Saturday Feb 01, 2025

February 1 - How can God be both Just and Merciful?

February 1 - If God is just, can he be merciful?

Your listening to OKY. The place where we discuss what we believe and why we believe it to be true! Today we will ask the question, if God is just, can he be fully merciful? And if he is merciful, can he be fully just?

I will proclaim the name of the Lord.

Oh, praise the greatness of our God!

He is the Rock, his works are perfect,

And all his ways are just.

A faithful God who does no wrong,

Upright and just is he.

Deuteronomy 32:3-4

I was recently speaking at a camp, and I told the students to ask me questions anytime they saw me throughout the weekend. So all weekend long, young people came to me with random questions, trying to wrestle with things that they were struggling to figure out. One of the students came to me and asked, if God is just, how can he also be merciful? Don’t they cancel each other out?

So is God really just and merciful at the same time?

My answer is unequivocally - YES!

So let’s do a quick dig into it.

Just.

The Hebrew word ṣeḏeq is used 449 times throughout the Bible. Most of the time it is used in a governmental or authoritarian rulership. And it means what is right or normal, rights, justness. It infers a balance as in the weights of measurement. The imagery is that there is an equal punishment that fits the crime of an individual.

So the question is, if God is merciful, can he really be Just?

Paul tells us in Romans 6:23, that the wages of sin is death. This wasn’t his own words actually, this is something that God had told Adam and Eve. His instruction was that disobedience would bring death. If they ate from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, they would surely die.

Go back to the meta narrative of the Bible and you find that death came in as a result of sin. The chaos of the darkness was released to do whatever it wanted against humanity, ultimately leading to death. But not only that, death took place once Adam and Eve sinned. Genesis 3:21 tells us that God made clothing for Adam and Eve out of animal skins to cover them. This was the first death that took place because of sin - also the reason for animal sacrifice following this sin. Death is the judgement of sin. Something has to die in order to pay the price of sin.

This is the evenly balanced cost of sin. For God to be just, death has to pay the penalty for sin. . .

So how can he be gracious at the same time?

Psalm 103: 8-12

“The Lord is compassionate and gracious,

Slow to anger, abounding in love.

He will not always accuse,

Nor will he harbor his anger forever;

He does not treat us as our sins deserve

Or repay us according to our iniquities.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,

So great is his love for those who fear him;

As far as the east is from the west,

So far has he removed our transgressions from us.”

Well this sounds like David is saying he is not just then, doesn’t it?

So this is the best part.

God is just!

He is true to his standard and holds sin accountable.

There is a payment and that payment is death!

But his grace is so strong for us, that he is compassionate toward us.

Romans 5:9-11

“Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, his much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”

Or remember Romans 8:31-32

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

Here is the thing.

God is gracious. That means you don’t have to be put to death for your sins. Though sin separates us from God and the only way back to him is through a sacrifice of blood - We will address that one tomorrow - God is gracious enough to keep you from making that sacrifice! He won’t let you die for your sins. He is, however, a man of his word! So death still has to take place!

So in his justice, he still allowed Jesus to die for sin! Listen to the justice side of God as described by Isaiah

“Surely he took up our pain

And bore our suffering,

Yet we considered him punished by God,

Stricken by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions,

He was crushed for our iniquities;

The punishment that brought us peace was on him,

And by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

Each of us has turned to our own way;

And the LORD has laid on him

The iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted,

Yet he did not open his mouth;

He was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,

So he did not open his mouth

By oppression and judgment he was taken away.

Yet who of his generation protested?

For he was cut off from the land of the living;

For the transgression of my people he was punished.

He was assigned a grave with the wicked,

And with the rich in his death,

Though he had done no violence,

Nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer

And through the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,

He will see his offspring and prolong his days,

And the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.

See, a long time ago I stopped telling kids that God gets rid of their sins. That’s not actually true. He doesn’t get rid of our sins. If he got rid of them, there would be no reason for Jesus to have gone to the cross.

No, in his mercy he did not allow me to pay the price I deserved. But in his justice someone had to pay for my sins. They don’t just disappear. So Jesus took my place. But God still poured out the justice of his wrath on Jesus so that I would be redeemed - or purchased back.

But we will dig into that more tomorrow. But for know, the good news my friend is that yes! God is merciful! And God is just. . . But in his mercy, he took the wrath upon himself, so that we would understand his mercy through Jesus Christ our Lord.