The Objective Reality of Redemption

"The Lord is righteous..." (Lamentations 1:18a)

In the six verses prior to verse eighteen, we see a grueling exposition of the suffering of Jerusalem under the Babylonian siege, and all of these verses have sprinkled throughout them the phrase, "The Lord hath (or "has," depending on your translation)..."

"The Lord hath afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger..." (vs. 12)
"[The Lord] hath...sent fire into my bones,...spread a net for my feet,...turned me back,...made me desolate..." (vs. 13)
"[The Lord] hath made my strength to fall, the Lord hath delivered me into [enemy] hands..." (vs. 14)
"The Lord hath trodden under foot,...He hath called an assembly against me,...[He] hath trodden...the daughter of Judah..." (vs. 15)
"The Lord hath commanded concerning Jacob, that his adversaries should be round about him..." (Vs. 17)

I suppose that when one considers that this "someone" that the Lord hath afflicted is the apple of His eye, any reasonable person would pause and wonder, "WHAT is God DOING?! He is the one destroying His own people? How dare He! Who does He think He is?"
Destroy His own people? Please. What about the Canaanites, the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Hittites, and all the other pagan nations that Israel came in contact with? They were plagued, slaughtered, and wiped out in practically genocidal fashion. And here we stand looking back, and wonder, "By what right or reason has God done these things?"
The prophet Jeremiah responds as he laments, "The Lord is righteous: for I have rebelled against His commandments..." After six verses (and in the end, a whole five chapter book) of God sounding like a cruel, vindictive sadist, the prophet sounds a truth known but forgotten, and we are struck by the reality of God's righteousness.
Please allow a slight rant: Political correctness (the aptly called "cancer of the West") and a postmodern produced wishy-washy attitude has turned the people of the West into sentimental saps. "Why must you be so judgmental?" "Can't you see the shades of gray?" "Why can't we just all get along?" BECAUSE: "The Lord is righteous..." Okay, rant over. Let's cut to the quick.
Yes, toleration is good. Yes, God is love (a LOT more on that in a moment). But remember what C.S. Lewis taught in The Four Loves: whenever you take a singular virtue of the Tao (the law, the moral code, "written on our hearts," etc.) and rip it out and make it THE singular virtue to follow, it becomes demonic. God's holiness and righteousness is sacrificed more often by the world on an altar of tolerance, and (more seriously) by Christians on an altar of His love.
In case Sunday School is a distant memory, let's recap: God's is Holy; His holiness keeps Him separated from sin. God is Righteous; His righteousness punishes sin. These are facts lost today in bigger ways then we would like to believe. It is one thing to shout it from pulpits, or in debates, or in the classroom, or from home; and quite another thing to look sheer desolation (of any scale) in the face and hear the answer to your desperate inquiries whispered in your ear: "The Lord is righteous."
Who flooded the world? The Lord hath. Who incinerated Sodom and Gomorrah? The Lord hath. Who sent plagues, slaughter, and genocide to the pagan nations? The Lord hath. Who stores up evil and releases it for judgment? The Lord hath (Daniel 9:14). Who creates evil? The Lord hath (Isaiah 45:7). Who kills and wounds? The Lord hath (Deuteronomy 32:39). And Who, in the last days, will unleash such desolation on the earth, that all heaven will be struck silent? The Lord (Revelation 8:1). Why? Because: "The Lord is righteous."
It is in righteousness that God MUST punish sin. It is from God's right hand, His dexter, that His holy law came (Deuteronomy 33:2), and its purpose was and is to punish and kill sin (Romans 3:19-20; 4:15a; 7:9-12). God's righteousness is an absolute fact, not a mere habit. God IS righteous, i.e., His very being is made up of and exudes righteousness. Before we can continue, be reconciled to this fact: "The Lord is righteous."

