After a few days of sickness & a lost voice, Brett responds to last Thursday’s challenge:
Challenge Response: The Crucifixion is Immoral
Posted: December 19, 2011 by Brett Kunkle in Jesus Changes Everything, Weekly ChallengeComments
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She can’t pay her debt????? You should’ve punched her! LOL
Something I was thinking as Brett was giving his response that God paid the debt we owe, is that If the debt was owed to God, then God would not need to pay that debt, but only forgive the debt. I’d be interested to hear some thoughts on why this would not be the case.
Seth, He couldn’t just forgive it because it’s a moral debt rather than a monetary debt, and in the case of moral debt, God’s righteousness and justice are at stake. To sweep sin under the rug without expressing His wrath against it would be to compromise His nature. This is why the cross is such an amazing solution! God didn’t have to compromise His justice while expressing His mercy. I was just thinking abut Les Miserables (if you’re familiar with the story…spoilers ahead). In the end, Javert could feel the pull of the beauty and goodness of grace, so he gave in to it by letting Valjean go, but since he saw this as a compromise of justice, he couldn’t handle it and was driven to suicide. Amazingly, God harmonized justice with grace and mercy on the cross so that neither was compromised. It’s beyond brilliant!
I just can’t meditate on Romans 3:20-26 (which ends with “so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus”) enough. Those verses are the pinnacle of the whole Bible. If you pay attention to stories, you’ll see that authors (and screenwriters) are constantly struggling with the justice vs. grace question, and they usually end up compromising on one or the other. I find God’s solution not only beautiful in its love and goodness, but also beautiful in the sense I find an amazingly strategic game of chess to be beautiful. It’s just beyond amazing to me.
A reason for God not to forgive immorality, without repentance, is because he wants to ensure that our hearts have changed and we don’t continue on the same path. God is serious about dealing with sin. He doesn’t want to sweep it under the rug, not really deal with it. Faith in Jesus is important because of what it produces in us, but this is a gift from God – the result of His efforts toward us. God’s nature is to have mercy, even in the form of sternness since it many times is what brings us to our senses. God’s grace and justice are one, not in opposition to each other. His justice is to see things restored, made right – our repentance and life. God is pleased to give us his Son for this reason, not because he takes pleasure in what evil men will do to Him. To think God is able to forgive, finds some kind of satisfaction, in beating his son comprises His nature, which is love. God’s wrath is only appeased as we are repentant, place our faith in Him. If not, we get wrath – to turn us. A righteous God that desires justice (for us to be made right/our hearts addressed) wouldn’t have it any other way. The idea that God’s justice is content in brutality is unfathomable to me. God doesn’t cast men off forever and His purpose is to have mercy on all Romans 11:32.
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