Harmony of God's Attributes

Harmony of God's Attributes is the book’s account of how the Gospel reveals divine perfection by joining justice and mercy, which it treats as irreconcilable apart from Christ’s atonement. Salvation, in this argument, neither sets justice aside nor makes mercy a reward earned by the righteous: sin is punished in Christ, the freely appointed Divine Substitute, and sinners are pardoned. The same theological framework insists that human beings remain responsible for their wrongdoing even when God brings his purposes to pass through it.

Justice and Mercy in the Gospel

The book begins its account of divine wisdom with a problem: if salvation is wholly just, how can it also be merciful, and if it is wholly merciful, how can justice receive its due? Justice cannot simply overlook guilt without losing its claim; mercy cannot give freely if the debt has already been fully paid. The author presents these as opposing demands that human schemes of salvation fail to reconcile.

The Gospel’s answer is the atonement of Jesus Christ. The believer’s sin, the book argues, is fully punished in Christ, whose divine worth makes the punishment sufficient; yet the guilty person does not suffer that punishment personally. The Substitute is freely given, so salvation is at once just and merciful. The believer is justified because sin has been taken away and the person stands clear; the believer is pardoned because the person was guilty and forgiveness is freely bestowed. These terms would contradict one another if applied in the same respect, but the atonement gives each its place without making either attribute imperfect.

This account differs from a model in which mercy wins by defeating justice. In the book’s criticism, ordinary human conceptions of divine goodness often give mercy precedence and let justice’s claims yield when they become inconvenient. Such a balance leaves the divine character in a continuing struggle with itself. The Gospel, by contrast, is said to disclose a God whose attributes do not compete for supremacy: mercy does not require injustice, and justice does not prevent mercy.

Confidence Joined to Humility

The harmony extends beyond justice and mercy to the believer’s state of mind. Salvation must provide confidence sufficient for peace, while also sustaining an honest awareness of human unworthiness. The book argues that other accounts tend to make these qualities move in opposite directions: a low estimate of personal merit weakens hope, while confidence in one’s own moral achievement leaves little room for humility.

The example of Dr. Price sharpens the contrast. The book rejects the claim that a person’s moral attainments can establish a right to demand reward from God. Even ten thousand years of uninterrupted virtue, it argues, could not cover a single offence. Confidence grounded in personal achievement therefore cannot meet the claims of perfect justice; nor can a person make God a debtor by appealing to religious devotion or moral excellence.

Confidence grounded in Christ works differently. The believer can trust that justice has been met, but not by anything the believer has achieved. As the ground of confidence becomes clearer, the book contends, humility increases rather than diminishes: the believer sees both the sufficiency of Christ’s work and the extent of personal unworthiness. The resulting assurance is not self-congratulation but dependence. Even when the book imagines judgment and catastrophe pressing in, it presents this confidence in the work of Christ as compatible with peace and deepest humility.

Providence, Sin, and Responsibility

The book also places the harmony of God’s attributes within its broader account of Providence. In its reading of the events surrounding Esther’s rise, it argues that a purpose of deliverance for the Jews was advanced through sinful human actions, without making those actions innocent. Ahasuerus’s indecorous demand that Vashti appear before his company, her refusal, and the later elevation of Esther are treated as events through which divine purpose proceeded. The author is careful to distinguish that providential outcome from moral approval: God’s purpose does not make the conduct of human agents lawful or good.

The same distinction applies to Esther and Mordecai. The book judges their marriage arrangement to be contrary to God’s law, yet sees it as part of the means by which the Jews would be delivered from the danger posed by Haman. It therefore holds together two claims: God appoints or employs events to accomplish his purposes, and the people who violate his law remain guilty for their actions. Providence can bring good out of evil without turning evil into good or cancelling the responsibility of those who do it.

This reading of Esther becomes an example of the book’s wider argument about divine sovereignty and human free agency. Human actions are genuinely attributed to their agents, who can be blameworthy; at the same time, even actions undertaken for human purposes may serve God’s plan. The text presents this as a truth to be received on the authority of Scripture, not as a puzzle that human reason can fully solve. It offers the account as consolation amid the apparent triumph of wickedness: the wrongdoing remains grave, but it does not mean that God’s purposes have been defeated.

The Gospel as a Revelation of Divine Perfection

For the book, the Gospel does more than offer a solution to the problem of guilt. It makes the character of God known. The author argues that the attributes of God would not all be displayed in the same way if sin had never entered: mercy would have no occasion to forgive, justice no occasion to punish or provide its answer to sin, and love and sovereignty would lack the particular manifestation they receive through redemption. The atonement is thus presented not as an afterthought devised to repair a failed plan, but as central to the revelation of divine character.

That claim also supports the book’s case for the truth of Scripture. A humanly invented religion, it contends, would be expected to accommodate its god to the failings of its adherents. The God described in Scripture instead maintains the claims of justice while extending mercy to the guilty through Christ. In the conclusion, the author treats this distinctive harmony as evidence that the Gospel manifests the true God: neither attribute is reduced to protect the other, and the believer’s hope rests on their unity in the plan of salvation.

The concept’s significance therefore lies in its linked claims. The atonement reconciles pardon with justice; it makes assurance compatible with humility; and the wider doctrine of Providence allows the book to affirm divine purpose without excusing human sin. Its governing emphasis is not that evil ceases to matter when it serves a providential end, but that human wrongdoing cannot finally thwart God’s purposes and cannot be used to erase the guilt of those who commit it.