A Loving God Who Judges

If God is loving, why does He get angry? Why does He destroy people? Many who read the Law ask it. Moses says that God keeps “his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments”. In the same breath he says that “those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction” (Deuteronomy 7:9–10). Christians ask it as well. Many have been taught that a loving God should forgive everything. To answer the question, we need to redefine love.

Love Redefined

Love is not accepting everything. If I love a group of people, I will not allow anyone within the group to harm someone else within it. If I allow one of them to do so because I love him, I do not love the others.

Take a simple example. There are two children in a family, and you are a loving parent to both. One child is beating the other and making him bleed. Will you not step in? Will you not say, “What you are doing is wrong”? And you will not stop at saying it. You will make the child understand that it is wrong, and you will punish him for what he did. You still love that child. But you will not allow one child of yours to kill another child of yours. That is what love is.

So I define love this way: love sees to it that everyone it loves is safeguarded and protected.† If one person is taken for granted by another, love does not allow it. It does not let it slide.

God loves everyone He created, and there is no one in existence whom He did not create. Would He allow someone He created to destroy someone else He created? If He did, would that be love? It would not. God Himself says that when the widow and the fatherless are mistreated and cry out to Him, He will hear their cry and His anger will be aroused (Exodus 22:22–24). He “defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow” (Deuteronomy 10:18). It would mean that He was partial, that He favoured wickedness, that He was evil Himself, because only the evil side with evil. A parent who has the power to stop one child from making the other bleed, and does not step in, is as villainous as the violent child, or even more villainous. If God allowed us to kill each other and treated it as a sport, He would not be God. He would not be good. He would not be loving. He would be a sick person, enjoying all the pain without lifting a finger.

To think that because God is loving He cannot be angry is a logical fallacy. It does not hold water. If He is loving, He should be angry, and He should judge. He does not judge because He wants to. He has to judge, because if He did not, He would not be loving everyone. That is not love for people; it is love for wickedness. A God who says, “It is all right for you to be wicked; I will let it pass,” is not loving at all. The God who revealed Himself to Moses as “compassionate and gracious” said in the same breath that He “does not leave the guilty unpunished” (Exodus 34:6–7).

Because of His Grace, He Judges

I often say it: because of His grace, God judges. If He were not gracious to us, if He did not love us, He would not judge anyone. He would let us kill each other. God’s justice comes from God’s love.

The grace of God and the justice of God can never be separated. If God is gracious to people, He has to be just. If He did not punish the wicked, He would allow victimisation to go on, and He would be siding with the perpetrator, not with the victim. “I will not acquit the guilty,” He says (Exodus 23:7). God’s goodness is His doing everything for the benefit of His creation,† and His justice is His judging whoever disrupts its joy for selfish reasons.† Because He is good, He has to be just.

Yet today many people stand against justice, against any law and any order. That is antinomianism: standing against law. It has spread through society and through Christianity. “That is all law,” people say; “that is all order. Today it is all about the grace of God.” Jesus said the opposite. He had not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. Anyone who sets aside the least of the commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:17–19).

We also need to be careful how we define grace. It is usually defined as unmerited favour: something done for a person who does not deserve it. But grace does not work quite that way. There is one thing God always looks for. To the repentant person God is gracious. To the defiant person He is not gracious at all. Neither of them merited His favour, and neither deserved His mercy. Yet God is merciful to the one because of that one thing: repentance rather than defiance.† “Let the wicked forsake their ways,” says the Lord through Isaiah, “and he will have mercy on them” (Isaiah 55:7). Through Ezekiel He says that if the wicked turn from their sins and keep His decrees, none of their offences will be remembered against them. But the one who turns from righteousness to do evil will die for it (Ezekiel 18:21–24). “Repent and live!” (Ezekiel 18:30–32). Jesus said the same: “unless you repent, you too will all perish” (Luke 13:3). Grace does not mean that God will give chances over and over again to someone who will never change.

