The phrase must have been repeated in Adam’s mind after taking his first bite of the forbidden fruit: “The day you eat it, will you certainly die?(Genesis 2. 17). That was the day he ate, so it was the day he’d probably die. I can’t imagine the terror Adam felt when he went looking for fig leaves to serve him as makeshift clothes. Adam was now paused before his inevitable punishment. The day of the trial had come.
While God introduced earthly justice that day, He also restricted the full weight of his judgment and gave Adam and the now sinful world a deferred sentence. Did your merciful delay in the final judgment set an elegant but sometimes frustrating standard for our battle between sin and justice?Every earthly evil will not see an earthly and just answer.
- To the extent that God rejected immediate death when Adam swallowed the first bite of the forbidden fruit.
- He showed him two other new ideas: grace and mercy.
- The opposite of justice is injustice.
- But the complement to justice is mercy.
- Both justice and mercy.
- They come from God’s good character.
- And the day creation needed mercy to survive.
- God promised a Savior (Genesis 3:15).
But how do we know God’s character? When skeptics designate the world and declare that things are not as they should be, believers can shout an “Amen!”Comforted. But when the skeptic points loudly and accuses God of injustice and transgression, the skeptic and the believer must follow different doctrinal paths.
Few skeptics say simultaneously (1): Is There God? And (2) “the god I sincerely believe in is unjust. Accusations usually come from those who hope to expose a conflict between God’s existence and unjust tragedies. But there is an essential difference between man’s responsibility under God’s law and God’s relationship with the laws he creates and reveals. The laws created are divinely designed for special, earthly, and sometimes temporal circumstances. God is not responsible for any higher law separated from his nature. The skeptic who holds God accountable for the laws he has inevitably created does not understand the Creator-creature relationship.
What about the skeptic who observes injustices in the Bible?How do you harmonize God’s perfect and just nature with all kinds of biblical stories and events in which God’s people, and even God Himself, seem to approve or order injustices?
The Old Testament takes place in the first act of the battle for final justice. Since the day of the trial was postponed after Eden, injustice often blossomed. God has cast only the temporal and earthly shadows of the ongoing final judgment. conquers with any chapter of revelation. Joshua seems sweet compared to dragons, beasts and the fire of revelation. Although the Apocalypse conveys its message in the form of veiled symbols and fantastic images, isn’t the message simply to be displayed?It’ll end violently. Before their end, the people of God’s covenant shout at them to put an end to the injustices involved in betrayal, slavery, exile, and death. You cannot read the Psalms without echoing what the Old Testament Saints felt: “My cries will be answered. “
Someone answered. But, once and for all, the liberation of injustice would take place in a two-part story (Jn 12:31; Ap 14. 7). In the center we find Christ on a hill; the second Adam, waiting in another garden (Gethsemane) in early agony for the undeserved judgment that would inevitably come from his Father (Lk 22:44). Of all injustices, has the greatest, to an infinite degree, occurred in this mysterious substitution?the day of judgment was poured out upon Christ, when he acquired supreme glory for a new creation. Good Friday is an obstacle to all simplistic attempts to achieve God’s righteousness. On that day, the wooden cross reached its climax in fulfilling God’s merciful promise to the first Adam (Genesis 3:15).
Three days later, Christ’s Resurrection condemned death and the devil to the death penalty. Paul called this maiden resurrection the principles? For believers (1 Corinthians 15:20-23). If Christ is the beginning, we are the “next fruits”, hoping to join the harvest of the Resurrection at the end of this phase of history.
Christ has never downplayed the reality of the unjust sting of death (Jn 11:35-38), but knowing how his dramatic story ends offers a comfort that resists temporal injustices, our inevitable resurrection, and our new home in the new heavens and new heavens. earth, will finally redeem the first old injustice in this old land. For now, injustice permeates and permeates the earthly air we breathe. Suffering and tragedy must be taken seriously and treated with sensitivity and pastoral care. But won’t we find definitive solutions in the country. The final remnant of injustice will be in a new and eternal home. We repeat, “How long, Lord, for we know that our righteous and merciful Savior is currently preparing our new home (Jn 14. 3) for the final act of the latter day.