In response to my assertion that it would have been more just if God had allowed Jesus to live and humanity to perish, Donald Sensing writes:
I don't agree with this at all because it uses a fallen, sin-ridden concept of "just" and justice. God is just, no doubt, but on his terms, not our own. God's justice is gracious rather than judicial because God's justice redeems and saves rather than condemns. In God's justice we do not get what we deserve, which is sort of the whole point of the Jesus story.I think this is just quibbling over semantics; I think Rev. Sensing and I agree foundationally, but he's not using words the same way I am.
A distinction is generally made between God's justice and his mercy; God is always just, but apparently only sometimes merciful. For instance, all humanity has the opportunity to go to Heaven, but when someone continually rejects that opportunity God eventually abandons him to his fate. See also numerous examples in the Old Testament in which God executed rather swift judgement without any opportunity for repentance. There's a lot of context necessary to understand Romans 9, but consider verse 15:
Romans 9:15To say that "God's justice is gracious" because "it saves rather than condemns" isn't really accurate. We aren't redeemed because of God's justice, we're redeemed because of his love and mercy. Justice would give us what we deserve -- death -- but because of love and mercy we are given life. Jesus' death was the supreme display of God's mercy, and his sacrifice allowed us to escape God's justice.For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."
Without any opportunity for repentance?
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Numerous examples?
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Can you come up with just one?
Gator:1 Chronicles 13:7-10
They moved the ark of God from Abinadab's house on a new cart, with Uzzah and Ahio guiding it. David and all the Israelites were celebrating with all their might before God, with songs and with harps, lyres, tambourines, cymbals and trumpets.
When they came to the threshing floor of Kidon, Uzzah reached out his hand to steady the ark, because the oxen stumbled. The LORD's anger burned against Uzzah, and he struck him down because he had put his hand on the ark. So he died there before God.
Or, if your mind works like Erich von Daniken's, the ark was really a giant battery, and Uzzah was electrocuted when he touched it.
Ultimately, God's justice is directed not toward punishment, but toward reconciliation and wholeness precisely because God loves us. Punishment or threat of punishment is primarily a call or warning to repent. So, I don't see how God's love and justice can be separated, and I wouldn't agree with the idea that justice would be allowing Jesus to live and humanity to perish.
JT: It's simple. Justice gives people what they deserve. We deserve to go to Hell. Mercy intervenes.
Some people view justice as primarily manners and degrees of punishment. I think God's justice is about restoration, with punishment being merely a means. God can love regardless of how he punishes, but he can't restore through love alone. Nor could God restore without love. God practices "tough love."
JT: You're not using the standard meanings for words then, you're making up your own.
With the events of Noah's ark and the flood, I believe that God's love became inseparable from his justice, such that the primary purpose of justice was redemption and restoration. It becomes punishment alone to those who decline to be restored.
JT: Again, I don't like the imprecise way you're using the terms. You may argue that God's justice is now more tempered by mercy than in the past, but justice itself doesn't change.
If justice doesn't change, then how can mercy temper it? If justice demands a certain result and God doesn't impose it, then the result is unjust. That would make God's saving of humanity through Christ unjust. Is it possible for God to be unjust? If justice required that Jesus should have been allowed to live as oppose to being crucified, then God is unjust for allowing or asking that Jesus die.