A God of Love and of grace

Because God is Love he is also a God of grace. He gives plenty of opportunity to respond to Him and to turn to his Love before the time of judgment comes. He gives plenty of opportunity to amend our ways in line with his Love and to learn to live according to his ways of Love. He has to allow the consequence for sin, but he also allows us time to avoid the full brunt of those consequences.

Judgment cannot follow choice immediately or on a consistent basis because the result would be conditioned response, rather than genuine choice. It is one thing to make decision in relation to outcome, something else to make a decision out of love.

If every time I make good choice I receive a blessing, I would quickly become conditioned to making that choice. I would no longer act in a way that reflected the genuine choice to love. I would be acting in response to the stimulus of blessing. Conversely, if every time I did something bad I received punishment or something bad happened to me, then I also will become trained and conditioned in my behaviour. I would avoid certain behaviour, not out of love, but to avoid punishment. (For how many of us, if we are honest, is avoiding punishment the basis of our relationship with God?) That type of conditioned behaviour, whether positive or negative, is not what God wants for a relationship or partnership with man. He wants and longs for a genuine love relationship.

And so God’s judgment can seem unpredictable and random. There are times all through history when God, in his wisdom, chooses to bring judgment, in line with the bigger picture, in line with his long-term plan for redeeming a broken world. But equally there are times throughout history when it appears that people have got away with it and that God has not judged. This can lead to confusion. This can lead man to interpret that God does not really mean what he says. If God is in the business of giving us choice and then giving us time to correct ourselves, it may appear as if God is not being completely fair. If God creates a universe where we can freely choose and then in grace and love acts to minimise the damage when we choose wrongly, it might look as if people are getting away with bad choices. If God has clearly outlined the consequence of a choice and that consequence is not immediate, then it might look as if God isn’t like he says he is. So God’s very kindness and very love can actually mask the fact that love also requires judgment. People begin to think that there is an excuse, that others have got away with it in the past and that they will too. 

But the truth is that because God is Love, he also judges. He has to allow us the consequences of our choices, and ultimately the consequences of our sin