Last week I attended a breakfast meeting with other Christians at work where a lot of different topics came up. The one that stuck was a brief discussion on how to communicate when people ask about disasters like Fukushima earlier this year. Couple of people said something like “We have to tell people that God is a God of love and not judgment…”.
Whenever such disasters happen questions always pop up like why it happened, or why did God let it happen. Those are difficult questions but that is not what caught my attention that morning. It is the fact that Christians today cannot deal with a God of judgment. Somehow they think that God is ONLY a God of love. What they do not understand is that love and justice go hand in hand.
Today in my meditations, God reinforced one thing about Himself as He took my attention to John 3:16.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
The verse that is used most often in evangelism He made it clear that His love and justice go hand in hand. In the first half of this great verse, it explicitly talks about a God who loves and implicitly talks about a God who is just at the same time. He loves us so much that He is ready to save us through His son Jesus who give us them eternal life. However, that love had a price tag and that was Jesus dying on the cross.
Although the verse does not use the word ‘judgment’ it implies that God, when He gave His Son to die in my stead, meted out His justice. God had to make a judgment for my sin because He is just and does not ignore sin. In fact, He cannot ignore my sin because His holiness demands justice. For me to be redeemed from God’s judgment meant someone else had to die. He loved us so much that He made a way out for us by putting His own Son on the cross to satisfy His justice. What an amazing thought.
You cannot separate God’s love from His judgment. They are two traits of His character that work together with His other traits.
