Spir Dynamics 1226-8 2/3/98

 

DOCTRINE OF THE FAIRNESS OF THE JUSTICE OF GOD

 

A.  Definition of Impartiality.

            1. Impartial means unbiased, unprejudiced; hence, God is fair, free from all dishonesty and injustice, totally without bias and without prejudice. This is why Jesus Christ on the Cross was judged for every member of the human race regardless of who or what they are.

            2. God never departs from His perfect integrity.

            3. God is not influenced or swayed by any form of prejudice or act of injustice to anyone at any time in all of human history. Therefore, the sins of every person in all of human history were imputed to Jesus Christ and judged on the Cross.

            4. The perfect righteousness and justice of God are always in perfect balance with the love and the grace of God. There is perfect balance as well as perfect function in the righteousness, justice, love and grace of God.

                        a. We do not start with the love of God, but with the righteousness of God. Our spiritual life starts with the righteousness of God.

                        b. What the righteousness of God condemned in eternity past, the justice of God imputed to Christ on the Cross and judged, so that the love of God as expressed in the grace of God provided the solution, and the solution is believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

                        c. In our spiritual life God has provided the same solution. The righteousness of God judged our postsalvation sins, so that we name our sins to God in the privacy of our royal priesthood and God is faithful and righteous with the result that He forgives us our sins and purifies us from all unrighteousness. God is free to forgive us because His righteousness has already condemned those sins in eternity past, His justice has already judged them in Christ on the Cross, and His love has provided the solution in believing in Christ. This is all provided in grace, so that we do nothing but acknowledge our personal sins to God the Father for forgiveness. God is faithful and does the same thing every time—He forgives us.

                        d. The integrity of God always starts with His righteousness. The righteousness of God must be satisfied before anything else. Therefore, God has never made an unfair decision in history. There has never been an exception to this rule.

                        e. The righteousness, justice, and love of God are divine attributes. The grace of God is not a divine attribute, but the expression of God’s divine attributes.

                        f. The spiritual life is harmonious rapport with the righteousness of God; everything else is a result.

            5. There is no partiality with God. If there was even one case of partiality, there is no divine righteousness in heaven, there is no justice in heaven, and there is no salvation. Our salvation is based on righteousness and justice.

            6. No one ever gets away with any sin. Moses, David, and Paul, the three greatest believers in history never got away with their sins. They received divine discipline from the righteousness and justice of God.

 

B.  The Fairness of God at the Second Advent.

            1. Rev 19:17-21 says that at the second Advent our Lord will annihilate millions of men in the armies attacking Israel. This is compatible with God’s perfect integrity because the love of God does not reject these unbelievers.

            2. The love of God does not reject those men and their leaders; they reject the love of God by refusing to believe in Christ. They have the same privilege and opportunity to believe in Jesus Christ.

            3. When the righteousness of God in eternity past condemned all sins, it condemned the sins of all these unbelievers. All of these sins were imputed to Jesus Christ on the Cross and judged, so that the love of God provided the solution to all of the sins of all of these men. God was fair and impartial to all of these men.

 

C.  The Old Testament Examples.

            1. Moses was the greatest believer who ever lived, yet the righteousness of God was totally fair in condemning him and not letting Moses go into the Land of Israel after his one great sin.

            2. David was a man after God’s own heart. Yet, when David committed murder of Bathsheba’s husband, the righteousness of God condemned what he did.

            3. God was impartial in both these cases, and the righteousness of God was not compromised.

 

D.  The New Testament Example, Acts 10:34.

            1. The New Testament example of the impartiality of God is found in Acts 10:34.

            2. This passage deals with Peter’s understanding that there had been a change of dispensation and that God had provided salvation through faith in Christ for all Gentile unbelievers. Peter was told to go to the home of a Roman centurion named Cornelius, an unbeliever, and a Gentile.

            3. Peter said something very interesting about this Gentile Roman centurion after he visited him and discovered he was in fact a believer, “Opening his mouth, Peter said: “On the basis of the truth, I have come to understand that God is not one to show partiality.”

            4. God was not partial to Paul, when God told him not to go to Jerusalem and Paul bowed his neck and went anyway. So God had him thrown in prison for four years.

 

E.  Conclusion.

            1. God is infinite. He is without boundary or limitation. He unites in Himself those perfections which belong to His person—His essence, His attributes, the infinity of God. Because God is infinite, He cannot be complicated by ignorance, absurdities, silliness, or emotion in relationship to His divine attibutes, including His righteousness, His justice, and His love.

            2. Therefore, because God is love, that divine love can only function in compatibility with integrity. There must be virtue before there is true love.

            3. God is immutable; He cannot change. His love cannot waiver, change, oscillate. His love is not ever in a state of instability or capricious. God’s love does not increase or decrease. God does not react to human failure with petty irrationality. God’s love does not reject the unbeliever. The unbeliever rejects divine love.

            4. Divine foreknowledge and omniscience does not cancel divine love.

            5. The love of God is always self-motivated and compatible with all of His divine decisions.

            6. Since God is eternal, His divine love exists eternally, unsustained by Himself or any other source.

            7. God can never be anything less than perfect righteousness, perfect justice, and perfect love. God is holy—justice and righteousness. Therefore, the love of God possesses perfect virtue and integrity. Perfect love has perfect virtue; therefore, the perfect love of God does not need emotion to sustain it.

                        a. God is not emotional.

                        b. In the interaction of righteousness and justice, there is no place for emotion. In the interaction of divine love with divine holiness, there is no place for emotion. God does not deal with us emotionally.

                        c. In the operation of God’s grace, there is no place for emotion.

                        d. It is doctrine in the soul that is the spiritual life, not emotion.

                        e. We often appreciate things from the word of God and respond with emotion, but you cannot appreciate anything from the word of God unless you know it and can think it.

            8. Therefore, regenerate mankind must understand that the inerrant word of God reveals a cognitive Trinity in perfect integrity for the believer to understand and appreciate under the mentorship of God the Holy Spirit all that we have, all that we are, and why God does certain things the way He does things.

 

 

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© 1989, by R. B. Thieme, Jr.      All rights reserved.

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