Love And Justice

By Hugh Deadwyler

I know, first hand, the love of God. When I was homeless, helpless and had no one, He took care of me. I committed myself to God and I learned that there is more to having a relationship with God than just harvesting the bounty of His grace. With that comes the rules, prohibitions, and proscribed ways of living. We of a Judeo-Christian background know the Ten Commandments as well as Jesus’ words to, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

And certainly, there is God’s redemptive power of forgiveness, but the stain of sin, whether practiced casually or in a premeditated way, is an extremely serious violation.

Jesus is not a lamb-carrying pushover that forgives all, indefinitely. He will not be mocked by tolerating ongoing rule-breaking punctuated by only lip-services requests for forgiveness. I don’t believe He plays a sin/repentance game.

I was once in a congregation whose pastoral orientation was: “Love and Grace trump everything.” But I don’t believe God is that simplistic. The Bible is a rulebook as well as a guidebook. Jesus said: “I am not come to destroy The Law, but to fulfill it.”

God’s love and judgment are like two separate wings of an airplane. It takes an appreciation of both to make our personal redemption “fly.”

Several years ago I was hospitalized at the VA. I met a fellow patient, he was friendly, and we talked. He wore a big gold cross on his chest as he told me about his life. He said several times: “Jesus is a forgiving man.”

This is true. But if this individual had stopped, and repented, during the probably several-hundred times he had abused himself with drugs and alcohol, he wouldn’t have been sitting in the psychiatric ward with me, ruined in both mind and body. He talked the talk, but he didn’t walk the walk.

I believe God expects a good faith effort to live in compliance with his law. We have the responsibility to give grace a chance by obeying the rules. “Behold therefore the goodness, and severity, of God.” Romans 11:22

Hugh Deadwyler writes from Salisbury, North Carolina.