The common apposition of the words “mercy” and “justice” in popular theology and sermonic speech is due to the common, but erroneous, conception of justice as exclusively penal or punitive. Then the notion of mercy and justice “agreeing” or “kissing” is attached to the Cross of Christ where allegedly we were shown God’s grace (mercy) because he was shown God’s wrath (justice). BUT THIS INTERPRETATION COMPLETELY IGNORES GOD’S RESTORATIVE JUSTICE!
Yet, to be sure, restorative justice is not the same as mercy. For mercy is still but oriented to the sinner, even as penal justice is, whereas restorative justice is oriented to the one injured or harmed, that is to say, the one sinned against.
Thus, when Paul in Romans writes of “God’s righteousness,” with only rare exceptions, he means God’s restorative justice manifested in the Christ’s RESURRECTION. [10/17/07]
It is noteworthy to observe that the Levitical version of restorative justice naturally required that the injurer should restore by repaying the injured. Therefore the necessary reparation needed to be extracted from the injurer before it could be given to the injured.
In the Cross/Resurrection, however, something absolutely unprecedented takes place. Not only does restoration occur to the injured before the injurer makes reparation, but the restoration comes from another source altogether—God Himself, Who also suffered from the injury! This is a stark revelation of the graciousness of God, beyond all expectation based on mere penal justice. Yes, the injury was even a capital offense of aggravated proportions, so any normal reparation by human beings was impossible. Yet to not even demand penal justice for the injurers, but rather to reprieve them for a full generation to make room for repentance was the grandest revelation of the mercy of God ever manifested in Israel’s long, tortured history. [10/17/07]
On the grounds of the wrongfully shed blood of Jesus, applied to our sinful hearts when we simply believe the Explanation of the Proclamation about what he did for us (which Message is the power of God for our salvation), we are cleansed or pardoned from our sins by the actual washing operation of God’s Holy Spirit that is then poured out in our hearts and thereupon God is justified in openly declaring us “just” or imputing righteousness to us, i.e., in justifying us on account of our believing His Message, because this accords perfectly with His graciousness, aside from any acts on our part whatever.
This is contrary to the teaching of both the Roman Catholic Church and of the Protestant Reformation. Each will tend to see the other in this corrected doctrine of salvation, but it is neither. Romanism made justification depend on the end product of progressive sanctification. Protestantism made justification depend on the imputation of “Christ’s righteousness,” and in Calvin’s version that imputation in turn depends on a faith generated not by the power of the inspired Gospel itself, but by an arbitrary infusion of the Holy Spirit to the “particularly elect” as a “gift” (by which he meant not the Holy Spirit but the faith!), without which the Gospel itself is regarded as powerless to evoke faith in sinners, due to “total depravity.” Both are in error.
In the ppure and simple apostolic version, the faith of any sinner is counted (imputed) as righteousness when created by the power of the Gospel narrative (inspire by God’s Holy Spirit, in written or spoken form), and thereupon God bestows His Spirit of power into the sinner’s heart to cleanse away sins and thus justify God in declaring the former sinner to be righteous instantly, the sign of which, in conjunction with water immersion, was often the miraculous utterance of unknown languages, prophecy, and other extraordinary manifestations of the Spirit’s redemptive presence.
The Gospel narrative that has such power to effect so much is, of course, the Story of Jesus, especially his cross-and-resurrection, which jointly manifest the covenantal faithfulness or obedience of the Son and the covenantal righteousness or justice of the Father. [10/17/07]
The Premial Atonement 