Why Creator is A God of Both Mercy and Justice Probably, you’ve never been asked that question when you shared Christ with someone. It’s more likely that you’ve been asked, “Why can’t God just forgive everyone? When someone offends me, I just forgive him. So why can’t God do that? Why did Jesus have to shed His blood?” The answer to those questions is, “You can forgive like that because God is absolutely holy and you’re not. God must maintain His absolute justice by punishing all sin. An unjust ‘God’ would not be God at all.” There’s the rub: If God must punish all sin to maintain His absolute justice, then how can He forgive sinners? If a human judge started “showing love” by pardoning murderers and terrorists and rapists, we’d say, “Wait a minute! This is horrible! He’s not upholding justice.” So the question that Paul is grappling with here is, “How can a holy God be just if He pardons guilty sinners?” How can He be a God of love who shows mercy and yet be a righteous God of justice? The answer is:
Yet God is both a God who judges with justice, and also a God of mercy. How can he combine these two apparently contradictory characteristics? The answer is that the sacrifice of Jesus has made it possible for God to combine both justice and mercy. When I first encountered Jesus, this illustration helped me to understand what Jesus achieved for us on the cross: Two people went through school and university together and developed a close friendship. Life went on and they went their separate ways and lost contact. One went on to become a judge, while the other’s life spiraled down and he ended up as a criminal. One day the criminal appeared before the judge. He had committed a crime to which he pleaded guilty. The judge recognized his old friend and faced the dilemma, which, in effect, God faces. The more the evil increased, the more my goodness urged me to communicate myself to righteous souls, so that they would transmit my orders to those who caused disorder. Sometimes I had to be severe to lead them back, not with the intent to chasten them – which would only have made things worse – but rather, to turn them away from the vice and towards their Father and Creator instead, whom they had forgotten and scorned in their ungratefulness. Later on, the hearts of men were flooded with evil to such extent that the Creator was compelled to send disasters and misfortune to the world. This is to purify man by the experiencing suffering, destruction of his goods, or even loss of his life. So there the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the wars of man against man, and so on. The world was purified from its corruption many times by the infinite goodness of Jesus towards mankind. So, He always continues to choose souls which He took delight, in order, through the, to enjoy himself with his creatures, the human beings.
Calvary Road Baptist Church 703-922-6700 6811 Beulah Street Alexandria, VA 22310 www.crbc.org