Yes, God is both just and merciful.
Nevertheless these two attributes of God contradict each other in the way they would be meted out, apart from the Cross.
That may happen with your doctrine or theology, but not with my understanding. God is wise enough and powerful enough to resolve any apparent contradiction.
Suppose you were a murderer and God is required to mete out a just punishment to you. Such a punishment would be the death penalty according to scripture (Genesis 9:5-6). Now God wants to show you mercy and merely give you life in prison. But He cannot do that because His justice requires the death penalty.
There is no cosmic “Law” out there which God did not write with full foreknowledge of what could happen, so His “law” is totally perfect every exception is taken into consideration and not like the “laws” man have written.
God’s Law took into consideration God’s desire to be merciful and was written with mercy.
Enter the Cross. Jesus died in our place so that you don't have to receive the death penalty. It is theologically called the substitution (so at this point I am not merely trying to teach one who opposes himself but to bring the truth to the onlookers as well).
“For” does not have to mean “instead of” or “in our place” and of the 1000+ times “for” is used in scripture I never see it needing to be translated “instead of”. Can you give me an example beside when you think it is talking about the crucifixion?
The substitution means that Jesus died in the place of the one who deserved the death penalty for their sins. The wages of sin is death. He died in our place so that God could be both merciful and just, not only in His heart, but in His practice towards humankind. He can show you mercy and still be just because He Himself paid the penalty which should have been exacted upon you.
“Penal Substitution” (PS) is never fair or just even when the one being tortures agrees to the torturing.
PS makes God out to have the problem needing something in order to forgive people.
PS has God responsible/cause for the torture, humiliation and murder of Christ.
PS loses all the benefit that comes from disciplining/punishing the guilty
PS does not explain why atonement would not be universal.
If God is Love, how could God have a problem forgiving people? The reason given for “penal substitution” is God cannot forgive us without Jesus being our substitute, but that makes God out to having a problem, lacking in Love someway, and really being almost blood thirsty.
I think you have a problem with understanding it because death is in the equation. If I owed a fine of a million dollars and someone else offered to pay the fine, I do not say that it is unjust of them to pay the fine for me. If I do, I may indeed be rejecting their offer of paying my fine and I will have to pay the fine myself. And if I cannot pay it something worse will happen to me, I will be thrown into debtor's prison with my wife and children until the equivalent of a million dollars in suffering has been exacted from me.
This just creates another huge issue: You say Christ paid the “fine” completely 100%, so we owe nothing, yet we also know God forgave our sins 100%, so we owe nothing. To suggest both are needed by God makes God’s forgiveness much less or totally insignificant or it makes Christ’s payment to God virtually not needed or of little significance. The answer given is “Will that is just the way it is”? (Totally illogical and yet the cross is something we really need to understand).
Yes we are crucified with Christ; but this refers not to paying the penalty for my sins but rather to the death to my flesh that takes place so that I can live the Christian life!
Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
If Christ had not been crucified you would loss the benefit of being
crucified with Christ so what would be your loss?
Do you feel any “pain” with being crucified with Christ?
When do you experience this crucifixion and how often?
Look at Acts 2 because Peter gives the first Christian “Christ crucified” sermon to nonbelievers and in it he never mentions Christ going to the cross as their replacement, but does talk about them Crucifying the Lord and Messiah (Acts 2:36). 3000 realized what they had done and experience the most painful feeling they could experience and live with a death blow to their heart. In that sever pain they cry out with their last breath “What can we do!” , which is what we want to hear from every nonbeliever. So did the cross for those 3000 help them to turn their lives around (repent)? Did they hear or see Christ’s death as helping God out to forgive them or did they experience God’s disciplining of their sin and see Christ’s crucifixion creating an even greater need for God’s forgiveness (Love/charity/grace/mercy).
Christ’s torture, humiliation and murder were hugely significant in the conversion of those 3000 on the day of Pentecost, so can we say it directly helped those 3000 for Christ to be crucified?
So then, Jesus died in our place so that the sinner can receive mercy; and in the case of the murderer he does not even have to receive life in prison from the eternal perspective. The blood of Jesus was shed in order that we might receive forgiveness (Ephesians 1:7, Colossians 1:14 KJV)
Eph. 1: 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace
Col. 1: 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Forgiveness comes with atonement and the blood is the cleansing factor for us, but it is not saying it is given to God. Anything done in obedience to God can be offered up to god as worship, like giving gifts to the needy is worship to God but the gift itself goes to the needy.