Yet God is gracious, and to those willing to change He gives chances over and over again. We do not deserve to be united with Him, and we are not perfect at all, yet He has given us a way to be united with Him. That way is not hard to follow. It may be swimming against the current, but it is not impossible. Put a curb on your selfishness and try to be as other-centred as you can. God does not expect us to be completely righteous at once. He wants us to be on the track, saying, “I want to be righteous; I am trying to be righteous,” and He says, “You are already united with Me.” That is grace.

Judgement is for those who reject grace. The choice is given, and it is not hard to take, but some say, “I don’t want it at all.” Such people are wicked to the core. They are defiantly wicked, proud of their wickedness, and there is no way they will change, because they have refused the very choice that was given to them. They have to be judged, or others will be victimised.

The difference between remorse and rebellion makes this clear. Suppose I hit a person by accident and cause him grievous harm. My remorse does not excuse me. I take responsibility: I take him to hospital and pay for the harm I have done. Remorse always leads to restitution. In rebellion there is no remorse and no restitution. The rebel says, “Yes, I hit you. I harmed you. I made you bleed. Why should I apologise?” Such a person is wicked, and God will not allow him to go on being wicked, because of how many other people and nations he will destroy.

Those who hate God are saying, in effect, “We reject You, because we do not want to treat other people as equals, or gently and kindly. We want to exploit them.” So God stands against anyone who destroys others. They have chosen it, and He has to step in and be the judge.

Why Punish? Two Purposes

Why does a wicked person have to be punished? Can we not just leave him be? We cannot, because wickedness always creates victims. There is no victimless sin. Sin is anything selfish that harms, or has the potential to harm, human beings in particular and God’s creation in general,† so whatever creates victims is sin. If we call something sin that creates no victims, we have called something sin that is not sin. A wicked nation will always create more victims. Punishment has two purposes.

The first is moral and practical: to stop the wicked in their tracks, so that no more victims are created. God has concern for all people and does not want them to fall victim to a perpetrator. That comes from His love. Justice means that the criminal, the perpetrator, pays the price for what he has done. He has done something serious, destroying many people’s lives, and he has to pay for it.

The second is didactic, that is, it teaches. When a rebellious nation is punished, it becomes an example, and others think twice before they rebel against the Law of God and become wicked. Two things deter us from wickedness. One is a natural inclination: those who follow the Law of God have their minds already conditioned, and they say, “I am not going to do this evil thing, because it creates victims.” The other is imposed from outside: people know they will be punished if they do it. Punishment does both. It stops the wicked, and it warns those who are on the way to becoming wicked. That is why the Law says of the one who leads others to idolatry and wickedness, “Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again” (Deuteronomy 13:11; see also 17:13; 19:20).

Sometimes God judged directly, with no human agency involved, as when He rained down burning sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:24). When Israel was involved, there was always human agency. God made the Israelites the instruments of His justice on the unrepentant nations of Canaan. That was not a vicarious lesson, heard second-hand. It was a real lesson, learnt first-hand: if Israel became an unrepentant, wicked nation like them, another nation would be the instrument of God’s justice on Israel. God warned them of it beforehand (Deuteronomy 8:19–20; 28:49–52). And that is what happened, through the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans.

Does that contradict “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13)? No. Murder creates victims. God says, “I will not allow that.” Judgement punishes those who create victims and will not repent. When God tells Israel, “show them no mercy” (Deuteronomy 7:2), He is speaking of unrepentant wicked nations: no remorse, no repentance, no restitution. It was “on account of the wickedness of these nations” that they were driven out (Deuteronomy 9:5). We must always qualify it that way. Punishing such a nation is not wrong. It is justice. The two are not contradictory.

Think of a serial killer who has murdered dozens of women and says he has no regret at all. What do we do with such a person? Are we to be loving and say, “I forgive you; now you can live freely in society”? What about the people who suffered at his hands? If there is remorse, repentance and restitution, then by the grace of God even such a person can become a child of God and part of the Kingdom. But someone who says, “I have no regret at all. I am going to exploit people. What is wrong with making victims?” deserves to be punished, and there is nothing wrong with punishing him.