"...God is love." (I John 4:8b)

The same language found in Lamentations is found here: God IS love, i.e., His very being is made up of and exudes love. Just as God cannot help but be righteous and bring all it entails, He also cannot help but love and bring all it entails. Now, if righteousness entails judgment (Psalm 9:8; Revelation 19:6), then what does love entail? Love entails SALVATION (Romans 5:8; John 3:16; I John 3:1, 4:10). In righteousness, God cannot help but punish sin; in love, He cannot help but save those that he loves. That God loves us is true (whether or not it is exalted above all His attributes and made a demon).

There is a problem, however, and the problem (as usual) IS US. God loves us, and as lost sinners, He MUST save us. He cannot help but do it. However, God is righteous, and as poor lost sinners, He MUST punish sin, and hence punish us. He cannot help that either. This creates a problem, a problem that deserves to be called something fancy and full of superficial meaning. I think I shall call it "The Dilemma of Being," and here it is in simplest terms:
Righteousness MUST punish sin. God IS righteous. We ARE sinners. Therefore, God MUST punish us.
HOWEVER, love MUST save that which it loves. God IS love. We ARE loved of God. Therefore, God MUST save us.
You see the problem. God's very being demands that he punishes AND saves us AT THE SAME TIME. Gracious, what is God to do?
"Can't He just save us?" If He merely saves us, he would have to overlook our sin, and if He overlooks instead of punishing it, he would no longer be righteous. He would do away with a part of His very being, which is an impossibility: no one can completely do away with a part of their being (i.e., if part of your being is that of masculinity, you can starve it, ignore it, or deny it on the surface, but you cannot do away with it). "Well, why doesn't He just punish us? He has every right to do so!" You are absolutely right on God's rights. However, if He merely punishes us, unleashing His fully justified wrath and consumes us eternally, again He would have done away with a part of His very being, i.e., love. And again, this is an impossibility.
(NOTE: It is true that during salvation God does away with a part of our being, i.e., the disposition of sin, but this is an act of the Creator on the created. There is no grounds to believe or even assume that God can amputate Himself of parts of His Self. Besides, our disposition of sin is an abnormality, NOT an original part of creation).
In the end we find God in a pickle. Somehow, some way, God has to do BOTH: He has to both punish and save. Only by doing both can He remain God; to do exclusively one or the other would make Him something less than God. The question is, where can the two be reconciled?

"...love is the fulfilling of the law." (Romans 13:10b)

Here there appears to be reconciliation. here the holy law, wrought by righteousness to punish sin, is satisfied by love that can only save. How exactly can this be? CAN it be? It cannot be any love of ours: our fallen hearts make the sacrifice necessary for love (for love is sacrifice) an impossibility. We can only gush up (at best) selfish sentiment, or (at worst) selfish lust. The only love pure, true, and high enough to satisfy the law is divine love, Love Himself, and that love was manifested in the God-man, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ said He came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17). According to Romans 13:10, He could only fulfil it through love. Christ was given out of God's love (John 3:16, duh), and He is the proof of God's love (Romans 5:8). Christ said that the purest, highest, and truest love is the one that dies for those that it loves (John 15:13), which is exactly what Jesus did. Sacrifice, or better yet REDEMPTION, is what satisfies God's law (and His righteousness to use it) AND God's love. The solution to The Dilemma of Being (and just when I started liking that name), the reconciliation of law and love, is Christ Jesus.

The implications of this solution are PROFOUND. Recap quickly: God's righteousness and love are NOT mere characteristics or habits: things that were absent from His being but came upon Him over time. No, they are ABSOLUTES, i.e., Reality, "a priori" truths. God IS those things. That you remember.
However, that would mean that the dilemma of being is an absolute as well, an "a priori" truth. Then that would also mean that the solution to the dilemma of being is an absolute as well (for a God of order would never allow a contradiction in His being). Therefore, the sacrifice of Christ was no mere martyrdom, political execution, or even just a payment for sin. Christ passion is an absolute: it HAD to be, it had ALWAYS been. Redemption is an absolute objective reality, the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." (Revelations 13:8b) It always has been, it HAD to have been, and nothing can e'er change that.