Perfect Justice, Perfect Mercy.
Generations and cultures before us have wrestled with God — or the idea of God.
Is God fallible? Is he omnipotent? Is he even a he? God knows that we struggle, in our humanity, to understand what makes us human, and God… well, God.
The Bible is a record of God’s manifold revelations to us about himself — two whole testaments to the nature of God. But do these two distinct Testaments seem to speak of two separate Gods? In the Old Testament, the prophets tell us of a jealous, vengeful God; in the New, Jesus speaks of a loving, forgiving Father.
How do we reconcile these seemingly incongruous natures of God — can perfect Justice and perfect Mercy exist together?
In Exodus 34:7, God reveals his nature to Moses on Mount Sinai:
“The Lord, the Lord,
God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,
yet by no means clearing the guilty,
but visiting the iniquity of the parents
upon the children
and the children’s children
to the third and the fourth generation.”
In these verses, God emphasises his mercy, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation — not the fifth or seventh or tenth — the thousandth! He forgives iniquity and transgression and sin…all possible connotations of the word, so that there is no splitting of hairs. All is forgiven.
But then comes the line that zigs when it should zag — “yet by no means clearing the guilty”.
If all is forgiven, who does God hold guilty?
The answer lies in this — we are only guilty when we believe we have not been forgiven. The “guilty” that God refers to are those who cannot accept the forgiveness that God extends to them.
God knows that we are human — that we need a tangible way to know that we have been forgiven. And just as we know today when we leave the confessional that we are not guilty of our sins any more, so God provisioned a way for the Israelites to know that their sins had been forgiven.
In the time before Jesus, the sacrifice was the way to make atonement — to cast off guilt and put on the righteousness of the innocent slain lamb. The priest would lay his hands on a sacrificial goat, transferring the sins of the people onto it, and set it out into the wilderness. Then, an unblemished lamb would be sacrificed on the altar and the blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins.
God knows that it is our guilt and shame that keeps us from him — just as Adam and Eve’s kept them at a distance from him. When they realised that they were naked, they were ashamed to come before him, so God in his love made clothes for them out of animal skins. Here too, something had to die in order for the first humans to believe that they could come back into the presence of the Lord. They could appear before him only once they had been covered in the animal skins, but God had not required this — they had! God had known them before, when they had already been naked. [Click here to read more about this!]
In his mercy, God covered Adam and Eve in animal skins, the Israelites in the blood of the unblemished lamb… and us in the blood of the perfect sacrifice, Jesus.
For as St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.” Although Jesus has been sacrificed, it is our faith that will help us accept the righteousness of Christ — to ‘put it on’ as our own, in order to cover our sinfulness.
But if we choose NOT to accept Christ’s sacrifice, or his perfect righteousness, we remain… guilty.
“For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.” [Romans 10:4]
The other statement that God makes that a modern reader might find problematic is the announcement that the iniquity of the parents would be visited upon the children upto the third and fourth generation. This would have been problematic, though, if the Bible hadn’t explicitly stated:
“A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child’ [Ezekiel 18:20]
and
“All shall die for their own sins” [Jeremiah 31:30]
How then are we to understand this? The answer may lie in Jesus’ first commandment —
“I the Lord your God am a jealous god, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.” [Exodus 20:5]
The Lord confirms that the ‘punishment’ is for those who reject him — who choose NOT to be loved. And even here, what is most visible is the discrepancy — the ones who are punished are punished to the fourth generation, while the ones who are rewarded are till the thousandth generation!
And what is the ‘punishment’ that these will face — if not to feel (and incorrectly so)… unloved?
So when we see what we think to be God’s justice coming down on someone — imprisonment, humiliation, economic downfall, illness, or any kind of suffering at all — first, we are wrong to judge what only God can know, and secondly, perhaps this is not justice at all, but the Mercy of God pouring down on them to draw them near to him so that they experience him, repent and come into relationship with him. But for those who will reject, or fail to recognise, God’s mercy, it will seem to be justice raining down on them instead.
Can God’s mercy be just — and his justice… merciful?
