Job 37:23 Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out: he is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice… Perhaps the foremost characteristic of God that men are tempted to disparage is His justice. They do not relish that which is opposed to their enjoyment, and to the successful issue of their purposes. And as they have a sense of guilt, and cannot fail to see that their conduct brings them into conflict with the Almighty, since He must be offended with the violation of His law, they first wish that He were not the righteous Being that He is, and then they deny Him this essential quality. By so weak a process is it they create a God to their liking. 1. Justice ranks high from its own inherent character. In the old mythology of Greece the Goddess of Justice sat by the side of Jupiter. In all lands the tribunals of justice are next the altars of religion. When men would ask for that which they prize the most among their fellow men, they ask for justice. When the Athenians would most honour Aristides, they called him "the just." Justice is the parent of many virtues. The moral sense of every man pronounces the excellence of this noblest virtue. It is excellent in God. It gives a sense of security and repose that our God is a God of justice. 2. Justice is an attribute essential to the complete revelation of God. This quality some men deny in God; if they do not deny it, they degrade it. The first excellence in a judge is that he be just. God administers His government with no respect of persons, and with an undeviating regard to the principles of equity. 3. Justice guards the manifold interests of the Divine empire. Justice to each and all is the result of only the choicest wisdom. No neglect, or partiality, or injustice, can be charged against Him. 4. Justice ministers to the greatest happiness of God's subjects. This sense of the Divine justice gives solace in the trials of the world. 5. Justice admits the exercise of mercy. Biblical theology allows no rivalry between these two cardinal attributes of God. God has devised an atonement of such a character that, on the one hand, the majesty and sanctity of His law are vindicated, and on the other hand, a full pardon can be granted to sinners who embrace this Divine provision. That which it would not be safe to do in civil society, it is safe to do under this Divine plan for human redemption. 6. Justice demands the punishment of the guilty. Under the economy of grace it demands the punishment of the finally impenitent. It is a strange infatuation that has seized some minds, sensible on every other subject, that there is to be no suitable punishment of sin hereafter. They claim that God is too good to inflict merited penalty; that the doctrine of eternal punishment is a censure upon His fatherhood; that hell has no place under the Divine administration. But sin is here, and suffering is here. Sin causes suffering now, and the penalties of wrong-doing are before our eyes everywhere. The hardest problem is not to account for hell and future punishment, but it is to account for sin and suffering at all. Under the government of a supremely good and powerful God, why is there sin and its necessary woe? We know that sin is. We know that dreadful penalty is. If sin shall go into the future life, if it shall wax great and strong there, if it shall forever lift its defiance against the eternal throne, it will bear — it must bear — its eternal penalty. It is not the eternity of sin, nor the eternity of punishment, which challenges our belief, it is not the duration of them, but the existence of them. Of their existence we know. If, then, endless sinning continues, endless punishment should. God is just. He has issued a just law, harmonious with His own character, as an authoritative guide to men. Inasmuch as they have all broken this law, He has graciously devised, if we may say so, a plan of salvation, by which they can be pardoned and justified, while yet the law is sustained. Now, if they reject this plan, if they will not be saved through Christ, if they prefer to stand on the old basis of the law, it only remains that judgment shall be given by the law. It demands perfect obedience. It imposes death as the penalty of sin. The law, with its announced penalty, God, as a just God, must sustain. The unbeliever in Christ, must, therefore, meet the penalty. There is no recourse. Divine justice demands the punishment of the guilty. It will inflict upon no one more than he deserves. (Burdett Hart, D. D.). Parallel Verses KJV: Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out: he is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice: he will not afflict. |
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