How Can God Be Merciful and Just at The Same Time?
Some of the effort needed in wrestling with God’s justice is coming to terms with how a holy God interacts with sin. Habakkuk tells us that God's eyes are too pure to look at evil or to tolerate wrongdoing (1:13). An unsightly vision it must be. "He can't look on sin without loathing it, he can't look at sin, but his heart rises against it; it must be most odious to him as that which is against the glory of his nature and directly opposite to that which is the luster and varnish of all his other perfections." - Stephen Charnock, Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God.
When God sees sin in all its colors, He does not see Himself, He, being most beautiful. There is nothing so unlike God than sin. Nothing so awful as that presence within us that is repelled by God's voice. God's holiness recognizes sin as it is. A foreigner without glory. Sickening at its core, vomit by another name. The root of ungodly behavior. The reason creation mirrors the devil in its defiance of a better love. There is in it the constant attempt to masquerade itself like it is another version of the Lord, hoping we will not notice the stench of deceit, and sadly, apart from the Holy Spirit's intervention, we never do.
"Everything in the universe is good to the degree it conforms to the nature of God and Evil as it fails to do so" A.W Tozer. Sin deludes us into thinking that our feelings and creaturely thoughts hold weight in our moral universe as if God is not the ultimate authority on goodness. But we can know if something is right by whether it conforms to God's character, therefore, God is righteous because He cannot deviate from His standards as communicated in His law. God Himself is the standard by which all right and wrong is determined.
Which leaves us with the question: What does God's righteousness have to do with God's justice? Some people of the earth have spoken and have given us their explanation of how God deals with sinners. To justify their belief that God is not antagonistic towards sin, some will say, "…but God is love". They most likely do not realize it but what they are ultimately claiming is that God is unjust. In their defense, the veil that covers, darkening their wisdom, keeps them from seeing their argument as theologically unsound (Romans 1:22; 2 Corinthians 3:14, 4:4; Ephesians 4:17-19). To them, love must be lenient or at least compassionate, which to them means setting aside all offenses so that God may be allowed to dispense forgiveness to anyone who needs it.
Paradoxically, they incorrectly suspect that God is what they will correctly protest when observed in a person. Have we not seen that 'holy' rage that rises in us when a brown boy is murdered and he, not the one who threw the bullet, is blamed for it? When he, the murderer, goes without an indictment, a sentence of guilt, or some judicial consequences for throwing his bullets at an innocent body, do we not lament? Do we not tell justice to stop hiding? And where do you think we got it from- that sense of knowing the scales should be balanced? You would not be telling a lie if you traced the desire for equilibrium back to God. For we all testify to His image in us when we expect justice to "roll down like a river" (Amos 5:24). We know almost instinctively that the guilty must be punished… until the guilty one is us.
God's "rectoral righteousness", as the theologians call it, is that aspect of the righteousness of God that imposes laws on every man and woman made, requiring from them righteousness in return. Oh, how offended our God must have been when He looked at Sodom and Gomorrah and did not see Himself in how they lived. Everybody's body in that city (and ours today) was made for a higher, more glorious purpose than the perversion to which it was subjected. What defiance it is to use the body God gave as an altar for our glory! No one held a gun on Adam's head obliging him to eat what God had forbidden, but his heart opened his mouth, and out of it came the word "shoot". That is a metaphor for how we, like Adam, choose our fate.
When it came time to return the ark of the covenant to its place in Jerusalem, it was set on a cart. A deadly mistake that would soon cost a man his life. According to the law, the ark was to be carried on the shoulders of the Levites with poles (Exodus 25:4; 1 Chronicles 15:15). Instead of referring to God's word for how to manage God's stuff, Uzzah and others took their cues from the Philistines. An ignorant act for them, doing what they knew not about. Then it happened, upon reaching the threshing floor, the oxen forgot its legs and started to dip near the ground. The ark, that precious symbol of God's presence tilted, threatening the dirt to catch it. As it did, Uzzah extended his hand to grab the ark by the hand to keep it in its place, and according to the text, "the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and God struck him down there because of his error, and he died there beside the ark of God" (2 Samuel 6:7).
