the point, honestly of impatience.
I don’t like to fight, but I will. I’m too ready to tell any man the truth he does not want to hear. If he is ready enough to endanger the precious lambs of God. As a pastor, responsible to the Great Shepherd, I have chosen not to ignore but to battle the wolves who would rape his flock and my soul as a result, can be hard. I have no room in my life anymore for political games, for such games damage human lives and bring shame to the church of the living God. In deep prayer, I’ve come to the conviction that I have but one goal, one thing to work toward, and that is the glory of Jesus Christ, to honor the reality that Jesus is Lord. I don’t care anymore about the inanity of culture wars, the internecine nature of battles among believers and the insanity of personal career opportunism.
For the glory of Christ, however, I will stand and bellow His Word, and this is the key issue from this text, we must be ready to demonstrate the mercy of his gospel as quickly as we are ready to proclaim the judgment of his law, the dialect of the law and the gospel of speaking the truth, yet doing so in love of giving grace to the graceless. This is the key to the way forward for me, and I dare say, for all battle hardened Southern Baptists. Did you look at and hear that text? Open your Bibles to Luke chapter six, and we’ll look at verses. Dr Dodd, there’s a Bible up here if you need it. Verses 32 and following, I think this text, by the way, divides into three parts. First, Christ radicalizes the golden rule. The second, Christ reminds us of the coming judgment.
And third, Christ points us to the grace and mercy of God. So first of all, Christ’s radical radicals, excuse me, Christ, radicalization of the rule. In the verse immediately preceding this, the Lord offered a version of a rule given by natural men in many religions, he said, just as you want others to do for you, do the same for them. But in the next three verses, he intensifies and theologizes The golden rule with a call toward the one true God. It is as if he is saying, listen, all these philosophers, the gurus, these scribes, the rabbis, these theologians, the scholars, these religious power players, they recognize a basic truth, do to others what you want them to do for you, but you, I want you to be better. You don’t need their golden rule. You need my, if you will, Platinum Rule.
So let’s become more like God, boys and girls, and he provides three case studies, each of which alludes to the Lord’s superiority in person and work. God is love. God is good and God is grace. So Christ’s Platinum Rule is this, if you will, you should do for others what God does for you. And first of all, he points to love. He points to them above merely human love. He says, If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you, even sinners love those who love them. Love is not merely about a reciprocal relationship. Sinners, you know us, those who dwell in sin and expect certain judgment, they know how to love at a base level, but you, he says, You need to be like God, who is love in essence in other places, Jesus and his apostles developed the doctrine of divine love.
Love is above all, a communicable divine attribute. True love is rooted in the character of God. John says twice, God is love. Love is of the very being of God. His love, moreover, is perfection. His love is agape. Love, an entirely outgoing love, not that we loved him, writes John, but that he first loved us, His love does not depend on reciprocity. Rather, God generates perfect love from within his perfect and eternal being. The Trinity is love eternal, and his eternal love condescends to create this world and to redeem it. God alone can do this, and he does do this. His love is in addition entirely giving of himself. Greater love has no man than this that a man lay down in his life for his friends, Christ says, Love. Love. Divine Love is a love to death for the life of the other. Does that not remind you of his blood atonement? The apostle Paul grounds the doctrine of Divine Mercy in the context of the Divine Court, a court where the cost of love was demonstrated in the sacrifice of God’s only begotten Son for the sins of the whole world. But now Paul writes in Romans three apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, attested by the law and the prophets.
The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ, to all who believe, since there is no distinction, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ. Jesus, God presented him as the mercy seat. Jesus is the mercy seat by his blood, through faith to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint, God cast over the sins previously committed. God presented him to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time so that he would be just and justify the one who has faith in Jesus, the platinum rule of Jesus demands not reciprocity, but Divine Generosity. Which brings us to the next divine attribute, goodness. If you do what is good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that the goodness of God is entirely above the goodness of man. Thomas Aquinas, the leading Roman Catholic theologian in church history, and John Gill, whom I would argue is the leading Baptist systematic theologian in early Baptist history, both treated the goodness of God as the first of the divine attributes he is as even the high priest understood the Blessed One, the good one.
