to live a flourishing human life.
This tension between mercy and justice, and the need for redemption, reveal certain dynamics of God’s relationship with humanity. Our evil acts demand a just response from God, a response that includes punishment. But as sinners, we stand in need of God’s mercy. Many of our sufferings, like death, originate from God’s just punishment, yet he reaches out to heal us in his mercy. The tensions we see in the Bible between justice and mercy stem from our troubled relationship with him; sometimes we act in loving obedience, and sometimes we rebel. God’s justice appropriately punishes wrongdoing, but his mercy and redemption invite us to something even greater than satisfying the demands of justice.
Chapter 3
God the Just Judge
God sits on a throne. The Bible pictures him this way multiple times—in the Psalms, Isaiah, Revelation, even the Gospels.13 Thrones conjure images of kingship in our minds, but most of us know more about kings from fairy-tale picture books than from personal experience. Our inner child says that a king wears a crown and a red robe with ermine lining. He has big gold rings and feasts sumptuously every day. We might even think he’s like a president, handing down orders and appointing people to important positions. But kingship is different from presidency, even in the case of JFK’s “Camelot.” In theory, the king holds all power. In the American system, power is divided into the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. However, in an absolute monarchy, all power is contained in one person. The king is legislator, executive, and judge.
We see the judicial role of the ancient Israelite king in the story about Solomon judging between two women who both claim the same baby as their own (1 Kgs 3:16-28).14 They bring their case before Solomon, and he famously offers to have the baby sliced in half and divided between the women. The true mother reacts with horror and offers to give the baby to the other woman. Solomon thus reveals who the true mother is and restores the baby to her. The story is meant to demonstrate Solomon’s wisdom, but it also shows something else—that the king was not only the chief executive, but he was the chief judge of the system of justice. Ideally, a complex or hard-fought case could eventually be appealed from a local official to the king himself. Now, exactly how efficiently or perfectly this system of appeal worked is not our concern here.15 The point is that the king operated as a judge, and the throne is not just a symbol of executive power or regal pomp, but a symbol for the king’s judicial authority.
At the end of time, after God has completed all of his judicial work, we won’t be able to say, “That’s not fair!” about anything in the universe.
In our culture, the bench on which the judge sits symbolizes his authority. We often hear talk of “the bench” as in when a judge invites lawyers to “approach the bench” or when newspapers discuss new judicial appointments. (The bar, on the other hand, divides the area where the lawyers, jury, and parties to the case sit from the seats for the general public.) Nowadays, most judges sit on a nice leather office chair, rather than a stiff bench, but the point is that the place where the judge sits stands for the judge’s power. In the Bible, God’s throne indicates his kingly judicial authority, his power as the final arbitrator of all cases.
Hope in Judgment
Now this concept of God as the final judge of all things can prompt either hope or despair. On earth, many cases are left unsolved, many injustices are never righted, many times justice is left unserved or incompletely served. But if, ultimately, the one being in (or above) the universe with total power also will act as a perfect judge, we have hope that all of the injustices in our world will someday be “put to rights.” And all of the incomplete ministrations of human, earthly justice will be brought to completion in God’s eternal, perfect justice. At the end of time, after God has completed all of his judicial work, we won’t be able to say, “That’s not fair!” about anything in the universe. This is a great hope! However, the despair I mentioned might jump up in our hearts if we find ourselves on the wrong side of God’s ultimate justice. If we have hidden sins, secret crimes, everything we have done will eventually come to light before the all-knowing God, and we’ll be judged not according to how people saw us, but according to who we really are and what we have really done.16 That can be kind of scary, but there is no reason to despair since God offers us a possibility of redemption and hope, but more on that later.
Even the Caesar of the Roman Empire would judge cases. Emperor Claudius was famous for spending much of his time adjudicating cases personally.17 Even St. Paul, when he is on trial in the book of Acts (25:11), appeals his case to Caesar. Tradition has it that Nero initially dismissed his case,18 but later, when Paul was arrested again, the emperor had him executed.19 Thus even Caesar, as the monarch of a political system switching from democracy to dictatorship, acted with judicial authority. He was not only the supreme executive of Rome, but the supreme judge.
The beauty of this divine justice is that it is perfect. No stone will be left unturned. No evidence will be left out. No one will walk away complaining about an unjust verdict or a biased judge.
Human judges like Caesar or Solomon must always base their decisions on the testimony of witnesses, the evidence of objects and documents, and their own horse-sense wisdom. This last element is often the most important. Robots wouldn’t make very good judges since they can’t read people, rely on experience, or develop shrewd judgment the same way people can. Human justice is not mechanistic but always has the X factor of human subjectivity. For example, a judge can decide that leniency is to be pursued in a case where the defendant has committed her first crime and has children to care for, but strictness is the order of the day when the defendant has a long rap sheet and needs to be taught a lesson.
Divine justice is different. Since God is all-knowing he does not need to rely on the faulty memories of human witnesses or the difficult-to-decipher physical evidence. Rather, he can know absolutely what a person has done and what their intentions were. His wisdom is complete. His judgment is always on target. He says, “I know your works” (Rv 2:2), and the Bible also teaches that “before him no creature is hidden” (Heb 4:13). Again, this omniscience can be either frightening or relieving. While we talk about having to “give an account” to God, his all-seeing knowledge does not need our help. He will know what we’re going to say before it comes out of our mouth. The beauty of this divine justice is that it is perfect. No stone will be left unturned. No evidence will be left out. No one will walk away complaining about an unjust verdict or a biased judge. Instead, when we walk away from the divine “bench” or throne, we will all be satisfied with the result.
King David and Divine Justice
One biblical example of divine justice will help us think through the judicial power behind God’s throne: the story of David. David was the first great king of Israel. He firmly established the throne, fought off Israel’s enemies and was “a man after God’s own heart” (see 1 Sm 13:14). He was brave and just, holy and devout. It seemed that everything in his life was going right; he was destined to be a hero for God’s people! Yet even in the best of persons, sometimes things go awry. One year, during his reign as king, David sits out the battle season (2 Sm 11). Instead of going out with his courageous army, he stays at home at his palace. Then as he strolls along the roof of his palace, which overlooks the regular homes below, he notices a lovely naked woman bathing in her backyard. Desire consumes him. He acts before he thinks. He summons her and sleeps with her. He abuses his kingly authority, his appointment by God, the trust placed in him as king, by taking advantage of a woman with no royal status or political importance. Her husband was a soldier, out to battle with David’s army (absent David). When the woman, Bathsheba, tells David that she has become pregnant by him, he is horrified and tries to cover his tracks.
He invites Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, back from the battlefront. He asks him questions about the battle and suggests he go home and pay a visit to his wife. But Uriah can’t stand the thought of going home when his comrades are camping out and fighting a battle, so he sleeps in the barracks at the palace. When David invites him back and plies him with wine, Uriah still refuses to go home. David feels backed into a corner—his sin will be a public scandal if there