The Cross as a demonstration of God’s justice and mercy Romans 3:21-26; Luke 19:1-9
This is the second of our series on the cross as we lead up to Holy Week and Easter. Two weeks ago we looked at the cross as a demonstration of God’s victory of evil, sin and death. And as a demonstration of God’s limitless love.
Today we think about the cross as a demonstration of God’s justice and God’s mercy.
Ernest Hemingway wrote a short story which used the fact that one of the commonest names in Spain is Paco, a shortened form of Francisco. A Spanish father came to Madrid and put an advert in the local paper which said
Paco meet me at Hotel Montana at Noon on Tuesday. All is forgiven. Papa.
An entire squadron of the Civil Guard had to be called out to disperse the 800 young Paco’s who turned up to answer the advert.
Forgiveness is one of our deepest needs, because we value relationships and they cannot be mended without forgiveness.
When we talk about God forgiving, many non- Christians don’t understand the need for the cross. Why can’t God just forgive, they ask. Why all this cross stuff? Why all this talk about judgment and wrath and all that sort of stuff. Isn’t God supposed to be nice? Can’t he just forgive?
The cross changes our view of God. At one end of the way we think about God is the view of god as the tough negotiator with whom we try to deal. We do what he says and he’ll make sure we are all right.
The trouble is that this doesn’t really work; firstly, because keeping God’s rules is very difficult. The only one who has managed it is Jesus. As our NT reading argued, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God – if we are relying on a deal negotiated with God, we are in trouble! And secondly, God actually isn’t into those sort of bargains. He gives us more than we deserve! And his rules are about showing the way to live fulfilled lives. They are not there as a negotiating weapon – they are a gift.
At the other end of how we think about God is god as a heavenly Santa Claus who gives us everything but makes no demands on us – a nice god who doesn’t mind what we do as long as we are happy.
The true God is not either of those false images of God; he is neither a hard negotiator striking a deal impossible for us to achieve, nor a totally soft touch who doesn’t care what we do. As we will see, the cross shows that God is concerned for justice, but that he also chooses to show mercy and forgiveness.
Before we look a bit more at the cross I want us to explore 2 words that we probably don’t like very much. Those words are ‘judgment’ and ‘wrath’.
The first thing I want to say is that Judgment is a demonstration of God’s love for God’s world.
We often make a contrast between God’s wrath and God’s love. I think that is false. In his love, God’s deepest desire is that all of us may receive the rich blessing that comes from knowing and serving him, the rich blessing that comes from being more like Christ.
God’s wrath is the reaction of God’s love to those things which prevent people from receiving that rich blessing, from living in peace and shalom with God and with neighbours. And God wants all to know that peace and that shalom. He wants them to know it now and in eternity. In his judgment God will exclude things from eternity which will prevent that peace and shalom.
The Croatian theologian Miraslav Volf wrote that he
used to think that wrath was unworthy of God. Isn’t God love? Shouldn’t divine love be beyond wrath?
After his experience of the atrocities of the Balkan conflicts of the nineties he realised that he would rebel against a God who wasn’t wrathful at the sight of the world’s evil. God isn’t wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.[1]
Let’s think about Zacchaeus in our Gospel passage from Luke. How did Jesus bring salvation to a tax collector like Zacchaeus?
Well, firstly by Zacchaeus putting things right with those he had robbed. His salvation involved justice. Because God loves people he hates them being robbed, so that must be put right. But he also loves Zacchaeus, so Zacchaeus’ salvation involved the mercy of his relationships with God and with his neighbours being restored.
So let’s look again at this idea of forgiveness. Why can’t God just forgive? Well, nobody ‘just’ forgives. If you have ever been in the place of forgiving something serious you will echo the words of Paul Fiddes
Forgiveness is no mere business, it is a ‘shattering experience’ for the one who forgives as well as for the one who is forgiven. This is because forgiveness, unlike a mere pardon, seeks to win the offender back into relationship.
Forgiveness is not the same thing as sweeping under the carpet. Justice requires that sin is recognised for what it is; forgiveness is not possible unless sin is recognised as sin. Real forgiveness aims at reconciliation, at relationships being restored. For there to be real reconciliation, justice and mercy BOTH have to be demonstrated.
This is the principle behind the bringing together of offender and victim in restorative justice; the offender needs to understand the impact of the offence upon the victim; the victim needs to see that the offender has understood this and really repented of it before there can be real forgiveness. (About the only sign of hope from the trial of the Austrian man accused of those awful things against his own daughter was that he changed his plea after seeing her testimony – perhaps he had begun to grasp the wickedness of what he had done).
This is what is happening on the cross. At the cross the effects of our sin and evil are demonstrated, as Christ bears the consequences of human sin. There are two possible ways of thinking about this, both I believe faithful to scripture. One is that on the cross Jesus received the punishment for sin that should have been ours. A slightly different view is that God’s wrath includes allowing the consequences of sin to happen and effectively being the punishment for sin. God bears the consequences of our sin.
Either way, the cross demonstrates that sin matters to God profoundly; the cross demonstrates that we live in a universe where justice really matters and not one where sin can just be ignored. True forgiveness requires that wrongdoing is recognised as wrongdoing.
But the cross also demonstrates that by bearing the consequences of human sin, God freely gives love., compassion and mercy to human sinners. As a result of the cross we are set free from the consequences of our sin which God in Christ has overcome, thereby reconciling the world to himself.
The cross is a place where justice and mercy meet – or better, it shows that true justice involves mercy, because the aim of true justice is to put things right.
This model of the cross can speak to us in several ways.
Firstly, it shows us that forgiveness is possible – both for us and by us. More of that next week.
Secondly, it shows us the consequences of human sin, including our own. At the cross we see cruelty, indifference, callousness, disloyalty, lack of love, lack of regard for the well-being of others. We see the system sacrificing an innocent man for the sake of preserving the system. And we see God’s ‘No’ to human sin. The cross brings us as offenders to see the consequences of our sin. It calls us to repentance.
But second, the cross helps us to see God’s willingness to forgive, and to receive his forgiveness. Forgiveness is in a sense not complete until it is accepted. The goal of forgiveness is restored relationships. The goal of the cross is that we should be reconciled to God and one another, that we should again enjoy a loving relationship with God.
In many ways the cross is like that advert in the Spanish paper - through it God says to us Hey Paco, meet me in town, all is forgiven. Papa.
Let’s be there to meet him.
[1] Miroslav Volf Free of Charge (Zondervan 2005) pp 138-139