What awakens the human conscience and draws a man or woman to Jesus Christ? In Reformed circles it is customary to say that it is mostly a sense of need occasioned by awareness of sin. We know sin by the law. So we say that a person must first be slain by law before he can be resurrected by the Gospel. That is good theology. Yet in actual experience it is more often the case that an awareness of the great love of God is the decisive factor. John R. W. Stott once polled members of the congregation of All Souls Church, London, and he was startled by this fact. He found that the vast majority were brought to Christ, not by an acute awareness of their sin, as he had supposed, but by the winsome love of Christ displayed in the Gospel. This is not to say that God does not use other means to awaken the conscience and bring us to where we can recognize and respond to His love.
We have been looking at some of these other means in the story of God’s awakening a sense of sin and bringing repentance in the lives of Joseph’s brothers. He had used the pinch of material want, the pain of harsh treatment, the press of an enforced solitude, the proof of His presence in small things and, last of all, the pattern of an ordained necessity. These had shaken the brothers out of their spiritual lethargy and had brought them to confess their sin— at least among themselves. Still there was a sense in which the most effective of God’s means were yet to come. In this section of the story God uses the power of a genuine affection to melt their hearts still further.
Law terrifies; it should terrify us even more than it does. But love draws! Johann Staupitz, prior of the Augustinian monastery which Martin Luther entered as a young man, said, “God is not angry with you. Do not be angry with Him.” It was when Luther saw that God had quenched His wrath against him at the cross and was now reaching out to him in love that the future Protestant Reformer was transformed.
This is not the first time in the story that Joseph’s brothers received a token of Joseph’s good favor toward them. On their first visit to Egypt they had purchased grain and had started back to Canaan. But toward the end of their journey—perhaps because they had run out of immediate provisions for their animals—one of the brothers opened his sack and found his silver returned. Later, after they had returned home, each one discovered that his silver had been returned to him. This frightened them. Indeed, it brought them to recognize the hand of God in their circumstances. “What is this that God has done to us?” they cried. However, as I said when we considered this portion of the story earlier, there is nothing in it to make us think that Joseph’s intentions were anything other than absolutely kind. Unlike the situation in chapter 44, where the cup is hidden in Benjamin’s sack, Joseph did not send soldiers after the departing brothers to bring them back to Egypt. Nor does he mention their money again. The brothers bring it up, discussing it with Joseph’s household steward (Gen. 43:18-23). Joseph never mentions it. So far as he was concerned, the return of their money was an act of pure benevolence. Joseph simply wanted to give their money back. He had no hidden motives.
Something like this occurs again in this part of the story. Only here Joseph’s benevolence is even more noticeable and is more stressed.
