Tag: Our Judgment of God’s Judgments

“The judgments of the Lord are true; they are righteous altogether.” ~ Psalm 119:9 NASB

Over the past several months, I have found myself spontaneously confessing before God, “Lord, You are right when You judge.” His judgment has been on my mind and His rightness on my heart, so we’ve been blogging lately on topic of judgment. In our October 16 post, we viewed judgment as a kindness, for as a medical diagnosis directs us toward healing, so divine judgment ushers us toward mercy. Then in our October 30 post, we confessed our own unsuitability for the task, for not only are we capable of false judgment, we are actually prone to it. We crave justice only God can wield, yet we judge Him for the way in which He wields it. So, today, let’s address this irony of ironies — our judgment of God’s judgments.

One giant misstep for us is to blame God for not judging, or not judging soon or severely enough to our liking. The prophet Habakkuk muses before God, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?”¹ Today, we ponder the same, but articulate it differently: “How can a loving God allow so much injustice in the world?” which is to say, why isn’t God as impatient and intolerant as we are?

Our second faux pas is to blame God for judging too harshly. When Job — the archetype of suffering — and his “friends” [cough, cough] exhausted their accusations and advice, God broke His silence and asserted His authority: “Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself?”² For 35 canonical chapters, these men had judged God’s judgment, and unjustly so. It took God just two rhetorical questions to cut to the heart of the matter. Likewise, who are we to judge God judgments, and why would presume to try? As He spoke through Isaiah, “Woe to him who strives with him who formed him . . .”³

So let us cease subjecting God’s judgment to our Goldilocks assessments — too hot or too cold, and too hard or too soft. For His judgments are just right, or “righteous altogether.” ⁴ They lead us to His mercy . . .

 . . . and “mercy triumphs over judgment.”⁵

“Yes, Lord God the Almighty, true and just are your judgments!”⁶ You are “justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.”⁷ We trust in Your judgments and rest in Your mercy. For in Christ we live, and in His name we pray. Amen.

¹ Habakkuk 1:13 NIV, emphases added
² Job 40:8 NIV
³ Isaiah 45:9 ESV
⁴ Psalm 119:9 NASB
⁵ James 2:13 ESV
⁶ Revelation 16:7 ESV
⁷ Psalm 51:4 ESV