God As Judge

A repost of an old post.

Because of his righteousness (see last week’s attributes of God post), all of God’s thoughts and actions are morally perfect. One of the righteous ways he acts is as the perfect Judge of all things.

God stands in judgment over everything, discerning the exact truth about every thought and action of all of his creatures, impartially pronouncing and executing his judgments (Romans 2:6-11). In our legal systems, those who make the laws, those who sentence lawbreakers, and those who execute the sentences are separate. In God’s rule, however, those three functions are all carried out by God himself as the one and only righteous Judge of all the earth.

First of all, God is the one who has set the moral standards and declared them to us. They are called his precepts, his laws, his commandments, his statutes, his judgments—there are probably more terms I’ve forgotten—and he reveals them to us in scripture. And even those who’ve had no exposure to God’s word know instinctively what sorts of behaviour a righteous judge would require of us, because God’s righteous standards for human behaviour are written on their hearts and in their consciences (Romans 2:15).

God’s standard of righteousness is not arbitrary, but rather, it is the perfect reflections of God’s own holy character. He is morally perfect, and his standard for us demands that we “be holy as he is holy”—that we not fall short of his glory. We can’t complain that this standard is an unjust one, for its source is in the only perfect justice there is: the justice of God.

Secondly, God is the one who determines the just sentences for those who don’t live up to the standard of righteousness He has declared. He is the only one suited for this job. He has the wisdom to discern the truth in every situation of lawbreaking, and he knows a lie when he hears it and a cover-up when he sees it. He sees not only the actions taken, but the motives behind the actions. Everything stands in the open before his wisdom and his truth. And he loves what is good and hates wickedness, so he has a vested interest in seeing right win out over wrong. He can be counted on, then, to never overlook wrongdoing; he will always pass the perfectly deserved (and therefore perfectly just) sentence for all lawbreaking.

Lastly, as the righteous Judge, God is the one who executes the sentences. He is perfectly suited for this role as well, for he has the wisdom and might to enforce all of his judgments. There is no one with the wits or power to escape the sentence for breaking the moral standards set by God.

This brings us to one aspect of God’s activity as Judge that we probably prefer not to think about—the outpouring of God’s wrath. God’s wrath will be expressed against sin and sinners as the execution of the righteous sentence for all unrighteousness.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (Romans 1:18 ESV)

Those who love God will want to know all facets of him, even the less comfortable ones, like his just wrath. His wrath is part of what makes him the absolutely holy God that he is; it is one of his perfections. If God had no wrath against sin, he wouldn’t be true to his morally perfect (or righteous) character.

And deep down, we all know that. We wouldn’t much like a God who simply overlooked the cruelty of heinous villians—of murderers and rapists and terrorists. We want God to express his wrath against what we feel is true, unequivocal evil, because we know that real justice requires it. What we have more trouble with is God expressing his wrath against the more ordinary sorts of lawbreaking like our own and that of people like us. It’s easy for us to see that history’s more evil men deserve God’s wrath for their moral imperfection, but scripture tells us that when it comes to what God requires of us—and remember, he can rightly require no less than that we be “holy as he is holy!”—we all fall on the wrong side of the line. We all fall far short of his righteous requirement; by our very nature, we are “objects of God’s wrath.” Some are more abominable than others, and a just God will take this into account, but we are all rightly placed in the cubbyhole labeled “evildoers”. What we deserve—the just payment or wages—for being the kind of people we are is to be on the receiving end of the expression of God’s righteous wrath against sin.

Even when God mercifully spares some from the execution of his just sentence for lawbreaking, he must do it in a just way. His morally perfect character places certain parameters around the way he can pardon us. He can’t overlook sin without a righteous ground upon which that can be done. This is what Christ’s death is all about. It is God’s righteous way of pardoning sinners. He displayed Christ publicly as a propitiation (a way to turn away God’s wrath)

to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.  It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3: 25, 26)

Christ’s propitiatory (or wrath appeasing) death proves before all eyes that God is righteous, because even his mercy upon sinners—his forgiveness of sins—is extended in a way that is in accordance with his righteousness. He justifies the faithful in a just way.

What does it mean to us that our God is a perfectly just judge and that he has just wrath against our sin? For one, it shows us the abhorrent nature of our unrighteousness. That the wrath of the only morally perfect One is called out as the correct—and only correct—response to what we might prefer to excuse as petty mistakes or small crimes of little consequence ought to help us see those sins in a their true light. That the one who know and sees it all as it is judges us as deserving of his terrible wrath ought to stop our excuse making mouths and cause us to cry out for his mercy.

Knowing that God has judged our sins as worthy of the outpouring of his wrath should make those of us who have experienced his mercy extremely grateful. We have been spared something utterly deserved, and the mercy that spared us wasn’t an easy mercy, for it required the death of his own Son in order for him to be justly merciful to us. It was costly and he spared no cost. In return, we are called to

serve the living and true God,
and …. wait for his Son from heaven,
whom he raised from the dead,
Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.
(1 Thessalonians 1:9,10 ESV)