The Judge of All the Earth

In Genesis 18 God visits Abraham and lets him know what He plans to do to Sodom and Gomorrah. "Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto Me; and if not, I will know (Gen 18:20-21). Abraham is ... concerned. "Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?" (Gen 18:23). And he starts to dicker with God. "Look if you find 50 righteous, will you save it? How about 40? Will you give me 30? Maybe 20?" And so it goes. The final outcome, it reads, is that God would not destroy the righteous with the unrighteous. Not even one. What was the premise? Why was Abraham willing to do this with God? You find his reasoning in verse 25. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?" A quintessential rhetorical question. Yes, of course the Judge of all the earth will do what is just. Because that's what God is -- just.

We know from Scripture that "He loves righteousness and justice" (Psa 33:5). We know He demands it from us (Micah 6:8). And in the sacrifice of His Son for us He is both "just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Rom 3:26). The justice of God is a given. But ... what is this thing we call "justice"?

Justice at its core is simply that which is right. The dictionary says that to be just is to be "guided by truth, reason, justice, and fairness." Now, in all fairness, I'm pretty sure it's circular to define "just" as "guided by justice", but, okay, you get the idea. Justice is what is right, what is true, what is proper. In terms of courts, it includes the notion that the punishment should fit the crime. You get the idea.

Here's the difficulty. For humans, there is an external "right" to which we must conform if we are to be just. We don't define right; God does. So there is this external good to which we must adhere in our views, our behavior, our attitudes, our treatment of others, and so forth. God, on the other hand, has no such external. God defines good, so justice for God would be that which conforms to His definition of good.

So the difficulty is that we have an external version and God does not. So we have this version that requires fairness. It requires equity. By this we mean that everyone must be treated equally. And I'm here to tell you you do not want that from God. You see, from a pure "fairness", "equity", human justice perspective, all things being equal, the only just thing for God to do with all humans is damnation. No, no, you don't want that. This is where He deviates from human justice and conforms instead to Himself -- what is right.

Of course, it is this precisely that is at the core of the questions against God's justice. "How can it be just for God to send to hell someone who doesn't do anything that bad? Maybe it's that he didn't hear about the Gospel. Maybe she wasn't always honest. I mean, they didn't kill anyone or anything. They just weren't ... perfect. How can a just God damn these people? How is an eternity in hell a just response? How does the punishment fit the crime?"

So we're here dealing with our own short version of good. The worst we can accept is "an eye for an eye" and, frankly, we don't even like that. So we figure that an eternity in hell for a day of sin makes no sense. What we fail to see is the measure of the crime. When the Creator of All Things says "This is what I want" and His creation says, "No!", this isn't the product of a bratty child. It is an act of Cosmic Treason. The violation is not a failure to obey; it is an assault on His Sovereignty, His Majesty, His Glory. (Isn't that what it says? "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23).) It isn't a "bad deed". It is defiance against the Eternal One, and the proper response is an eternal one.

Look, even in human justice we get that it's not a matter of time, but intensity. "Hey, my client killed the woman, but it only took him five minutes, so he shouldn't get more than 5 minutes in prison!" Nonsense, of course. And yet we rail against God in exactly the same way. "How is it fair to condemn someone to eternal torment for a mere lifetime of sin?" We miss, as sinners tend to do, the massive nature of our sin and belittle the character of the Most High and can't figure out how it is just. It is.

"Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?" Oh, yes, He will. And not one tongue will complain about it in the end. "At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil 2:10-11). Oh, yes, He will do what is right. Every time.