You hear a lot about God's love. That makes sense: it is unfathomably deep and extravagant and glorious. You also hear of God's justice. This, too, is for many good reasons: not only is God's justice a central theme of the entire Bible, it is something we all long for today. Or do we? Sometimes God's justice seems so hard, given how often we mess up. Have you ever thought of how God's love and God's justice are related?
I realized today that God's love is made perfect by his justice. This is nothing new, I just thought it was worth thinking about again. If God was not a just God, he would not have had to find a way to allow us, who wrong Him continually, to know and love Him. If he had not needed to find a way for us (who were helpless to find it on our own, not even wanting to find that way!) to come to him, he would not have been able to reveal to us the depths of his love for us through Jesus Christ's terrible death on the cross.
It seems that the complement is true as well: God's justice is made perfect by his love. The extent to which his love took him shows the power of his justice. Without his love we may have known his wrath, but not the extent of his justice.
I might even go so far as to say that God's love and justice are parts of the same thing. Of course, they are both parts of his character. What I mean is this: How could a loving God not be just as well? How could he love us and not be angry about the injustice and evil in the world? How can he not, in perfectly loving what is good, hate what is evil?
God is so wondrous and complex! I know this post may have seemed a bit abstract; do you have any (perhaps more practical) thoughts on this topic?
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