"Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness." Isaiah 1:27
Justice is joined to redemption's hip just as much as love is. Do not be fooled: our culture's over-focus on God's love has made His justice and righteousness our enemy. Speak of God's justice and/or righteousness, and most people get a very dark image: the merciless executioner, chomping at the bit, waiting with glee to be avenged of us, only to have its sadism disappointed by love, which we treat as the lone hero who flings himself into the fray and "satisfies" justice and righteousness, as though those two were hungry beasts ready to devour us and love had to throw them something else, viz., our Lord Jesus. So justice and righteousness are monsters, love a lone ranger, and Jesus a hunk of meat. How dare we assume so.
"Zion shall be redeemed with [justice]..." The true redemption of Zion (beyond the Babylonian captivity) comes through Christ's redemption of all (see esp. Romans 11:25-32). Christ came, not as an opponent against justice, but as the fulfillment of BOTH love and justice (Matthew 5:17; John 3:16; Romans 13:8, 10; see also blog entry "Objective Reality of Redemption" for further exposition). It was not that God's love got justice "out of the way" through Christ, but that through Christ, God's love and justice worked hand in hand to bring redemption to man.
Get out of your head any idea that leads you to believe that some part of God's nature was done away with by Christ's sacrifice. If any part of God was done away with, then God is no longer Perfection (i.e., no longer the Complete Being, or the Source of Completion). Every part of God's nature was "satisfied" in Christ.
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2 comments:
The point you are making here is what I think Paul was trying to teach to the Roman Christians in his epistle. I'm reading Romans again, and over and over again, I hear Paul emphasizing that the "righteousness of God" - the "justice of God" - is what Jesus Christ came to reveal. The reason Paul is not ashamed of the gospel? In it the righteousness of God is revealed.
I hadn't seen this before in Romans.
Where exactly is this "objective reality"?
How big is Conscious Light?
Where is up?
What are you, and where do you begin and end?
Are you separate from anything at all such that it could possibly be "objective" to you?
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