“The concept of justice incorporates all that is just. The concept of non-justice includes everything outside the concept of justice: injustice, which violates justice and is evil; and mercy, which does not violate justice and is not evil. God gives his mercy (non-justice) to some and leaves the rest to his justice. No one is treated with injustice. No one can charge that there is unrighteousness in God.”[1]
Justice is, in fact, very fair. Justice says that if you harm an innocent person, you have to pay for your crime one way or another. Justice says that if you steal something from another person, you owe them their property back plus a penalty for the inconvenience of the rightful owner’s loss of use. In many ways, justice is mechanistic and tit-for-tat. Justice seems to be fair when the penalty fits the crime. Justice does not seem to be fair, however, when the crime and the penalty seem mismatched.
From this point of mismatch, many in the modern world tend to derive a sense of unfairness when they contemplate God. Many look at the penalties—whether they be supernatural (e.g., hell) or natural (e.g., war, disease, or interpersonal strife)—and come to the conclusion that God isn’t being fair because the harsh punishment doesn’t seem to fit the less heinous crime. After all, for people who are genuinely “good” or “decent” to be subjected to, for example, wanton cruelty and prejudice just doesn’t seem fair. Yet, this analysis does not consider the wholly detestable nature of the real crime. The real crime, of course, is sin, which has cataclysmic and destructive effects on our association with God. In the Garden of Eden, sin ended a deep, personal relationship with The Lord and drove a wedge between humankind and God. Sin has since been inherited by all humanity. In the beginning, God called all of creation good, and He walked in the garden He made for us. Now, because of sin, a distance and separation exists between creation and the Creator. Sin is a blatant offense to a holy and just God, and it necessitated God taking the form of a human being to reconcile humanity back to Him. Sin is so wretched that it made the devil the devil.
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