Where Justice and Mercy Meet
“God’s law can diagnose your problem, but it can’t repair it. It’s like a thermometer. It can measure the spiritual temperature of your heart, but it’s not a thermostat. It can’t adjust that temperature.” – Tony Walliser
Read Romans 3:21-26
Where Justice and Mercy Meet
How do you think people would describe you? A nice guy? A pretty good person? A good Christian man? But what do they mean by “good?” Because if we’re honest, not one of us is good 100% of the time. We do things, say things, think things we wouldn’t want anyone to know about us. Things we definitely wouldn’t want reported on the evening news.
And yet, God knows. As Hebrews 4:13 informs us, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.”
The Scriptures tell us that no matter how hard we try, we can never be good enough to meet the Lord’s perfect standard. The book of Romans is especially convicting. We read passages like Romans 3:10-12, “There is no one righteous, not even one…. There is no one who does good, not even one.” Or Romans 3:23, which declares, “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
There’s a version of the New Testament that’s called Good News for Modern Man, but when we read verses like the ones above, it sounds like bad news, doesn’t it?
Maybe something inside wants to offer a defense: “I’m not a bad guy, really. Sure, I’m not perfect – but who is? I do lots of good things!”
Most of us could say much the same, but God’s standard isn’t “good enough.” His standard is simple: Perfection. And there’s only one person who ever lived the perfect life – the Lord Jesus Christ.
Think about it this way: Have you ever seen the Grand Canyon? If you have, you know it’s a wonder that truly deserves the description, “Awesome.” It’s 11 miles across, 1 mile deep, and about 100 miles long. The first time I saw it my jaw literally dropped.
Well, imagine this. You’re at the rim of the Grand Canyon and a stranger comes up to you and says, “I’ll give you $1 million if you can jump across the Grand Canyon.” When he sees your look of astonishment he says, “Okay, I know it’s not easy. I’ll give you $10 million if you can jump across it.”
You think to yourself, “Buddy, I don’t care if you offered me all the gold in Fort Knox. There’s no way I could jump across this canyon. No one could. I might as well start flapping my arms and try flying to the moon.”
As crazy a scenario as that seems, it illustrates the futility of trying to be good enough to earn God’s acceptance. It can’t be done. That’s the bad news.
However, there’s good news – the Good News. Even though we could never be good enough to deserve God’s divine favor, Jesus Christ accomplished what we couldn’t when He went to the cross and died on our behalf. When we receive Him as Savior and Lord, what Jesus described as being “born again” (John 3:3), His righteousness is imputed to us.
Other verses in Romans 3 explain this: “The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe…” (Romans 3:22). “They are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24).
This doesn’t mean that since Jesus willingly died on the cross, God looks the other way and ignores our sins. Not at all. Through His death, Jesus became the atonement for us. As someone has expressed it, “He took the rap for us.” The penalty we rightly deserved and should have experienced, Jesus paid on our behalf.
How can this be? It’s because of God’s mercy and grace. Mercy, we could say, is not receiving what we do deserve. Grace, on the other hand, is receiving what we don’t deserve. Romans 3:25-26 assures us, “God presented [Christ] as a sacrifice of atonement…He did it to demonstrate His justice at the present time, so as to be just and the One who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”
There was a price to be paid for our sins, a price we could never begin to pay. But because of Jesus’ “sacrifice of atonement,” that price has been paid once and for all. The only thing we have to do – the only thing we can do – is receive it by faith in Him.
Through Christ, the great chasm infinitely wider than the Grand Canyon that separated us from God has been bridged. As a result, we can have and enjoy direct access to God and fellowship with Him, both now and forever.