That's Justice

Some months ago, the Lord told me that He was making me into a woman of faith. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?

Sigh.

So it’s likely that my present condition is for one of two purposes: either God is trying my faith in order to grow it, or He is showing me how little faith I have, so that when He makes me a woman of faith, I won’t be tempted to take any credit for my faith. Since He’s done that sort of thing in the past, with other “virtues” in me, I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if the latter was the case.

Here I am, crawling along the floor, figuratively, in what amounts to being a quagmire of doubt and fear. Finally I picked up my old stand-by, Faith, and decided to read a bit of it, looking up and reading the various Bible passages it mentions. As you can perhaps imagine, I haven’t gotten very far. I got stuck in Romans. Reading a translation from which I’ve never read Romans, I read something different, and saw something different.

God sent Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement, in order to demonstrate His justice.

Oooooh. Do you know something? We talk about Adam’s “fall,” but I don’t recall ever reading anything about Adam’s “fall” in the Bible. I really believe that God, on purpose, created Adam (and then Eve) with the very set of perfect weaknesses that would allow them to sin at the first opportunity presented to them. I don’t see a bit of evidence that Adam and Eve ever existed in a state that is more “God-like” than what you and I exist in, now. (Perhaps we have Greek mythology to thank for more church doctrine than what we realize …) By one man, sin entered the world, but did it enter when he sinned? Or did it enter when he did?

My point is that, all by itself, this appears to be highly unjust. Now, if Adam’s sin had been his own fault, we could be okay with it. But if God created Adam with such weakness that he was predisposed to sin, then that’s not quite fair. We know enough about justice to know that’s not right. But God is right. He is just. And He demonstrated His justice in Jesus.

All the punishment and guilt and shame that we earn by sinning—which we can’t help but do—can be completely overridden by faith in Jesus. By sin, we have earned sickness and poverty and isolation; when we put our faith in Jesus, our justification by God qualifies us for physical wholeness, wealth, and intimacy.

When we put our faith in Jesus, we are as entitled to all the riches of God as Jesus is ... as though we, ourselves, have been perfect in our behavior, and completely without sin. We can have all the benefits of perfection, but without pride and arrogance, because we need Jesus.

Think about it.

Again.

That’s justice!

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