Psalm 103:10-13: God's Non-justice

"He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. / For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; / as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. / As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him."

I bet the title of this devotion this morning caught your attention. "God's Non-justice." What does that mean? Am I saying that God is unjust? Well, certainly not. But am I saying God is sometimes non-just? Certainly. In fact, God's non-justice is the only reason you're saved.

In his book The Holiness of God (which is quickly becoming one of my favorite books ever), R. C. Sproul says this:

"God does not always act with justice. Sometimes He acts with mercy. Mercy is not justice, but neither is it injustice. Injustice violates righteousness. Mercy manifests kindness and grace and does no violence to righteousness. We may see non-justice in God, which is mercy, but we never see injustice in God."

What is Sproul saying here? Well, ultimately, he's explaining Psalm 103:10 to us. In this verse, the psalmist plainly says that God "does not deal with us according to our sins." Hhmm. I don't know about you, but to me that sounds like injustice. If you were in a courtroom and a murderer was on trial, would it not be unjust for the judge to let him go free? Would we not call a judge who lets a murderer go free a vile, horrible, and unjust excuse for an enforcer of the law?

Well, let us take this question a step further and realize that we are the murderers on trial in God's courtroom. We are the sinners, we are the evil-doers who deserve capital punishment. Yet for those of us who are saved, God has certainly not given us the justice that we have deserved. Does that make him unjust? Does the mercy that he has granted upon us make our innocence unfair?

Certainly not. Why? Because of the cross of Christ, our ransom has been met. Christ has paid the eternal punishment for our sins on one afternoon on the cross as God's wrath was poured out on him. The reason why you were able to experience God's mercy, or his non-justice, is because God has poured out his justice on Christ.

We must realize this morning that if we were to get what was fair, we would all be sent to hell. In other words, if we were to plea for justice for ourselves, we would be asking for eternal punishment Yet, God has committed great non-justice as he justly punished Christ on our behalf. J. D. Greear has said many times that the Gospel can easily be put into four words: Jesus in my place. Surely this is true. On the cross, Jesus took your place, and now because he has received wrath, you receive mercy. For surely God has not dealt with you according to your sins, but he has dealt with Christ according to your sins. Let this Gospel reminder fall afresh on you today, and in the righteous response on Psalm 103, let me encourage you to bless the Lord for his non-justice.