First Kiss
The Paradox of God
Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
For centuries, mankind has asked the question: "How can a Righteous God spare or forgive my wrong?"
Langland's Pier's Plowman illustrates perfectly the picture of Christ & man when it uses the phrase "where righteousness & mercy kiss."
Martin Luther struggled with this question as he slowly moved from the darkness of Catholicism into the light of God's Grace. How, he wondered, can God forgive my sin, and yet still be holy?
The place of God's grace is, however, a place where both His Righteousness (Justice) & His Forgiveness (Mercy) meet, & the sins of God's elect are forgiven.
Yet how, we wonder, can God be Holy, if He is not meting out the punishment we deserve for sin? Is this not inconsistancy? Where is God's Justice?
Because He can accept us with sin, because He grants us that which is not ours, because we deserve nothing but death & Hell, is He no longer Just for giving us Eternal Bliss & Salvation?
Would a Just Judge surely only give what was deserved? It would be like letting someone out on bail when they deserved life in prison, or death.
And that defines the situation exactly.
The reason the modern world often finds this hard to accept is because we live in an age when trust is at a zero. Why, we might ask, would someone pay my bail, when there is nothing in it for them?
Or, even further; why would they accept my sentence and let me go free?
This, is the Paradox of a Righteous & Merciful God.
C.S. Lewis smiled at this paradox and said that he believed it because; "It was exactly opposite of anything we (as humans) could have invented."
This ought to cause Christians to rejoice in the Covenant between themselves & their God, for truly, the Truths found in His Scriptures speak of a place where Righteousness & Mercy kiss, & - as Langland wrote -
'the hearts of men shall know with joy what peace can be in Middle Earth.'
1 comment:
"The most wonderful thing for us all is that God looks upon our low estate. The greater His blessing, the more unworthy we feel of it. There is no reason why He has stooped to our lowliness and obscurity except that He would. He does great things for the weakest and merciful things for the unworthiest, for His Name's sake--"Holy is His Name." In other words, there is no accounting for the putting forth of God's power and love, except His own glorious character."
-Meyer
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