Commenting on Romans 3:25-26, Robert Haldane said: ‘Mercy and justice are irreconcilable except in Christ.’ He was referring to the fact that at the cross, God set forth Christ as a propitiation for the sins of His people. Christ satisfied the justice of God and thereby enables God to be merciful to believing sinners, without ceasing to be just. In short, God is both just and the justifier; He punishes sin and He acquits sinners. God can be perfectly just and perfectly merciful at once. Christians are surely called upon to reflect something of that in our daily lives. Yet, take out the cross, and there is no complete reconciliation of justice and mercy this side of the new heaven and the new earth.
This was illustrated most clearly when the American armed forces killed Osama bin Laden recently (1 May 2011) in Abbottabad, Pakistan. As the news was made known, Christians and others poured out an unprecedented number of Bible verses on Facebook and Twitter. Some were horrified that anyone could rejoice at bin Laden’s death, while others danced in the streets and chanted ‘USA’. The Christian could only cringe at the sentimentality of the former, and at the crassness of the latter. The result was about as much confusion of thought and emotion as is possible in this world. It was reminiscent of Satan’s words to Eve in Milton’s Paradise Lost: ‘God cannot hurt you, and be just.’
Those who took the moral high ground over the killing of bin Laden appear to have missed the biblical emphasis on justice. When the Egyptians were drowned in the Red Sea, the people of God, did not agonise over their response. Moses declared, in words repeated by his sister Miriam: ‘I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider He has thrown into the sea’ (Exodus 15:2, 21). The Bible inculcates love but not without justice. As the book of Proverbs says: ‘When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices, and when the wicked perish there are shouts of gladness’ (Prov. 11:10). When the Allied forces heard that Adolf Hitler had shot himself in the head in his Berlin bunker on 30 April 1945 they surely rejoiced. Were they evil in so doing?
There are imprecatory Psalms that make the faint heart of the modern evangelical blanch. Asaph calls on God to act: ‘Pour out Your anger on the nations that do not know You, and on the kingdoms that do not call upon Your name! For they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation’ (Ps.79:6-7). Rob Bell declares that Love Wins. So too does Justice. J. G. Vos pointed out that ‘God’s kingdom cannot come without Satan’s kingdom being destroyed.’ This is not to identify God’s kingdom with the United States and the Taliban with Satan’s kingdom, but it is to say that God’s victory requires justice and judgment. Nor is this confined to the Old Testament. When Babylon falls, a great multitude in heaven cries out: ‘Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for His judgments are true and just; for He has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality, and has avenged on her the blood of His servants’ (Rev.19:1-2).
How then can it be that Christ could pray for the forgiveness of those who were crucifying Him? (Luke 23:34) Yet He will strike down the nations and tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty (Rev.19:15). Or how can the apostle Paul, citing Deuteronomy and Proverbs from the Old Testament, tell us not to take vengeance but to feed our enemy and give him something to drink, and soon after declare that a political ruler is ‘an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer’? (Rom.12:19-20; 13:4) God Himself takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezek.18:23, 32; 33:11), yet in the new heaven and the new earth the wicked are excluded and punished forever (Rev.21:8). Can we hope to reconcile these apparently contradictory assertions?
Part of the answer can be found in that the state is mainly concerned with justice, while the Church deals more with mercy. Rejoicing over the fall of God’s enemies has a place, but as individual Christians we are not to gloat or rejoice when our enemy stumbles or falls (Prov.24:17). Yet that is only part of the answer. We are called upon, somehow, to exhibit both justice and mercy. This means that, in short, there is no glib answer to this issue. Apparently some 60% of Americans expressed their pride in the success of the assassination of bin Laden. That hardly seems to be the right response. Moralising about the evils of attacking our enemies hardly seems any better. At Calvary, God could be perfectly just and merciful, but here and now we are unable in this fallen world to combine in ourselves these two attributes. All we can do is rejoice when justice is done, but do so soberly and humbly, being aware of our own sinful frailty and the unutterable holiness of God.
With warmest regards in Christ,
Peter Barnes