We like to think of God as some kind of Father Christmas character in the sky. We like to hear about His love and mercy, but the idea of a God who hates sin and will judge us for doing wrong is not very popular. We reverse things — instead of seeing ourselves in God’s image, we prefer to create God in our image. We read verses that tell us “God is love” and apply our own definition of love. We come up with a God who doesn’t judge sin, who doesn’t care all that much what we do as long as we don’t hurt anybody and don’t do anything too bad. We invent a God who wants a relationship with us on our terms. This is not the God of Exodus 34. The God of Exodus 34 hates sin.
We may wonder, how can a God who is love hate anything? The answer is that because God is love, therefore He must hate. If you love life, you must hate murder, for murder destroys life. So also God must hate evil because He loves good, and evil destroys good. And God must punish sin. If God allowed evil to go unpunished, He would not be holy. Sin is the very contradiction of His nature.
God owes us nothing. He made us, and we rebelled against Him. If He were to send us all to an eternity in hell, nobody could accuse Him of injustice.
But God is also merciful. Proverbs 16:6 tells us that iniquity is purged by “mercy and truth”. Mercy without justice is not truth. Mercy without justice is to tell the lie that sin doesn’t matter. Only when there is truth as well as mercy can we be cleansed from our sin.
God’s justice demands that sin be punished. God’s mercy allows a substitute to take our place, to pay the penalty we deserved. And God’s love provided His Son as our Substitute. When Christ died on the cross, a legal transaction took place where He took our sins and gave us His righteousness. The Son of God bore the wrath of the Father’s justice in our place. Because of His work on the cross, His righteousness is placed on our account. When God looks at us, He sees, not our sin, but the perfect righteousness of Christ.
Mercy and justice.
It all comes together at a hill called Calvary.