We feel sorry for Uzzah, don’t we? From our standpoint, he was simply a man with good intentions, it all came from a good place. A man who just wanted to keep the ark from meeting the ground. The reach of his hand towards the ark mimics a fruit of the Spirit- a kind gesture. Uzzah was just trying to help, we say. Help, huh? It is intriguing the words we choose to use to describe things. No wonder we are so confused by judgment at times. We are too busy giving dreadful things good names and vice versa. Scripture calls Uzzah's actions "error" which NIV translates as "irrelevant act". Both names arrive to the reason for his death. Uzzah sinned against God. Maybe thinking himself holy enough to touch what he should not or is it because it had been in his father's home for two decades, the ark had become common? An ornament of sorts. The holy, holy, holy God should never be treated as so familiar to the degree that He becomes approachable on our own terms, but as we see with Uzzah, his loss of awe paired with his failure to do what God's law prescribed necessitated God's justice.
Now do not get me wrong; I am not supposing that Uzzah's actions were intentionally malicious or lacking genuineness. He was acting on instinct out of what he might have believed was respect- the bible does not tell us. But even if seemingly natural and sincere, such was forbidden. When the ark slipped, his impulse was to keep it above the ground, but as R.C Sproul put it: "Uzzah assumed that his hand was less polluted than the earth." Whenever God judges like this, we see the dead body with a "helpful" hand, a reminiscent wife turned to salt (Genesis 19:26), a man and his family swallowed whole by the untrustworthy ground on which they stood (Numbers 16:32), an entire city devoted to destruction both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys with the edge of the sword (Joshua 6:17-21; 1 Samuel 15:3). I understand I might have just made you think we are dealing with an angry God here, but here is the good news, He is merciful. Again, if you are wondering, how can God be merciful and righteous at the same time?
Observing the scripture like a curious child in its mother's lap, it won't be long before you notice that for every story where there is wrath, there are even more stories with mercy. Consider Adam and how after the chewing and the swallowing of what was forbidden, an animal was killed, blood spilled, its skin stripped from its body and made into a covering for the doomed ones (Genesis 3:21). An act not asked for, but one that God initiated and took care of Himself. When the fire from heaven came down to make a flame out of everyone alive in Sodom, the angels came to rescue Lot. The basis for it was not his righteousness- the lack thereof is evident in him being willing to throw his daughters to the wolves (Genesis 19:4-8). Even as the heavens began to open wide, making room for God's wrath to fall, Lot lingered as though to show his lack of urgency and lack of reverence towards the grace of God. He too could have been burned to dust, but the angels grabbed him and his family by hand, snatching them into safety not because they deserved it, but because God's mercy met him at the door (Genesis 19: 16-17).
Or consider Egypt, when God made it His business to judge Egypt for its idolatry by coming for their firstborn everything, the angel of death flew right on by any home with blood on its posts. Let us remember that, that blood was not Israel's idea. They only knew to do it because God took pleasure in communicating their way of escape. This was another mercy brought about by God's hand, the only difference between the two nations- the Israelites and the Egyptians- was that God decided to have compassion on one and not the other. God has said of Himself, "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy" (Exodus 33:19). No one can stand before God and say, "But I deserve this, not that".
The mercy God displayed towards all who sinned before Christ begs the question of how God can be merciful and righteous at the same time. John Piper posed a good question around this theme: "How many wrestle with the apparent injustice that God is lenient with sinners? Indeed, how many Christians wrestle with the fact that our forgiveness is a threat to the righteousness of God?" God is righteous, merciful, holy, and just. So then, what did the holy God do to ensure He could offer us forgiveness while not compromising His righteousness? The bloodied doorposts and spotless lambs would not have been sufficient to redeem us. From His hand, what good gift did God the Father give to the world out of love? "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). God gave His Son, the only One good enough to appease His wrath. The innocent One took on the burdens of the guilty so that when forgiveness is dispensed, God's righteousness would be upheld, and so justice has been satisfied.
