God Is Good and God Is Just

Who can command things to happen without the Lord’s permission? Does not the Most High send both calamity and good? Then why should we, mere humans, complain when we are punished for our sins? Instead, let us test and examine our ways. Let us turn back to the LORD. Let us lift our hearts and hands to God in heaven and say, “We have sinned and rebelled, and you have not forgiven us. [Lamentations 3.37-42]

God is good and God is just.

It is inaccurate to say God is more just than good, just as it is inaccurate to say God is more good than just. God is both good and just - just and good.

We may however gain some insight into God's priority of these two characteristics in Christ. Not ironically, Jesus provides this insight in both His mission and His message:

“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. [John 3.16-18]

God's priority is love. Because of sin, man deserved to die - God's justice exists to assure that. The only person qualified to satisfy the requirement of God's justice is God Himself. That is why God entered the world in the person of His own Son, not to judge the world, but to satisfy His own justice so that the priority of His love might be seen. But there is a catch...

There are a couple requirements upon man to receive the benefit of Jesus' Advent: repentance and faith. Jesus' teaching and preaching (as chronicled in the New Testament Gospels) reveal these two requirements throughout His ministry on earth.

The point we must see is that God's priority of love is evident in Christ. Even though God is both love and justice, His redemptive purpose of love, to deliver man from His justice, is seen clearly in Jesus.

Again, Jesus was not unclear in presenting the need for repentance and faith because God so loved the world...

Father, help me to better understand and live by the fact that You are good and that Your faithful love endures forever...