Most Righteous God, Most Kind Father: Gerhard on the Gravity of Sin and the Mercy of God

This letter was published in the April 2025 issue of The Lutheran Witness.

by Matthew C. Harrison

It’s LCMS district convention season and time is at a great premium. Seven down, and 28 to go! This month, I share with you a striking devotion from the great Lutheran scholar Johann Gerhard (1582–1637). He wrote an enormous series of books on Christian doctrine that brim with the Bible and faithful scholarship. The English translations have recently been published by Concordia Publishing House, under the series title Gerhard’s Theological Commonplaces. Gerhard (not to be confused with the greatest Lutheran hymnist, Paul Gerhardt) also wrote stunning devotional literature.

Years ago, I translated a little book by Gerhard called The Daily Exercise of Piety. CPH published it as Meditations on Divine Mercy. Of all the books I’ve translated and written, none has touched more people more profoundly. The following meditation on the seriousness of sin is strong medicine. God takes your sin very seriously, that it would be forgiven in Christ. The more seriously we take our sin, the more we cling to Christ, our Savior.

The Severity of Divine Wrath Against Sin Considered in the Passion and Death of Christ

An excerpt from Meditations on Divine Mercy by Johann Gerhard, translated by Matthew C. Harrison (CPH, 2003), p. 50–52. Printed with permission.

O Holy God, just Judge, I see Your Son hanging on the cross, streams of blood flowing freely. I look at Him and, behold, I become weak with terror. Those cruel nails are my sins with which I have pierced His hands and feet. Those horrible thorns are my sins with which I have crowned His holy head, the head worshiped and honored by angelic powers. Those sharply pointed lashes are my sins with which I have scourged His faultless body, the permanent temple of divinity. A terrible beast tore to pieces this heavenly Joseph and stained His robe with blood (Genesis 37:33). I, a wretched sinner, am that terrible beast because my sins rushed en masse against this Your beloved Son (Isaiah 53:6).

If this, Your obedient Son, suffers in anguish because of the sins of another, what will be meted out to disobedient and wayward children because of their sins? Truly, the wounds of my soul must be great and deadly if they can only be healed because Your only begotten Son is so wretchedly struck down. Truly, the disease of my soul must be great and deadly if it can only be cured because the heavenly Physician, Life itself, dies on a cross.

I see the torment of my Savior. I hear His wretched wailings on the cross (Matthew 27:46). He is tormented because of me. He complains loudly that His Father has forsaken Him because of my sins. If the weight of another’s sins strikes down the all-powerful Son of God, how unbearable will the wrath of God and His inestimable furor be against the unprofitable servant (Luke 17:10)? O dry and unfruitful wood, sold to the fires of eternal hell, what will be your lot if this is what happens to the green wood (Luke 23:31)? Christ is the green tree of life. Christ is a vigorous tree, rooted in divinity, part and parcel of humanity, famed for His virtues, possessing leaves of holy words, and yielding the fruit of good works. He is the cedar of modesty and the vine of peace, the palm of patience and the olive of mercy.

But if the fire of divine wrath burned against this green wood, the tree of life, because of the sins of others, how much more will it completely consume the sinner as a dry tree because of unfruitful works? How great and bloody the letters of my sin appear when written on the body of Christ. How striking, O most righteous God, is Your wrath against my iniquity. How tightly I must have been held in captivity because so precious a ransom was given to release me. How great the stains of my sin must have been because streams of blood from the body of Christ flowed to wash them away (Luke 22:44).

O most righteous God, yet most kind Father, behold how unjustly Your Son suffered for me. Forget how unworthily I, Your wretched servant, have acted. Look to Christ’s deep wounds and plunge my sins into the deepest depths of the sea of Your mercy (Micah 7:19).

Amen.

Blessed Lenten journey.

–Pastor Harrison