"Reflections on God's Attributes: God's Mercy and Judgment"

“We should banish from our minds forever the common but erroneous notion that justice and judgment characterize the God of Israel, while mercy and grace belong to the Lord of the church. Whether in the Garden of Eden or in the Garden of Gethsemane, God is merciful as well as just. He has always dealt in mercy with mankind and will always deal in justice when His mercy is despised” (Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy p.91). God was not a mean God in the Old Testament and suddenly became a merciful God in the New Testament. It can be a difficult thing for finite beings to understand a God who is both fully merciful and fully just at the same time. God cannot suspend one attribute in order to exercise another. Every time He pours out His judgment, it is in the fullest context of mercy. Every time He exercises mercy, He is fully just in doing so. It would seem, at first glance, to make a statement like this would be labeled an oxymoron. This thought can be settled by considering what God told His prophet in Isaiah 55:8: "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.” Finite minds cannot always understand who God is and how He does what He does. However, just because His children do not understand, it does mean they can just dismiss the thought. It is still truth that God can be fully merciful at the same time as He is just. His children must examine this idea and take a closer look into what is the great mystery of the knowledge of God. By His Spirit and through long meditation, some understanding can be received and light can be shed upon this topic. This paper shall try to define and examine these two attributes, mercy and justice, by looking at them in the Scriptures and see how they meet at the cross of Jesus Christ and once again in the book of Revelation.

“Yea, surely God will not do wickedly, neither will the Almighty pervert judgment.” (Job 34:12). Two things are discovered about God from this simple passage. First, we see that God CANNOT do wickedly. Right away we see that God’s judgments must be good. To punish wickedness is right, therefore it is good; to leave man uncontrolled in their wickedness is unrighteous, and therefore it is not in God to do so. Strong’s defines justice as: abstractly (rightness), subjectively (rectitude), objectively (justice), morally (virtue) or figuratively (prosperity). It is God’s confronting of moral iniquity. The Old Testament asserts God’s justice in very clear language and as beautifully as may be found anywhere in literature. Many, in the past and present, look at God’s justice in a negative connotation. The justice of God is actually a part of the goodness of His nature. Even in His judgments He is giving to man what he desires: “If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me” (Deuteronomy 32:41). Also, there is nothing negative about what was prophesied about the long-awaited Messiah, that when He came He should judge the people with righteousness and the poor with justice. He will show no partiality to the rich, and He will not overlook the poor. Isaiah 11:3&4 says: “and he will delight in the fear of the LORD. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.” This passage gives hope to all believers, especially to those who are oppressed, and should strike fear in the hearts of the wicked. When God’s justice is looked at through the truth, it is as comforting as any of His promises.

Secondly, we see from the verse in Job, that God cannot pervert His justice. He must punish those who reject His mercies and choose wickedness, no matter how much He desires to show them His mercy and love. He must judge, and He must judge in righteousness. He is a holy God, therefore He demands His children to be holy. Were there not judgments in the world, men would forget God, be indifferent of His government of the world, and neglect the exercises of natural and Christian duties. The wickedness of man is very often seen when God shows patience toward the wicked. It gives an excellent, yet narrow, picture of what would happen if God did not ever release judgment upon the wicked. “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Ecclesiastes 8:11). Psalm 50: 1&2 also says: “These things you have done and I kept silent; you thought I was altogether like you. But I will rebuke you and accuse you to your face. Consider this, you who forget God, or I will tear you to pieces, with none to rescue.” The greatness of the crime and the righteousness of the Judge are the first natural thoughts that arise in the minds of men at the appearance of Divine judgments in the world. This is one of the main purposes of God’s judgments. God executes judgment upon all the unrighteous in order to convince all that are ungodly among them to repent of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed. Part of His mercy is that He never sends His judgments without a warning. Judgments upon notorious offenders have been evident in all ages; the Scriptures give many instances. Is He less good, because He judges and will not distribute His goodness to those that despise Him?

Psalm 23:6 says: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever,” and Deuteronomy 7:9 says: “Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations.” It is such a simple and humble request that the Creator of the universe makes of His children, to love Him and to obey Him. The splendid thing about these verses is that God’s children will not have to ever worry about His judgments if they will only love Him and keep His commands. He longs to show mercy to His children. If we could remember that divine mercy is not a temporary mood but an attribute of God’s eternal being, we would no longer fear that it will someday cease to be. Strong’s translates the word mercy as kindness, loving-kindness, compassionate, to be inclined to, to show kindness to, to be gracious. Both the Old and New Testaments proclaim the mercy of God, but the former has more than four times as much to say about it as the latter. This is a striking fact for a God who is considered to be mostly angry in the Old Testament. “As judgment is God’s justice confronting moral inequity, so mercy is the goodness of God confronting human suffering and guilt. Forever His mercy stands, a boundless, overwhelming vastness of divine pity and compassion. He has a right to punish upon the first commission of a crime, but He warns men of what they have deserved and of what His justice moves Him to inflict, that by showing them His mercy He might not have to exercise the right of His justice” (Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God p.482). There is nothing in His justice which forbids the exercise of His mercy. God is fully just in His mercies, because the purpose of showing mercy to the unrighteous is to make them forsake wickedness, turn to God, and “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matt. 22:37). Mercy shown to the righteous makes them want to fulfill this command in an even greater way that is worthy of their compassionate Father.

