“God is Love!” This is a phrase used often by today’s Christians as well as the secular world when telling Christians that they are doing things wrong. It’s also a phrase that is proven by the events we celebrate this week.
If you are a Christian you believe that the creator of the universe sent his only son, one third of the Trinity that he is a part of, to be sacrificed for our sins. I often try to remind myself that even if everyone else on Earth had never sinned, Jesus would have still willingly died because of my sins. He would have done it all just for me. That is a truly amazing thought and the whole idea behind the sentence, “God is love.”
This is what we often spend all of Holy Week focusing on as we should. It’s vitally important that we remember the love Christ had for us and the saving Grace he showed us by dying on the cross and rising again on Easter morning.
What is often left out, and something that I feel today’s society often forgets is why Christ had to die. He didn’t die because Satan required it. He died because justice was required. God the father, though he is all love is also all justice! It is his nature that sin MUST be punished.
Satan tries to get us to sin, to bring us to a place where we don’t think we need Christ and his grace. He tries to convince us that sin isn’t sin but he isn’t the one who requires justice. God the Father requires justice!
So when we say that, “God is love” we are completely accurate but it must be remembered that God is also completely just! If it weren’t for Christ’s grace we would be separated from God for all eternity not because of Satan but because God would not accept our sinful nature! Jesus whipped us clean of sin otherwise God would have cast us away.
I know this might seem like a small detail but I think it goes to the root of much of the world’s obsession with “therapeutic moral deism” and Christian churches around the world starting to fold when it comes to sins in our world. We have forgotten that God is not JUST love. He is just and the only reason we need a savior is because we are sinful. We individually and collectively need to continue to remind ourselves that we are sinners. That things we do, though we may enjoy them or feel proud about them, may very well be sins.
Holy week is all about forgiveness and grace. The forgiveness and grace that is freely given to us because Jesus paid the price that God required.