God’s justice

God’s justice is not men’s justice. In particular, it is not retributive justice (“to give each one his own”, “to give according to the merits”). In the Old Testament, the Psalmist can pray like this: «Hear my prayer, LORD. Listen to my petitions. In your faithfulness and righteousness, relieve me. Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no man living is righteous» (Ps 143,1-2). He asks for God’s righteousness, but he wants to avoid God’s judgment, showing that in his mind those two things are very different. In fact, according to the Bible, God’s justice/righteousness is his faithfulness to the promises and covenants He made with humanity. An unconditional faithfulness, without “ifs”: “if you behave well...”, “if you respect commandments...”, “if you pray...”. Since the creation, in the ancient covenants, in the new and eternal covenant in Jesus Christ, God pronounced a definitive “Yes” to the human beings, to their life, to their good. A “Yes” that does not fail even before his creature’s total rejection. When the sinners killed his only Son, the Father did not answer with “what they deserved” (death), but with their justification, forgiving their sins. «For rarely does one die for the righteous. Yet perhaps for a good person someone might dare to die. But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us» (Rom 5,7-8); «while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son» (Rom 5,10).

 

 

God is “righteous” because He is always faithful to his promises, to his unconditional love for every single man and woman. If this is true, is God indifferent to evil? Certainly not: evil is incompatible with his holiness and with men and women’s life, that is impaired and blocked by sin. God has indeed a really educational way of manifesting his “wrath” and “punishing”; he abandons the sinners «in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness, [...] to their degrading passions [,] to a reprobate mind» (Rom 1,24.26.28). Every human being, when he or she is far from God, feels loss, grief, loneliness, depression because we are all made for him and who disowns God loses himself/herself. “To sin” according to the Greek word used in the New Testament is “to miss the target”; every person who chooses the wrong way, experimenting all its negative consequences, has the possibility to «come to himself» (see Luke 15,17) and return to the Father’s house. That Father never stops to call back the sinners and waits for them with great trepidation.

The moment of the “punishment”, even if for the sinner’ sake, is something that God does not do willingly «For he is not predisposed to bring affliction or suffering to the children of men» (Lam 3,33).

We can say the same thing about the moment of the judgment: the Father gives it to the Son (see John 5,27) and the Son renounces, giving it to his Word. «And if anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He who rejects me, and does not accept my words, has one who judges him. The word that I spoke will judge him on the last day» (John 12,47-48).

Divine judgment is therefore an “autojudgment”: the person who chooses evil, in the present life will front the bad consequences of his/her actions, that in the future life will become definitive and irremediable if there is no conversion before dying. «“Your own wickedness shall correct you, and your backsliding shall reprove you. Know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter that you have forsaken the LORD your God, and that my fear is not in you,” says the Lord, GOD of Hosts» (Jer 2,19).

To sum up: God is faithful to his Word dealing with us according to our needs and not to our merits «For he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust» (Matt 5,45). God is not willing to judge men and women; He abandons them to the consequences of their sins, waiting for their conversion. God does not want to send anyone to hell, conversely He «desires all people to be saved and come to full knowledge of the truth» (1Tim 2,4). The one who chooses evil, hell, in a stubborn way (even definitive if there is no conversion before death) disobeys the Lord’s will.