God does not have to apologise for being just. Let that sink in. Justice is good: “all his ways are just” (Deuteronomy 32:4). Why should He apologise for it, or feel bad about it, as though He had said, “In My anger I wanted to punish you, and now in My love I don’t want to”? That would mean two contradictory things were going on in the heart of God. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked; He would rather they turned from their ways and lived (Ezekiel 33:11). Those who are judged are those who refuse to turn. Judgement has not been passed on people who do not deserve it. They deserve it, because there is no remorse, no repentance and no restitution.

What about us? We do not take the law into our own hands. Israel was a nation governed by the people under the constitution God had given them; God made the law, and the people rewarded and punished according to it. We live under a different system. But we still have to say what is right and what is wrong. If a person is unrepentant, we have to call him wicked and call him back to repentance. If he does not repent, we still have to say, “You will be judged, because what you are doing is not right.”

A Makeshift Solution?

All this bears on how we understand salvation. Ask why Jesus came into the world and died, and the popular answer goes like this. God is loving and God is just. Because He loves us, He wants to forgive; because He is just, He has to punish. He has already passed judgement on us for our wickedness. Then, instead of our being punished, He comes and takes the punishment on Himself. I really have no idea where we picked this up. Definitely not from the teachings of Jesus. Did Jesus ever speak about it that way?

It treats love and justice as two distinct things, even contrary things, so that God has to come up with a trick to make them work together. People in India call that kind of trick jugaad, a Hindi word for a makeshift solution. When a road floods, a motorcyclist knows that water will get into his exhaust and stall the engine. So he fixes a PVC pipe to the silencer, high enough to stay above the water, and rides through. It is not a great idea, but it helps at that moment. That is how we picture God: He wanted to punish us because He is just, and then, at the right moment, He came up with a makeshift idea. God does not do that.

And where is justice in it? A God who says, “It is all right for you to be wicked; I will pay the price for your wickedness,” is not just.

Some people love to say that the biblical God authorised genocide when He told Israel to destroy the nations of Canaan. When they say it, we get very angry, because they are slinging mud at our faith. But when we talk about salvation, we use the same faulty picture ourselves. We committed crimes and sins. God gave us the punishment because He is just. Then, because He is so loving, He took the punishment on Himself. There too we are not portraying Him rightly. So we should be very careful not to use this analogy any more. It is an analogy found in the writings of Paul and of other writers of the Epistles, who used such pictures to help particular people understand particular things. Neither the Law nor Jesus teaches it.

How did it become the doctrine of salvation in so much of Christianity? We take a structure from here and there and flesh it out, and we create something. I call that a biblical Frankenstein’s monster.* In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein is not the monster; Frankenstein is the man who built the monster, out of the body parts of different dead people, and then gave it life. Our theology should never be built that way: a great deal taken from Paul out of context, some from Peter, James and John, all put together and called the truth. We love Paul so much that it is as if Jesus were not God, not the Saviour, not the Redeemer, and Paul were our saviour instead. I say that sarcastically. What a sad state of affairs.

The way to be united with God is not a trick. God is just, and He stands against all victimisation. Anyone who wants to be united with Him goes through repentance and restitution. There is remorse: “I have done something wrong. I should not have done it.” There is repentance: I ask forgiveness from God and from the people I have victimised. And there is restitution: “How can I make up for what I have done?” When Zacchaeus promised to pay back four times what he had cheated, Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:8–9). Some things cannot be made up for; where they can, we must make them up, or there is no repentance at all. Then, by the grace of God, He unites us with Himself. However far a person has fallen, he can still have that relationship with God, if there is remorse and repentance. To set aside God’s justice in the guise of His love is to go against Him.