Jesus once responded to a man who called him good teacher. Why do you call Me good? Our Lord asked, and he then added, for God alone is only good. Listen, Jesus was not denying that he was good for He is good rather, just as He does so in many places throughout Scripture, just as he did in the garden with Adam and Eve. When he said, where are you? He wasn’t asking them where they were. He knew he was asking them to reflect on where they were, and just as he did with his scrappy Apostle Peter, when he asked him, but you, who do you say that I am, Jesus is asking to lead to a truth. Why do you call Me good? For God alone is good. God asks questions to lead us to think more deeply about God and ourselves. The logic of Jesus, I would argue, is impeccable. Why do we ask this? Because, yes, alone, God is good. Yes, I am good, therefore provide the answer, Jesus is good, because Jesus is God. Make sure I put this here. Don’t touch it.
You want to be good. I’m sorry. I think we have any microphone malfunction that may have fixed it, we’ll see you want to be good, then go the extra mile and be like God in Christ, be so good that you are divinely righteous through your participation by grace in his perfect divine goodness. Goodness is, above all, a divine attribute, but like love, is a communicable attribute. He shares it with us again. Paul tells us how it centers on the merciful sacrifice of the God man. Everything is from God. Paul writes in Second Corinthians, five who has reconciled us to Himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation that is in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against him, and he has committed The message of reconciliation to us. Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ. Since God is making his appeal through us, we plead on Christ’s behalf Be reconciled to God. He made the one Paul continues, who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might be. Become the righteousness of God. So there is your mercy, He who knew no sin became sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. There’s the great exchange, there’s your mercy, there’s your goodness.
There on the cross of the One who created, who centers and who consummates creation itself in the great exchange of the cross, he receives the punishment for our sin, and He gives us the perfection of his character. So we need to receive his ministry of reconciliation for ourselves. Then we need to live out of his ministry of reconciliation, and we need to preach it too. So there is true goodness, not our petty displays of sanctimonious ceremonialism, but his cross. That’s goodness. He’s not done as a good triadic Trinitarian theologian, he offers you a third example grace. He turns to the commercial aspect of human existence, and says, and if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you, even sinners, lent to sinners to be repaid in full. You know, I noticed the stock market opened down another 4% this morning.
Oh, well, lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust nor the stock market destroys it. Forget about your 401 case, just a company IRA. Rather look above the world’s definition of the center of life. It’s not about your petty cash. It’s about his perfect credit. The grace of God is a Trinitarian act, an inseparable act that originates in the will of God, is then proclaimed by the word of God and is applied by the Spirit of God. The grace of God is perfectly displayed again in the cross of Jesus Christ. He is constantly pointing beyond us to something that is above us, God Himself in Christ, listen to Paul again, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
There is a commercial, legal, juridical aspect to the final judgment. There is a judgment coming, brothers and sisters. So prepare for it. Christ is coming again. There is an Eternal Throne, and the eternal word sits there in his crucified body, and he is prepared to judge. And you have only one hope, grace, His grace, His perfect grace. Which brings us to our second point, Christ reminds us of the coming judgment. Jesus brings these truths He’s been teaching to a head, and he says, But Love your enemies do what is good and lend expecting nothing in return, then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High now, Christ tells us to live the golden rule, but then to get above it by living toward eternity, where his throne demonstrates that it centers reality itself. So go ahead and Love your enemies, rather than just your nation, your ethnic group, your family, your friends, your church.
Love everyone be as liberal in your love as you are conservative in your creed. Do what is good, not just what appears to be good. Look to Christ and His life as the very definition of goodness. If you really want to be good, then be like Christ. I remember hearing the Oxford alternative band Radiohead had an interesting song with a jarring guitar lick in it, but its lyrics manifest a heartfelt desire within every human being. I want a perfect body. I want a perfect soul. We must learn to seek the perfect goodness of God in our lives, the perfection of our bodies will occur with his resurrection of us. The perfection of our souls occurs with the presence of His Spirit, even now in our lives, we need to be like Christ. Too many Christians today downplay the goodness of Christ in His humility and empathy for other human beings. So in your rush to political relevance, be careful that you don’t stop looking like Jesus.
