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How Can This Be?
A number of years ago, when I was driving along the interstate, I saw a sign for a church that had this passage written on it.
1 John 4:8, Psalm 37:22
A number of years ago, when I was driving along the interstate, I saw a sign for a church that had this passage written on it. 1 John 4:8, God is love. We accept all people from all lifestyles at our church, is what the sign said.
Sometimes when we think about that passage and we’ve probably heard it before, God is love. We can think that that must mean that God doesn’t really care about right and wrong. God doesn’t care about sin. God’s kind of like the elderly grandfather who sees his grandsons come into the house one day just after stealing some candy from the local convenience store, and he kind of has a good laugh. Boys will be boys. No, God is not like that at all.
God is not just a God of love, but he is also a God of justice. God is concerned about right and wrong, and he is concerned about punishing wrongdoing. So how does that even work? How can God be both a God of love? But also, on the other hand, how can it be true? As it says in Psalm 37? The Lord loves justice.
Imagine that there’s this guy who’s committed a murder. His name is Joe, and all of the evidence was laid out before a court concerning what Joe had done wrong. There’s video footage, there’s fingerprint evidence, there’s DNA, there’s eyewitness accounts. It’s obvious that he has committed this murder. But I want you to imagine that day in the courtroom, the judge said it’s clear that Joe has committed this murder. But you know what? Joe’s normally a pretty nice guy. He normally doesn’t kill people on a daily basis. So I think he was just kind of having a bad day. So I’m going to let him go. How do you think the people there in the courtroom would respond?
I think Joe would be pretty happy, right? But imagine everyone else there if they were listening to this. Imagine the family of the victim, if they were there, what would they say? Well, they would say that judge is absolutely unjust. Some people would even go as far as to say that judge is evil for not punishing this crime. The same is true about God. God is the judge of the universe. God cannot simply let sin go unpunished. If he was to do that, God would be unjust. No, God would be evil for not punishing sin, for not bringing evil to justice.
So how, on the other hand, could God also be love then? Well, it all comes together ultimately in the cross. You see, in the cross, God shows his love by sending his Son Jesus. But what does Jesus do? Jesus suffers the punishment for our sins, for your sins and mine. In fact, the sins of the whole world go upon his shoulders and that’s God’s justice. So God’s love is sending His Son for you. God’s justice is that he punished your sin once and for all in Christ who suffered hell for you. And in that way, God is both love and just. What a precious truth to note.
And how does that change our attitude really, when it comes to our sin as well? Not just to think, well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll just do whatever. God will just forgive me anyway, but instead to realize that our sin is serious and someone had to die to pay for that sin and suffer our punishment, and to believe that, and to rejoice in that, and desire now to not live in sin, but to live for the one who suffered your punishment and mine. Amen.
