Jonathan Edwards Mercy

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One of the most powerful themes that brings the people to God throughout Jonathan Edward’s sermon “Sinners in the hands of an Angry God” is God’s mercy. While Edwards certainly does talk about the wrath of God, God’s mercy is present throughout his analogies. In the first analogy where the person is being held over hell, God chooses not to let him fall. While some may see this as a cruel torment, God is executing his “divine wrath” over the loathsome sinner. God has no reason to uphold the wretched sinner who is “ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. . . .” However, he chooses to hold up the sinner, block the waters of his wrath as well as the arrow bent by justice because of his mercy. God wants us to run to him and Edwards recognizes this when he says that “Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open, and stands in calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners.” Even though “there is nothing else that is to be given as a Reason why you don’t this very Moment drop down into Hell”, he chooses to rain his mercy upon us every day until either we …show more content…
Repeated reference to the “hand of God” in the pit analogy and our blindness to it shows the people’s helplessness. By showing them their hopeless situation Edwards wants them to cling to God’s hand which, unlike our “own care and prudence, and best contrivance,” won’t break when we fall through them, but rather, God’s hand will hold us up and lift us up. The repetition of the torment of Hell is also a way that Edwards sends people to God. By repeating and elaborating on the indescribable place called Hell, it is that much more relieving when the congregation hears the hope that Edwards provides in the end when he says “let everyone that is out of Christ now awake and fly from the wrath to
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