Don’t start looking like Judas and Lynn. He goes on expecting nothing in return. Now the word. Here is El pidzo. Up El pidzo, and its real meaning is despair, literally lacking hope. The better translation is lend leaving no room for despair. In other words, don’t get upset in your economic activities. Live in hope. Whatever the worst you experience, your hope, like that of Abraham, is in a city that is not of this world, a city whose builder and maker is God Himself. So don’t act as if the economy is the entire measure of your life. Put your hope in Christ alone. Put your hope in His coming Kingdom.
Put your hope in God. He will never fail you, because Jesus is God, and he never fails. Christ then turns our mind towards the Eternal Throne, the place which he calls of the Most High. Now there is a court where the sins recorded in our conscience will be read out and judgment will be rendered. Oh, and I believe there will be things said there that will surprise not only everyone else about us, but us about ourselves. We have too often forgotten or suppressed most of our wicked thoughts and deeds, but the conscience keeps a transcript for the eternal court. Listen to Paul in Romans, chapter two, he writes that the Gentiles are a law to themselves. Even though they do not have the law, they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. Their consciences confirm this, their competing thoughts either accuse or even excuse them on the day when God judges what people have kept secret, according to my gospel through Jesus Christ.
So if you sin, your reward there on that day before the Eternal Throne will be by the law horrible, the judge will condemn you, cast you out, and you will go into the eternal lake of fire, where the worm in you does not die, where the fire is salt in you does not go out, where the light for which you should have longed your entire life and sought in this life does not shine.
But if you do what Jesus tells you, then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High he says, but that is the problem, isn’t it? I mean, the Pelagian heresy that resides in our unregenerate hearts. Says, since you have to do good to get into heaven, you can do good. The problem is, is that you and I cannot do good in and of ourselves, we are all sold into wickedness. The doctrines of Holy Scripture tell you otherwise. The doctrine of divine law says you must obey Him to be saved. But the doctrine of human sin reminds us that the none of us have kept the law so we deserve death, and thankfully, the doctrine of Divine Grace says, of course, you cannot do it yourself. The Law never saves you. But Jesus, Jesus saves and this brings us to the last point made by Jesus. Christ brings us the grace and the mercy we lack and we need. Jesus concludes this sermon with a reminder of divine grace. He points to the grace and mercy of God as our hope. For he is gracious to the ungrateful and evil.
Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful. Now the first sentence emphasizes God’s grace. The word play, I think, is fascinating, for he is Christos to the acharistos. Christos means kind, morally good, benevolent, if you will, graceful. Acharistos indicates one who is exactly the opposite, literally lacking grace, ungrateful, if you will, ungraceful. So God’s grace toward us is not reciprocal like man, but self generative. It comes from within himself towards us and we don’t deserve it. He shows good to those who are evil, to the ungod, to the ungrateful, to the ungraceful. Again, listen to Paul, but God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ.
Even though we were dead in trespasses, you were saved by grace. He also raised us up with Him and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ, Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ, Jesus. Jesus, for you are saved by grace, through faith. And this is not from yourselves, for it is God’s gift, not from works, so that no one can boast the second and concluding sentence of Jesus, I think, is also linguistically, literarily fascinating. Fascinating. Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.
Now, the term for mercy here is OIT termin, which is used twice here and only one other time in the New Testament. It is a poetic version often combined in Greek literature with the more common term, Elah Amon Mercy, the third use of the term in the New Testament, in James five locates the mercy of God in the ultimate context of the coming judgment of God. James warns us, the Lord is coming. The Lord’s coming is near. He says, the second time and a third time. Look, the judge stands at the door. So the warning is eschatological and the context is legal. Mercy is finally not determined by our earthly context, but by the Heavenly Court. It really doesn’t matter, in the end, what the rest of the world thinks about you. What matters is what God thinks of you, and we have to look towards the eternal court.
