Part of The Nature of God series.
During his New York gubernatorial campaign, –the square-jawed crusader and former prosecutor who chased corruption on Wall Street so ferociously that people nicknamed him –promised to bring ethics to Albany, New York, home of the state capital.
And because of his previous track record, many people believed he could.
But every ounce of credibility he acquired during his career evaporated the moment he was caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel.
As the :
The idea that Gov. Eliot Spitzer…was somehow involved in a prostitution scandal was too much. New Yorkers who thought they had heard everything were, for a change, dumbfounded.
For a man who cemented his reputation with aggressive prosecution of wrong doing…who once seemed to stand above the tawdry universe of politics…who drug a whole lot of people through the mud…the hypocrisy is incredible that he’d fallen from grace in such a low-rent kind of way.
“I feel betrayed” was a common sentiment among New Yorkers. And it did not take long for Spitzer’s opponents to call for his resignation.
God: Perfectly Positioned to Be Our Judge
God, on the other hand, will never be called to resign. Because, even as a human, he’s never fallen from grace. Indeed, he was perfectly sinless as Jesus.
Thus, perfectly positioned to be our judge.
The biblical judge is expected to love justice and fair play. He’s expected to loath all ill treatment of one person by another.
Think about it: A corrupt judge who has no interest in seeing right triumph over wrong is, by biblical standards, a monstrosity.
Moreover, a judge who is found to be living a double life–one condemning criminals and one condoning his own crimes–deserves no such respect, honor or admiration.
He SHOULD resign.
However, the judge of the Bible displays 4 characteristics that make Him an impeccable author of justice–and a being far above any charges of corruption or grounds of impeachment:
1. The judge is a person with authority.
He is both the Lawgiver and the Judge. That’s God’s nature.
2. The judge is a person identified with what is good and right.
The Bible leaves us in no doubt that God loves righteousness and hates iniquity and that the ideal of a judge wholly identified with what is good and right is perfectly fulfilled in Jesus.
3. The judge is a person of wisdom, to discern truth.
There is no jury: it his responsibility alone to question, and cross examine. When the Bible pictures God judging it pictures him as a searcher of men’s hearts and the finder of facts. Nothing can escape him. We may fool men, but we cannot fool God. He knows us, and judges us, as we are.
4. Finally, the judge is a person of power to execute sentence.
God is his own executioner. Always potent. Always mighty. As he legislates and sentences, so he punishes. All judicial functions pour into him.
But why even have a judge to begin with? Can’t God just overlook our sins? We’ll explore that next week in a post on retribution and grace.