Justice

I’ve been thinking about how God is the true judge and how we are not, but often we place our own judgements higher than His. (By saying ‘we’ I really mean ‘I’ in the hopes that you can relate somewhat to this post.)

From a worldly point of view, I think it can be easy (for me, at least) to want justice in the here and now and want what I see as justice to happen (e.g. someone doing something bad and getting the consequence of that). But then I remember that if I got what I deserve, I wouldn’t be able to live it up with Jesus forever, and I’d be separated from everything good, and that sounds so terrible I can’t even.

That’s the thing. I can see myself as being a better judge than God because I think there are bad people in the world, and I think that sometimes they get away with it when they shouldn’t. But then I see God and I see how I’ve failed Him thousands of times and how He still forgives me, loves me, treats me as someone valuable. The worst thing I’ve done is sin against Him, which means the true judgement will be with Him.

If justice was served the way I think it sometimes should be, God would have given up on me years ago.

I don’t have to worry about the fact that there are ‘bad’ people, because technically we’re all ‘bad’ people, and in the end we will all be standing before God taking account of our actions, so why take it upon myself now to be annoyed when ‘justice’ doesn’t occur? It will, in time, I just need to remember that the ‘right now’ isn’t the last say. God is.

This year I’ve been reading a lot of the Old Testament with the want to view God as He is and as who He says He is, and in this I have been learning how He can be both the just Judge and the loving Father.

I’m beginning to see in a new way that they don’t cancel one another out, and that the God in the Old Testament is the same in the New Testament. God is super wrathful and mighty and powerful in the Old Testament (which He still is today), but this just shows that despite being able to destroy His people, God returns to them, even when they make idols and don’t listen to Him. Even though God has every right to give them what they deserve, which is death and separation from Him, He returns to them. Hosea is a whole book of the Bible dedicated to show what it’s like being our God, and I think it’s incredible what He goes through every single day when He deserves all the glory and praise there is. (Hosea is about this dude marrying a prostitute and she goes off with other men but he goes to her and takes her home and remains faithful.) (It shows that God remains faithful to us even though we don’t to Him.)

Viewing God in all of His ways has been amazingly beneficial, and seeing all of His character actually shows me how much more loving He is than what I originally thought. We are shown love by what Jesus did on the cross, but seeing the richness of God’s love through Him returning to His people when He’s been cheated on time and time again gives me a fuller picture of how much God loves and how merciful He is to forgive us when we don’t deserve it. The Old and New Testament complement each other rather than contradict each other; together we are given the full extent of grace and love.

Sarah xx