Justice, and also love, met at Calvary
Thankfully, there are two facets of our Creator’s
nature we see displayed on Calvary’s hill. The full penalty for the
collective evil of humanity – the cause of all the collective misery,
heartache and pain that has ever been! – deserves undiluted, just
retribution from the Supreme Judge of all. His only begotten Son – one
in nature with His Father – pleads to bear it out of Infinite Love for a
depraved and perverse race which has made hell on earth of what was
originally a Paradise of innocence. (Yes, I believe in an original
Paradise, a fall from grace that followed which distorted the whole of
creation; and I believe in a ‘second Adam to the rescue’. I see more
sense in this than evolvement from protoplasm!). You have every right to
disagree with me! But I believe that at Calvary: ‘God was in Christ
reconciling the world to Himself’. His Son became the world’s sin
bearer, experiencing the righteous wrath of a God whose whole creation
had been horribly marred and - as a consequence – would bring untold
suffering of varying degrees to all forms of life that would inhabit it.
Indeed, to personally appropriate and apply to ones
self what Jesus accomplished by laying down His life, like a lamb to the
slaughter, so as to atone for our sins, is to spiritually – as I see it!
- pass from death to life. To accept this message from the heart
is, undoubtedly, to be born anew. No wonder that John Wesley could
write: “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life. My all”
No wonder that Rev. John Newton – a previous blasphemer and debased
captain of a slave ship – could be transformed by applying this gospel
message to himself! He expressed it in the words of a hymn he wrote:
‘Amazing Grace; how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once
was lost but now am found; was blind but now I see’. And did you
know this? He became a close companion of William Wilberforce, and
equally bitterly opposed - not only to the slave trade - but later to
much animal abuse as well.
I know as an imperfect father that if any of my
children were to do what is most harmful for them as well as for
innocent members of our same family, that the consequences could be
devastating. I already may foresee what the terrible outcome would be.
But this is far from what I want for them. Similarly, our heavenly
Father’s commands for us are for our own good. They’re given to avoid us
from suffering’ But if we still chose to disobey by partaking of ‘the
forbidden fruit’ then we not only bring the penalty upon ourselves but –
like the story behind Adam and Eve – bring the terrible fruits of our
misdeeds on to others because, as the saying goes, ‘no man is an island’
Indeed – what is more! – to step out of place with God is to be out of
place with the rest of His creation so that where there would have been
harmony there came chaos, conflict and confusion
Then we must never blame the atrocious evils of this
world upon God: be it the appalling suffering of animals in a laboratory
run by sadists; or be it a torture chamber where children have been
horribly abused, such as that within the channel Islands!. That there
are, undoubtedly, humans who have sold their souls to Satan and his
legions is scriptural teaching from the beginning; and it’s clearly
taught in the three leading religions that have emanated from Palestine.
But then, we have experiences of such demonic forces not only in
occasional lucid nightmares but through the creation of those horror
films and novels which must have been written by authors possibly
possessed themselves. Indeed, St Paul made it clear: “We fight not so
much against flesh and blood but as against principalities and powers.
Against the rulers of the darkness of this world. Against spiritual
wickedness in high places”.