This is going to be a rather weighty article and may end up being just a portion of what will eventually become part of my much more comprehensive Bible study section. Today I received a text message from someone who I've been studying God's Word with; he was texting me to tell me about something but in the process he posed a very interesting question, "Can justice and Grace Coexist." Well, as anyone who knows me is already familiar I care nothing for philosophy, there is only one source that I trust or encourage people to trust when they have such a question. With that in mind let us examine briefly what the answer to that question is, with some evidence from God's immortal Word.
Justice and Grace, the very foundation of God's government in heaven. (Psalm 89:14) In Exodus 33:18-20 and 34:5-7 God declares His name, in doing so He declares His character and part of His character is being a just God and part is merciful. (See the Seal of God Bible study in the section "Bible Study, He is coming soon.") What if I told you that without grace there would be no justice and without justice there is no grace? In reality we have asked the wrong question in asking if they can exist together. The real question is, can they exist apart? By human reasoning perhaps they can, but we see in the Scriptures that of a truth they are both an essential part of the Divine character and therefore are indispensable and inseparable.
It is truly an interesting theme we're exploring, but lets see what the Bible says. Exodus 20:6 shows that God gives mercy to those who keep His commandments, and Matt 23:23 reveals that without mercy the law does not mean anything. Therefore the two are inseparable, Keeping God's law and dying daily as Paul said (1 Cor 15:31) puts us into a position to continue receiving God's eternal grace. (Neh 5:1) (Rom 6:15) That said, Matt 23:23 displays that without grace the law means nothing. For one thing no man can keep the Law of themselves, we require divine grace just to do that much, for another thing, even if you could somehow keep the law of yourself it would mean nothing without Jesus and His atoning blood and grace for us.
The truth of the matter is that we cannot live in a just manner, we cannot have justice without God's grace, but we cannot have grace without justice either. This issue deserves further study, there will be more articles on this subject down the road I can already tell, we haven't even scratched the surface. Of this topic. To conclude I simply want to post this very well done study from www.the-ten-commandments.org. The study is on the Law of God in comparison with His character and how God mirrored His character perfectly in all points of the law.
No comments:
Post a Comment