God is righteous and just.
To say God is righteous is to say that God is always right. It is God’s very nature to always be right. He cannot be wrong. He cannot do wrong. God is righteous because He is the very definition of what it means to be right. God’s righteousness means that He is just.
Psalm 97:2 says “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne.”
God’s goodness and righteousness mean that God must be just. A God who is perfectly right cannot tolerate sin and allow it to go unpunished. Because God is good and right, sin must be punished. A righteous God and a just God means that God does not ignore sin. God’s goodness and rightness never change when God is just and punishes sin. This is another area where humans are not able to understand God completely. God’s anger and wrath toward sin do not change in any way His goodness and righteousness. God is unchanging. He is always good. He is always just. He is always loving. God cannot be good and ignore sin. Ignoring sin would not be justice. God cannot be good and not just. Goodness and justice exist together and God is always completely both.
Revelations 16:5 and 7 says, “Just are you, O Holy One, who is and who was, for you brought these judgments.” And, “Yes, Lord God the Almighty, true and just are your judgments.”
When God looks at a sinner who loves his sin and rejects God, justice sentences that sinner to die and go to hell. This is right and good because God tells us that the wages of sin is death.
When God looks at a sinner who has trusted in Christ’s death on the cross and trusts in God’s forgiveness, justice sentences that sinner to live eternally with God in heaven. The sin has been dealt with justly because God put the sin on Jesus for us. Jesus changes our condition from guilty to not guilty. God is just in both condemning the unrepentant sinner and in saving the repentant sinner.
We, as people, have a hard time understanding the “fairness” of this. We want murders to be punished for their sin. We don’t want people who have hurt us to be forgiven because our sense of justice is very different from God’s righteousness and justice. We have sinful minds and intentions. God is perfectly right and perfectly just. We need to trust that God is who He says He is and not allow our feelings of fairness to contradict God’s word.
In what circumstances are you tempted to think God has been unfair or unkind to you?
Put into your own words why rightness and justice must exist in God equally.
Isaiah 30:18
“Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you,
and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for him.”
Deuteronomy 32:4
“The Rock, his work is perfect,
for all his ways are justice.
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity,
just and upright is he.”
Psalm 119:137
“Righteous are you, O Lord,
and right are your rules.”
What do you learn about God’s righteousness and justice?
How does this change how you view the circumstances when it feels like God is not right or just?
Getting to know God in relationship:
How will you talk to God differently and read His word differently because of this attribute?