BY: JOHN LLOYD BAUTISTA
A lot of People are asking these questions:
They said “God is Love” which is true but some struggle with the question why can’t God forgive sin without a sacrifice? Why cannot He just forgive people? & If He is a God of Justice then how can it be just for Jesus to die on the cross?
What I am really really struggling with why it is that, if God is Love why was it necessary for Jesus to die on the cross to be given a path of salvation to God? If nothing is impossible for God, then why couldn’t a God of Love forgive freely without the the sacrifice of Jesus?
It is not God’s love that demands a sacrifice. It is his holiness which requires a sacrifice and it is his justice that requires death for sin. Romans 6:23 says that “The wages of sin is DEATH.”
This is God’s justice, not his love that this statement is coming from. God’s justice is a powerful and real as his love. His love provided a substitutionary sacrifice so that we do not need to die for our sins. God’s qualities shows that His love is immense and unavoidable, but so are his holiness and justice. You cannot have one without the other two.
Some people say that nothing is impossible for God. That is definitely NOT TRUE. It is impossible for God to do something that violates his character. It is impossible for God to be unjust but because He is JUST – kaya kailangan niyang magparusa.
Talking about being JUST, there is a yale religion professor and her name is Miroslav Volf and he grew up in Czechoslovakia and he saw all the atrocities made by the government and at one point he was mad about a God who make judgements and he once said “after seeing all the atrocities I couldn’t worship a God who did not judge sin – and I couldn’t worship a God who cannot punish those evildoers”. I mean if a judge has a murderer before him and the judge knows that he is guilty and the judge said “I love you you can go”..is that judge just? Obviously NOT!
God is a good judge. In fact volf said “ God judges those who are sinners because God is good and if he does not judge then he is not good”.
Now going back to the topic – As far as the bible is concern, this is how salvation works – God’s love desires a relationship with us. God’s holiness can have nothing to do with sin. Sin must be atoned for. God’s justice demands punishment for rebellion. God’s justice demands one thing. His love desires another. God’s solution was to send his Son to take the penalty for our sins. Is that logical? No. It is all about love. Romans 2:23-26 says it best. God sent his Son as a sacrifice so as to be just and at the same time to justify those who have faith in Jesus Christ. The death of Jesus was not about love. It was about justice, but the reason it happened was because of God’s love.
To some of you reading this I can see that this is not completely “logical” for you. I understand why it does not seem logical. It is not “logical” that Jesus would take the penalty for the sin of another. IT IS NOT ABOUT LOGIC. It is about God’s holiness, his justice and his love. These three traits came together at the cross and for those who obey Him and put their faith in Jesus, God’s love trumps his justice and Jesus takes the penalty for our sin. I can see why we might struggle with this concept but it is the truth as revealed in God’s inspired Word–the Bible. This is the Good News. This is the gospel. Romans 5 tells us that God loved us while we were yet still sinners–while we were enemies due to our sin. That is the mystery. It is about God’s love.
C.S Lewis once said “In the end, there’s 2 kind of people in the world – Those people who said to God “Thy will be done and those whom God says Thy will be done”. God will respect that choice. So if you don’t want God – God will not force you to heaven against your will because obviously how can you say you want God in eternity if you don’t want God now but the moment you reject that truth – truth will remain truth – and we are still bound to the consequences of that truth.