Forgiveness and Justice

Today we are told constantly that God is gracious and that we must be forgiving and understanding. Forgiveness has its place. But forgiveness and justice are two different things, and we should never confuse the one with the other. Forgiveness is personal. Justice deals with the consequences of what people have done. Both have to happen together. And forgiveness is not for everyone: it is only for the repentant. Even when someone repents, that does not mean he can evade the consequences.

Jesus Himself was compassionate, loving and forgiving, but He forgave only those who repented (Luke 7:47–50; 15:7). He did not forgive everyone, and He did not forgive those who intentionally distorted who God is. He stood against the religious leaders who were intentionally distorting God and His teachings from the beginning of His ministry until He was put on the cross (Mark 7:6–13; Matthew 23:13–36). There was no change in Him in how He dealt with people.

What about forgiving someone who sins against you seven times in a day, or “seventy times seven”, or seventy-seven times as the NIV translates it (Luke 17:3–4; Matthew 18:21–22)? Jesus often used hyperbole, and we should read His teachings on His own terms. We should not count to 490. He means that where repentance is genuine, you forgive. And Luke records the condition plainly: “if they repent, forgive them” (Luke 17:3).

When Peter asked how many times he should forgive, Jesus answered with a parable (Matthew 18:21–35). A servant owed his master a vast sum and was not able to pay it. He fell on his knees and begged, “Be patient with me, and I will pay back everything” (Matthew 18:26), and the master took pity on him and cancelled the debt. The same servant then found a fellow servant who owed him a small sum, and who begged him in the same words; he refused and had him thrown into prison until he could pay. The master called him wicked and handed him over to be punished. The man who was forgiven wanted to pay but could not. Jesus is teaching us to forgive people who cannot pay back what they owe because they are unable to, not because they refuse to. Forgiveness is for the one who wants to make things right; it is not a licence for the one who has no intention of doing so.

There is no point in saying “I forgive you” to people who never repent, who will never learn, and who will go on hurting and harming. Saying sorry should mean that a person is actually sorry and realises what he has done. Would a repentant person hurt you again? Possibly; we are human. But would he hurt you in the same way again and again? Suppose someone treads on your foot and says sorry, and you say, “That’s all right; I forgive you.” Then he treads on it again and says sorry, and a third time. Either he is very clumsy or he is very crafty. Is he really repentant? He does not seem to care about hurting you.

“Grace, Grace, Grace”

Two groups of people today get God wrong in the same way, though they arrive at opposite conclusions.

The first group stands outside the faith and claims to know better than God. Its argument runs like this. A good and loving God would not allow evil and suffering. Evil and suffering exist. So either God does not exist, or He exists and is sadistic, letting people suffer without stepping in, and we should do away with Him. Friedrich Nietzsche declared in 1882 that “God is dead”, and in the 1960s some theologians took up the phrase in what was called the “death of God” movement. Even if He exists, they said, we do not want Him.

The second group is within Christianity. It talks about the grace of God, the grace of God, the grace of God. Since the Reformation in the sixteenth century, we have been beating the same drum: grace, grace, grace. There is nothing wrong with speaking of the grace of God. We are eternally grateful for it. But the argument often goes like this: a gracious God would not punish anyone; God is gracious; so He will never judge.

The connection is this. Both groups decide for themselves what a good God should and should not do, and both leave His justice out of the picture. The first says that a good God should not allow evil. Because evil exists, it rejects God. It does not see that God does step in against evil: He judges it. The second says that a gracious God should not allow punishment. So it keeps a God who never steps in against evil at all.

The distinction is where they end up. The first group does away with God, because He seems not to act against evil. The second keeps God but forbids Him to act against evil, and so does away with His judgement. The answer to both is the same. God does not allow evil to go on for ever, and He does step in: He judges. Because of the love of God and the grace of God, we have the punishment of God. He cannot allow one group of people to go on victimising another, because then He would be standing with the exploiters and not with the victims, and He would not be just at all. A loving God is a God who judges.