a redemptive note. He mentions the offspring of the woman who will be an enemy of the serpent and eventually “crush” the serpent’s head (Gn 3:15). While the serpent had provoked Adam and Eve to fall away from God in the Garden, justice will come full circle eventually. At the moment of the Fall, the ominous consequences of the first sin loomed large, yet God chose to promise a change, a way to undo the consequences, to right the wrong of sin. The offspring he mentions points to Christ, the one who will come to break the power of sin and release those enslaved to it into the freedom of God’s children.
What we can deduce from the Fall and the moral discord between God and man which it introduces is this: suffering, punishment, and God’s just judgment are rooted in original sin, in humanity’s fall from grace brought about by our own actions, our own choice against God. Adam and Eve started the ball rolling. The wonderful harmony they enjoyed with God was not only damaged, but smashed to pieces by their violation of his simple command. They deliberately broke their relationship with God, and so God meted out punishment to them. The moral consequences of evil actions lead to suffering and harm. God’s judgment with its attendant punishments addresses evil action and aims to right the wrongs humanity brings forth. Yet in an odd way, just punishment is a kind of mercy, since punishment is meant to lead to conversion, reformation, moral transformation. Punishment is not only punitive but instructive.
We were supposed to be “immune” from it, but the original sin brought the consequence of death for all of us.
There is always a tension between justice and mercy. God is a just God, but he is also merciful. In the end, “mercy triumphs over judgment” (Jas 2:13), but that doesn’t mean that judgment is nonsensical or unnecessary. In fact, in that same verse James says that “judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.” Evil deeds ought to be repaid justly with fitting punishments. Again, this is why we hesitate to hand out punishments, because inside we realize our own moral failings and that we too deserve punishment. But punishment is only part of the story. Just punishment is fitting, yet incomplete. It appropriately responds to evil action, but it does not solve it or redeem it. Something more is needed. Long prison terms do not necessarily rehabilitate a prisoner. In fact, a long prison term could incline a person to repeat offense. A recent study showed that three-quarters of released prisoners were arrested again within five years of release.12 While punishment is just, it does not necessarily bring the moral transformation necessary to live a flourishing human life.
This tension between mercy and justice, and the need for redemption, reveal certain dynamics of God’s relationship with humanity. Our evil acts demand a just response from God, a response that includes punishment. But as sinners, we stand in need of God’s mercy. Many of our sufferings, like death, originate from God’s just punishment, yet he reaches out to heal us in his mercy. The tensions we see in the Bible between justice and mercy stem from our troubled relationship with him; sometimes we act in loving obedience, and sometimes we rebel. God’s justice appropriately punishes wrongdoing, but his mercy and redemption invite us to something even greater than satisfying the demands of justice.
Chapter 3
God the Just Judge
God sits on a throne. The Bible pictures him this way multiple times—in the Psalms, Isaiah, Revelation, even the Gospels.13 Thrones conjure images of kingship in our minds, but most of us know more about kings from fairy-tale picture books than from personal experience. Our inner child says that a king wears a crown and a red robe with ermine lining. He has big gold rings and feasts sumptuously every day. We might even think he’s like a president, handing down orders and appointing people to important positions. But kingship is different from presidency, even in the case of JFK’s “Camelot.” In theory, the king holds all power. In the American system, power is divided into the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. However, in an absolute monarchy, all power is contained in one person. The king is legislator, executive, and judge.
We see the judicial role of the ancient Israelite king in the story about Solomon judging between two women who both claim the same baby as their own (1 Kgs 3:16-28).14 They bring their case before Solomon, and he famously offers to have the baby sliced in half and divided between the women. The true mother reacts with horror and offers to give the baby to the other woman. Solomon thus reveals who the true mother is and restores the baby to her. The story is meant to demonstrate Solomon’s wisdom, but it also shows something else—that the king was not only the chief executive, but he was the chief judge of the system of justice. Ideally, a complex or hard-fought case could eventually be appealed from a local official to the king himself. Now, exactly how efficiently or perfectly this system of appeal worked is not our concern here.15 The point is that the king operated as a judge, and the throne is not just a symbol of executive power or regal pomp, but a symbol for the king’s judicial authority.
At the end of time, after God has completed all of his judicial work, we won’t be able to say, “That’s not fair!” about anything in the universe.
In our culture, the bench on which the judge sits symbolizes his authority. We often hear talk of “the bench” as in when a judge invites lawyers to “approach the bench” or when newspapers discuss new judicial appointments. (The bar, on the other hand, divides the area where the lawyers, jury, and parties to the case sit from the seats for the general public.) Nowadays, most judges sit on a nice leather office chair, rather than a stiff bench, but the point is that the place where the judge sits stands for the judge’s power. In the Bible, God’s throne indicates his kingly judicial authority, his power as the final arbitrator of all cases.
Hope in Judgment
Now this concept of God as the final judge of all things can prompt either hope or despair. On earth, many cases are left unsolved, many injustices are never righted, many times justice is left unserved or incompletely served. But if, ultimately, the one being in (or above) the universe with total power also will act as a perfect judge, we have hope that all of the injustices in our world will someday be “put to rights.” And all of the incomplete ministrations of human, earthly justice will be brought to completion in God’s eternal, perfect justice. At the end of time, after God has completed all of his judicial work, we won’t be able to say, “That’s not fair!” about anything in the universe. This is a great hope! However, the despair I mentioned might jump up in our hearts if we find ourselves on the wrong side of God’s ultimate justice. If we have hidden sins, secret crimes, everything we have done will eventually come to light before the all-knowing God, and we’ll be judged not according to how people saw us, but according to who we really are and what we have really done.16 That can be kind of scary, but there is no reason to despair since God offers us a possibility of redemption and hope, but more on that later.
Even the Caesar of the Roman Empire would judge cases. Emperor Claudius was famous for spending much of his time adjudicating cases personally.17 Even St. Paul, when he is on trial in the book of Acts (25:11), appeals his case to Caesar. Tradition has it that Nero initially dismissed his case,18 but later, when Paul was arrested again, the emperor had him executed.19 Thus even Caesar, as the monarch of a political system switching from democracy to dictatorship, acted with judicial authority. He was not only the supreme executive of Rome, but the supreme judge.
The beauty of this divine justice is that it is perfect. No stone will be left unturned. No evidence will be left out. No one will walk away complaining about an unjust verdict or a biased judge.
Human judges like Caesar or Solomon must always base their decisions on the testimony of witnesses, the evidence of objects and documents, and their own horse-sense wisdom. This last element is often the most important. Robots wouldn’t make very good judges since they can’t read people, rely on experience, or develop shrewd judgment the same way people can. Human justice is not mechanistic but always has the X factor of human subjectivity.