The best way I can understand mercy is by remembering that mercy is the compassion of God displayed toward this unworthy sinner simply through the vicarious atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I don’t deserve mercy. You don’t deserve mercy, but God offers us mercy in the blood of Jesus Christ, and if mercy is true about you and your relationship with God because you have received the application of that blood by grace, through faith in the power of the Holy Spirit, then that should show itself in your life and in my life. Mercy must characterize our relationships with other people, just as God’s mercy characterizes his relationship with us, His mercy must become our mercy. If we are truly believers, then his atonement will have a moral influence and exemplary effect in our lives. We’re not saved by our works, but our works ought to show that we are saved.
We cannot practice mercy out of our own resources, but God himself can give us mercy to display the mercy that he has given in our lives. Often I’m brought to tears when I survey the wonders cross. You know, I tried finishing the last chapter of the second volume of this popular level systematic theology that I’m writing. I tried to finish it earlier this week, but I kept breaking down with emotion because I keep seeing Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word of God, the transcendent God who created all, who rules all, and who will judge all. I keep seeing Jesus on his Eternal Throne, and I see him holding his pierced heart with his bloody hands, presenting his sacrifice through the eternal Spirit to the Eternal Father, thereby gracing me His eternal love through his once for all sacrifice and I break. I can’t go on, because that is the eternal truth that saves us. God himself became a man. He died on a cross and He arose from the dead, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
That truth ought to shape everything, because it is the center and the reality of our entire existence. So yes, I’ve become a tough man, hardened by my interactions with sinners in the world and with sinners in the church and with the sinner in myself. But Jesus, I got to tell you, Jesus, He is my Lord and my God, and He is my friend and my brother and my father, and by His mercy, he melts this heart of stone and makes it a warm heart of flesh, again, in Les Miserables. La Victor Hugo modeled the character of the virtuous priest miriel on a bishop he encountered in the late 19th century a real figure in his life, Mariel, who also has the nickname Monsieur Bienvenue, or Mr. Welcome, utterly transformed the life of the lead character in the novel Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean, recently released from prison, took advantage of the hospitality of this kindly priest, and in the middle of the night, Jean stole the bishops expensive plate and fled.
Captured by the local police, he was brought back to the bishop’s home Jean valjeans life hung in the balance at that moment, he had taken almost everything the bishop owned, and he had been caught and he faced certain judgment if returned to the pre modern prisons of France, the police laid the items before the bishop, asking for him to identify them as his own, the the ungrateful, the ungraceful, the sinful thief, expected only judgment, but the bishop, in an act of almost, almost unparalleled mercy, told Jean Valjean that he had forgotten this candlesticks, and he put them on the pile and said, You need to go now. Do well, live your life from this gift, the shock of that single act of mercy, the same mercy the priest himself had received from God, the shock of that mercy utterly transformed the life of Jean Valjean and his actions since forth looked toward the blessings of eternity rather than the fleeting emoluments of this age, the thief became a respectable businessman who showed grace and mercy to people on his left and his right, Jean Valjean, by one of Act of Mercy was shown that the way of God is the way of mercy.
I love that story, and I enjoy seeing the play as often as I can, because I want my life to reflect the divine philosophy of that Episcopal character about whom Victor Hugo wrote these words, there are men who toil at extracting gold. He toiled at the extraction of pity. Universal misery was his mind. The sadness which reigned everywhere was but an excuse for unfailing kindness, love each other. He declared. He declared this to be complete, and he desired nothing further. And that was the whole of his doctrine. Or as Jesus instructed us, Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful. Isaiah describe the mercy of God and the sacrifice of His suffering servant in this way, and may the Mercy effectively wrought for sins forever in the cross of Christ become the model for our lives.
Listen and as Isaiah prophesies some seven centuries before Christ died on the cross. Listen to what Christ did on that cross. Make that your own by faith through the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. Let Christ change your heart and you receiving the mercy of God. Display the mercy of God in your own life. Isaiah writes, yet He himself bore our sicknesses and he carried our pains, but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted, yet he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities, punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds. We all went astray like sheep. We all have turned to our own way, and the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us. All that is mercy. Let us go and do likewise. Would you pray with me?
Father, let mercy characterize our lives just as it characterized the life of your only begotten Son. We praise You, Father, we praise You, son, our merciful God upon the cross and risen from the dead. We praise you, and we praise you. Holy Spirit. Amen.
