God the Righteous Judge...Part 2
"I will put my Spirit on him and he will proclaim justice to the nations...a bruised reed will he not break, and a smoldering wick will he not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory. (Matt. 12:18-21).
Christ did not bring justice by causing pain and suffering but, with tenderness and compassion for the broken and bruised. The justice that God brings about leads to reconciliation victory that sets the captive free. What does Christ bring to the nations to bring about this justice? "He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed to proclaim of the Lord's favor." (Luke 4:18-19).
The righteous justice Jesus brings has to do with God's love for people and nothing to do with punitive suffering, it is God showing love and compassion for the lost, the down-trodden. It is God meeting at the point of our need and liberating us from sin and oppression including religious oppression. It has to do with setting things right...that is what Godly justice is about. god has always been a compassionate God, a God of love, the truth is, that nobody showed us what God was like until Jesus showed us. Any other picture of God's justice people may have laid on Him is false due to drawing their conclusion from human judges operating in their role and the retributive pagan gods that thrived in their culture and environment. God's justice comes through mercy...always has...always will!
Jesus...the express image of God came to reveal His Father to us...was a compassionate man, therefore God is a compassionate God. How do we know that, because Jesus said "I I do what I see my Father do", He also said I and my Father are one." Being compassionate is walking in the footsteps of another and feeling their struggle, suffering and pain. Jesus had mercy and compassion for sinners because he was denying their sin, but because He saw what sin was doing to them. It moved Jesus to mercy and compassion because it agonized Him to see people in the bondage and throws of the hell that sin brings, and because of His mercy and compassion He longed to bring them "justice" to free the oppressed, heal the afflicted and forgive the condemned. He did not come to condemn the condemned he came to forgive the condemned.
Jesus showed us that justice is rooted in compassion and carries the desire to make things right, to bring reconciliation and restoration, to see sin hurting people repent and made new.
God, who according to Jesus, is a God of love, mercy, compassion and justice...making things right...is not about seeing people die and sentencing them to an eternity of suffering in the torture chamber of hell,t ti give people life. God desires to break the cycle of sin's consequences by bringing people justice to make things right again and restore people to a rightful position again because the consequences of sin of the hell sin brings to people. God's Justice is rooted in compassion...not retribution with compassion!
Despite the religious man-made concoctions of what God's "justice" ought to be, Jesus shows us that His justice is about making things right again, about liberating people from sin and its consequences, about liberating people imprisoned by sin. Jesus shows us that death is not what justice requires, rather death is the enemy that Christ conquered through the cross.
Religion's picture of God's justice is to imprison people in the torture chamber of some hell fire to suffer forever and ever. God's vision of justice according to Jesus is to release people held captive in the hell of sin's prison: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. (Luke 4: 18-19).
We need to abandon the narrow-minded religious man-made concepts of God's justice and embrace the Godly life-giving justice of our loving God that Jesus revealed to us. This requires a major shift in our thinking:
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isa. 55: 8-9)
"For I am God and not man -- the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath." (Hos. 11:9).
We should not take what we understand of human justice and allow it to limit the justice of God, accomplished by Jesus on the cross, from the radical liberation and freedom it really is.
"ALL the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and ALL the families of the nations will bow down before Him." (Psalm 22:27).
According to Matthew 5:44, God is kind to the unthankful and evil.
God vows..."I swear by myself for there is none greater. EVERY knee shall bow and EVERY tongue will confess, surely they shall say, in the Lord I have righteousness and strength." (Isaiah 45:23,24).
God's justice is for the good of the Community of Humanity, not for their eternal damnation in some hell!
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