Who would want justice, when they can have mercy?

There is a great deal of talk today about the need for justice in our society. Crime is growing. Unsolved cases stack up on police records filing tables. In most major cities, people are afraid to go outside during the day let alone at night. Everywhere we turn we find people crying out for justice. And why shouldn’t they? After all, with what we’ve been through, any experience in which another person steals from you, harms you, or violates your person in any way, can impact you for years. All the prisons, however, and all the jails will not change the heart of a criminal; except to make it harder for him to be loving. Gang bangers, housewives, school kids, dads, everyone of us needs to be under the justice of the kingdom. For there, justice delights in mercy.

In God, there is another kind of justice. It is the justice best expressed in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Lately I have been overwhelmed by images and thoughts of what He went through for me and what that means to my relationship with Him. There is no doubt. I have broken God's law over and over again. No matter how hard I have tried, I have always failed. It just is not in me to do good. When I think I am doing good, my ego will rise up and I will destroy any goodness that might have come forth from the effort on my part. This is a condition shared by all of us. We are all bent and broken; twisted, and unable to see the truth. When Paul looked at this in his own heart, he cried out “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” But he did not stop there. He went on to say, with abundant passion: “But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. I thank God -- through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.”

I don’t mean to be on some kind of a guilt trip, but the truth is truth. Without a Savior, we are all destined to eternal punishment. Nothing else will serve justice. Nothing else would be fair. Nothing else would satisfy the holiness and righteousness of God. God knew this from the beginning. He was not surprised my sin. He had a plan. It was a plan that only he could carry out. This righteous sacrifice of a holy Man in place of you and me was carried out upon Jesus without mercy.

It was done that way to satisfy the wrath of God and to give Jesus the opportunity to extend to us the mercy He had not received. And that is just what He does. When we come to Him, and admit we are unable to do good, He gives us His mercy. When we stop justifying our wrong behavior as if it was okay, He reaches out a hand of grace. With all the stuff I’ve done wrong, and all the stuff I will probably do wrong, my only comfort is that I do not have to experience justice. Instead, I can have mercy.