Many are in a quandary which to choose. Is God just or merciful? Justice is making things right. Mercy is suspending justice or finding another way to execute it. Justice has punishment implicit in it. Mercy has the escape of punishment implicit in it. The legalist lives with the conviction that justice is all there is. The sentimentalist lives with the conviction that mercy is mandatory and universally applied to all people.
The Bible is filled with the voice of prophets hailing both. Take the words of God through any Old Testament prophet and that is what you get. There is a strong dose of justice with terrible consequences due in total to the sin of the people. And, in most of these same prophetic dramas there is a shift from certain judgment as a just response from God to a declaration of a certain merciful and optimistic future. You can see it in Jeremiah, Hosea, Ezekiel, Isaiah and nearly all the lesser known prophets. These messages move from a great and terrible day of the Lord to a wonderful day of God’s healing and forgiveness. Some of the shifts are stark and leave no clues as to what prompts the change in God’s behavior.
Some, however, give us clues. Joel does. Things look pretty bleak for the people of God in the first chapter and a half. They look pretty promising starting in Joel 2:18. Justice is impending. Mercy is promised. So what prompts the change? There is a transition or hinge message in Joel that can be seen in the messages of most other prophets. It includes a human response that can excite God to move from exercising justice to exercising mercy. It always includes humility, recognition of sin or guilt, confession and repentance. It is as simple as that.
In God’s vocabulary we always find these two powerful alternatives- justice including judgment and mercy including forgiveness- laid out side by side. God wants to do the one, but out of necessity must do the other. God is constrained to justice, but is always crafting a merciful possibility. The two are very real. God is not joking. God is not playing. And, the frequently ignored human hinge response is still in play in 2010. Most people just don’t understand that in their hands and hearts is a powerful response to their own dire past that can help forge an optimistic future. God has made every possible provision for us to feel the sin in us, see the sorrow that it causes, confess it and repent or turn from it. Our consciences work toward this. The Holy Spirit works in us toward this. The Bible is clearly an aid in this. Good friends are often our allies in this. In all of these, God wants us to see what is broken in us and respond to it.
It is in God’s common vocabulary. It should be in ours. Instead, many prefer to ardently advocate to the world support of God’s justice while ignoring his desire to exercise mercy. Others prefer to focus on some kind of inevitable display of mercy, banking on a loving God who requires nothing of us, only promising the unqualified exercise of his love. Both of these views miss the point of truth and the relationship of God to his creation. God is still the one who exercises justice and mercy. Human turning is still one of the most significant pieces of the puzzle in which will be exercised. And, it should be something that we are susceptible to on a daily basis. It is part of God’s vocabulary. It should be part of ours. God is just. God is merciful. We are thinking at our best when we realize that both are in play.