Besides the Cross the supreme example of God’s mercy is seen in the life of David. God’s mercy is seen throughout David’s life, but it is particularly striking in one particular passage. There is not enough space to quote the whole text of 1 Chronicles 21:9-14, so a couple of verses shall be highlighted. God sends the prophet Gad to David with three choices of punishment for sin. These options were: “Either three years' famine; or three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while that the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the LORD, even the pestilence, in the land, and the angel of the LORD destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel” (v.12). David’s response is shocking! He says: “let me fall now into the hand of the LORD; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the hand of man” (v.13). Oh the blessedness of being confident in who God is and the assuredness of His great mercies!

“Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer” (Isaiah 53:19a). As seen in this verse, mercy and justice run head on into each other at the cross. However unpleasant this verse may sound to the ear of the natural man, it has been sweet to the ear of the sinner who repents and chooses to put his faith in the Lamb that was slain. Justice shall not complain for lack of punishment because of Jesus, nor mercy for lack of compassion because of Jesus. At the cross, the plea of justice was satisfied in punishing, and the plea of mercy is received in the pardoning of sin. The Father will “have an infinite sacrifice to content justice; and the virtue and fruit of that sacrifice shall delight mercy” (Charnock, p. 412). We must believe that God’s mercy is boundless, free and, through Jesus Christ our Lord, available to us now in our present situation. God has given His only begotten Son to assure us of this promise. No man ever was nor surely ever will be just in questioning the justice and mercy of God. “Not all the judgments, that have, or shall be poured out upon the wicked world, nor the flaming furnace of a sinner’s conscience, or the irreversible sentence pronounced against the rebellious devils, nor the groans of the damned creatures, give such a demonstration of God’s hatred of sin, as the wrath of God let loose upon His Son” (Charnock, p. 135). The just penalty for sin was paid when Christ our Substitute died for us on the Cross. Thus God is righteous without being cruel and merciful without being unjust. Had man been sacrificed to justice, mercy would have forever been unknown; had man been solely shown mercy, justice would have forever been excluded. In Christ all the wrong things have been made right, though mercy and justice in God have never been wrong.

When the long-withheld judgment of God begins to fall upon the world, John sees the victorious saints standing upon a sea of glass mingled with fire. In their hands they hold harps of God; the song they sing is the song of Moses and the Lamb, and the theme of their song is divine justice. “Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? For thou alone art holy: for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest” (Revelation 15:4). Revelation 19:6 says: “And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.” These two verses in Revelation are shouted by a people that have understood God’s plan in the end-times. They understand that the works of judgment poured out upon the world are from God Himself and are a result of the prayers of the saints. They know that these judgments are the least amount of judgment from a righteous and merciful God whose supreme purpose for these events is to cause the maximum amount of people to be taken to the highest level of love for their God and to cause the least amount of death of the wicked. The cry in Revelation 22:17 made by the Spirit and the Bride in for the Lord to come is to be understood not as a plea for personal vengeance but as a longing to see moral purity prevail in human society, restoration to come to the planet, and the Lord Jesus Himself to come to dwell amongst His brethren. Those who do not understand this about God’s judgments are spoken of by Jeremiah in chapter 5 verse 4, “Surely these are poor; they are foolish: for they know not the way of the LORD, nor the judgment of their God.”

God is never at odds with Himself. No attribute of God conflicts with another. The truth is that there is not and can never be anything outside of the nature of God which can move Him in the least degree. Therefore He is always righteous, always just, and always merciful: “Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face” (Psalm 89:14). It is through His great wisdom that such a plan could be devised that would show both the fullness of justice and the fullness of mercy at the same time. It is through the work of Christ at the cross that justice is not violated but satisfied, and mercy is shown at its fullest when God spares a sinner. It is highly better and more glorious for both justice and mercy to be satisfied simultaneously than if the claim of one had been granted, with the exclusion of the demand of the other. There would have been either an unrighteous mercy, or a merciless justice; it is now a righteous mercy, and a merciful justice. “And therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you: for the LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for him” (Isa 30:18).