Our Bible verse for today: “I said to myself, ‘God will judge the righteous and the wicked, since there is a time for every activity and every work.” Ecclesiastes 3:17 (CSB)
Our thought for today: “God is just.”
Yesterday we spent some time thinking about the perfect goodness of God. God is perfectly, infinitely good. But because God is good, He must also be just. He would not be a good God if He allowed the wicked to go unpunished or the righteous to go unblessed. God’s goodness demands that ultimately evil is defeated and punished, and righteousness is victorious and blessed.
The terms just and righteous are often used interchangeably to describe God. For God to be “just” means that He is perfectly fair by nature. His just and righteous nature is revealed in the Bible. In the Bible God describes what is acceptable and what is not. It is His just and righteousness nature which requires each individual to be judged for their actions and blessed or punished accordingly. That is what Solomon was referring to in Ecclesiastes 3:17. Other Biblical writers have expressed that same truth. For instance, in 2 Corinthians 5:10 we read, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.”
Knowing that we will appear before the judgment seat of Christ should literally scare the hell out of us. It should cause us to remember “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23). We are all sinners and therefore God’s perfect sense of justice requires that we be punished for our sins. Fortunately Romans 3:23 is not the end of the story. Paul continued, “They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God presented him as an atoning sacrifice … so that he would be righteous and declare righteous the one who has faith in Jesus.”(Romans 3:24; 26).
Yes, the understanding that God is just and therefore must punish sin should, literally, scare the hell right out of us. It should cause us to embrace the truth described by Paul and place our faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins. As the passage explains, the Righteous One then declares righteous those who have placed their faith in Him.
Spend some time this morning meditating on the truth that because God is just, sin must be punished. Then remember that it is only because of Jesus that you can be declared righteous in the sight of a holy God. The atoning work of Jesus, and your faith in Him for the forgiveness of your sins, has saved you from an eternity in hell.
Oak Hill Baptist Church