Godly justice revisited

God made us to be in His family. That was His plan. When we fell, God declared “justice must be served.” No way, no how would God allow His plan of our union be thwarted by a deception or our stupidity and selfishness. “Absolutely not!” was His declaration the moment we turned and hid from Him. He was not going to compromise or give up. He was invested in love. His creation was born out of love. He could never abandon His children. Justice must be served!  God must have His children restored.

His intense longing for the awakening from our deception was tempered by the compassion a Father has for His lost-in-their-mind children. He knew the deception could only be broken by His persistent love and infinite mercy over a long time. He knew that the power of the deception was founded in our fear of Him. The only way out of our comatose nightmare was through relationship and trust and faithfulness. He had to show His commitment to His creation.

At times our fallen nature had driven us so far into the darkness, we had no Earthly chance to see Him as our Father again. He knew when the human heart was so hardened to the revelation of His goodness that the only course of action was death of the flesh for salvation of the Spirit. Floods and Sodoms become reminders of how deceived and darkened the human mind can be. Even in a temporal tragedy, His mercy triumphs and the deception is defeated. The father is still outside the party pleading with the son. In the final act of a surreal play, the gates of heaven are still open.

He would not be stopped. Total restoration from the fall was His justice. The inclusion of His creation in Himself such that the creation was restored from the fall was His passion. There was no valley too low or cesspool too deep for God to meet us in our worst moment. His passionate pursuit of us at His expense was His expression of His nature. He was willing to stoop to our level to mature the fragile relationship and create trust in a mankind that was in bondage to fear. Even when we missed His true nature and blamed Him for our atrocities, He never wavered. He would have His prize. He would have His bride. He would have His children.

When we lashed out against one another and against Him, He did not give up. He did not change His mind. Our resistance to His embrace did not bring rejection but protection instead. When we reacted out of fear and selfishness He gave us laws to protect us while we grew to know the one who loved us. When He wanted to show us Grace and inclusion and we hid and feared Him instead of embracing Him, He was not frustrated. He preferred a cosmic hug but instead gave us what we needed to survive, the law.   We took the simple guidelines born of triune love and wrongly made them conditions of relationship. We used them to judge ourselves and each other. We misinterpreted laws intended for good as measures of performance and morality. We took what was perfect and made it an instrument of death. Still God was not disgusted or irritated with us. His justice would be served. He would use our deceived dysfunction and morality obsession to His purposes. We began to see the goal. We got a glimpse of what perfect love looked like even if it were observed through a shadow of a law.

God pleaded with us to stop hurting each other.  He desperately needed us committed to this relationship so he could win our trust. To do this he insisted that we stop following pagan rituals and worship of pretend gods. He was so passionate to restore his children he wanted us to at least trust in His basic survival sustenance so he could reveal his intimate personal interest. Even with manna we complained but He did not give up. He was patient to wait for a generation that grew up in His presence, not distracted by the call of Egypt.

He chose a people to bring his unconditional love and other-centered relationship to the nation’s. He hand-picked a beacon to reveal his goodness. He promised them he would protect them if they remained faithful to the relationship. He didn’t give up when they broke fellowship again and again. Human fear forged in the deception and refined by stubborn independence had made us creatures of violence instead of trust. God’s plan of inclusion would not be derailed. No matter how dark and violent we had become God was so completely committed that he would stoop all the way down into our violent nature and fulfill his promise of protection no matter what. He would go as far as it took to show His faithfulness and trustworthiness. He is not violent. He is not vengeful. His master plan was our inclusion and restoration. Whatever the price, even if it meant we would see Him in a bad light, He would pay. His reputation was of no concern. Our restoration through His commitment to us was more important than a fallen-Adam wrong opinion of his methods. He could see Himself on the cross.  We still didn’t know Him.

Finally after what seemed like an excessive amount of time and generation upon generation of God’s pursuit of His restorative justice, mankind was ready for the pinnacle of his effort. The image of God we had in our minds was still light years from truth. We had no comprehension of his goodness. We had no thought or memory of the garden. We had placed Him far far away on a distant planet as jurist prudence judge not a Father. Mankind was no closer to seeing God for who He truly was then Adam in the bushes. Through Israel there was at least a relationship. There was a language. There was a tradition. There was a framework. There was a deep hunger. There was a finality of frustration born of endless religious dead ends. In our minds we were no closer to God than the span of the universe, but mankind had a taste of what was good. We had the manna. We had the red sea. We had the promised land. We had the wealth of Solomon. Now was the time. God’s master plan of reuniting His family would take a drastic and impossible turn. The justice of God and judgment of mankind was at hand. God took every option, condition, opportunity, decision and vote upon himself. His final gavel in this courtroom of restoration was to do it all Himself.

The incarnation was justice served. The life and death and resurrection of the Word made flesh was justice served. God joining Himself to is was justice served. The judgment rendered is “my children are restored.”

Now here we are 2000 years later and have not embraced God’s justice. He doesn’t give up. He made his home in us. The Holy Spirit is constantly pursuing us to transform our minds. The light may shine out of the darkness and the darkness doesn’t know it but the justice of God has him turning up the candle power. God made us to be His kids. He made us to know we are His kids. He made us His kids so we would know Him and share in His glory. That is the final word on His justice already served. Will we awaken to the truth?

Yay God!

Lance