Updated 6-25-15
David
Platt said, “How can God show all of His attributes: His holiness and His
mercy, His wrath and His love, His justice and His grace? How can He show
all of these things? And the answer is: the just and gracious God of the
universe looked upon hopelessly sinful people and sent His Son, Jesus Christ,
God in the flesh, to bear His wrath against sin on the cross and to show His
power over sin in the resurrection.
Jesus is the only way this tension is revealed. There is no other religious system, no other
religious philosophy that can bring this tension together, that can relieve
this tension. Only Jesus Christ can do this."
He
who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike
are an abomination to the LORD.
Proverbs
17:15
Far
be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so
that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal
justly?
Genesis
18:25
“Now
we don’t see this—this question, how can God be kind to sinners because, let’s
be honest, there are very few people today that are losing sleep over how God
can be kind to sinners. Instead, we are pointing the finger at God and
we’re saying, “God, how can you punish sinners? God, how can you let
people go to hell?” We point the finger at His character, question how He
could do that. The Bible does just the opposite. It’s because the Bible has a
God-centered worldview and we have a man-centered worldview.”
“The Bible is not asking how can God
punish sinners; the Bible is asking how in the world can God let rebels into
heaven. How can God maintain His glory
and let those who have belittled His glory into heaven? This is the
tension with which the gospel confronts us.”
David Platt
"Who
may ascend into the hill of the LORD? Or
who may stand in His holy place? He who
has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to an idol,
nor sworn deceitfully."
Psalm
24:3-4
You do not
have clean hands and a pure heart to ascend into the hill of the LORD or to
stand in His holy place. You have sinned
against a holy God whose righteousness and justice leave you no hope to escape
the full punishment that your wickedness deserves, much less get into
heaven. You come to God as a sinful
rebel who recognizes his helplessness and pleads to God for mercy for your
sins, but how can a just God forgive the wicked?
1. If God does
pardon the wicked, He is no longer just.
The Scriptures declare: “He who justifies the wicked and he who
condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs
17:15).
It makes sense that anyone who justifies the wicked is not just,
but the Bible says
that God justifies the wicked: “But to the one who
does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is
credited as righteousness” (Romans 4:5).
2. If God does
not pardon the wicked, we all will perish.
The
Scriptures declare: “For all have sinned” (Romans 3:23); and “The wages of sin
is death...” (Romans 6:23); and still, “The soul who sins will die (Ezekiel
18:4).”
The greatest
problem in the Scriptures is this: How can a holy God forgive wicked sinners
and still remain just? This is the Great
Dilemma.
The greatest problem in the Scriptures is this: How
can a holy God forgive the sinner and still remain just?
Let’s say
that a thief kills your family. And you catch him in the act, wrestle him down,
and call the cops. The police get all
the evidence they need to make sure this guy gets locked up. After months, the case finally goes to court and
the murderer appears before the judge. And
the judge says to the man that killed your family:
“Look, I am a
loving judge. That’s why I forgive you. You are free to go.”
How would you
react? You would be so angry! You would scream! You would contact your Congressmen, the
President and everyone else saying:
“Over here
there is a judge that is corrupt, even more corrupt than the criminals that he
forgives!”
If God is
just, He HAS to satisfy His justice. And
the only way that that is possible is by punishing you in Hell for all your
sins. That’s true. However, the Bible says also that God is LOVE.
God is
love and He has made a way to satisfy His justice against you and to save you. It’s only through His Son Jesus Christ.
If God is just, He HAS to satisfy His justice. And the only way that that is possible is by
punishing you in Hell for all your sins.
People have a
problem with the idea that God casts people into Hell. Heaven has a problem too, but it’s just the
opposite. The problem in Heaven is not, “How can a holy and just God judge
sin?” The problem is, “How can God be
just and holy and forgive these creatures that deserve death?” Do you see how we’ve twisted the Gospel?
And there is
only one way that God can be just and holy and forgive us, and that is for His
justice to be satisfied. His justice was
satisfied on that day when Jesus died and paid the price for our sin. And all the fierce fury and hatred of God
against men and their wickedness fell upon Jesus Christ, and God the Father
crushed His only begotten Son under the furious wrath that belonged to you.
God the Father crushed His only begotten Son under
the furious wrath that belonged to you.
In this is love, not that we loved God,
but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1 John 4:10
The word
propitiation is essential to understanding the gospel. This word, besides the name of God, is the
most important word in the Bible, yet it is never mentioned in most churches
today. I never heard it until I actually
started studying the Bible. This word propitiation
means “substitution; appeasement or satisfaction of God’s wrath by Jesus
Christ.” God is just and must punish
sin, and He did punish our sin by Jesus dying in our place and drinking down
the cup of God’s wrath on the cross. Our
sin makes us enemies of God, and a propitiation
is a sacrifice that satisfies the wrath of God and allows God to be merciful to the guilty.
23 For all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified as a
gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; 25
whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This
was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He
passed over the sins previously committed; 26 for the demonstration,
I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and
the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Romans
3:23-26
We can
imagine that Satan, the Great Accuser, had a real problem with God’s
forgiveness of people like David who committed terrible sins and deserved to
die for those sins. Satan was offered no
forgiveness for his transgression and imagine that he dared to accuse God of
injustice because he did not hold sinners accountable for their sins. That’s why Romans 3 repeatedly mentions God’s
righteousness. God the Father showed
without a doubt that He is righteous and does punish sin, and He did not even spare
His own Son. If He did not spare His own
Son, what chance do any of us have on the Day of Judgment? We have no chance apart from the propitiation
and substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ.
Michael
Durham said, “The Cross is the answer
to The Dilemma. It showed that God is
righteous and will not tolerate sin. He
would judge sin. God’s sin had been
restrained like a dam, but it was unleashed like a tidal wave. And Christ was crushed in its path.”
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