… I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion—One who relents from sending disaster.

— Jonah 4:2b

He is the Rock, His work is perfect; all His ways are just. A God of faithfulness without injustice, righteous and upright is He.

— Deuteronomy 34:2

… you disregard justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former.

— Luke 11:42b

Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of His inheritance—who does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in unfailing love?

–Micah 7:18

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit,

— 1 Peter 3:18

25 God presented Him as an atoning sacrifice in His blood through faith, in order to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance He had passed over the sins committed beforehand.

26 He did this to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and to justify the one who has faith in Jesus.

— Romans 3:25-26

Thoughts on Today’s Reading

Grace, mercy and love from Christ to you.

God’s justice and mercy revealed throughout the Old Testament gain momentum as the New Testament brings clarity to God’s redemptive plan. God mercifully rescued the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. Amazingly, God sent His Son, Jesus, to rescue His people from sin’s slavery by delivering them through Jesus’s blood. The life and death of the Lord Jesus Christ perfectly express God’s justice and mercy.

Throughout His earthly ministry, Jesus both taught and practiced justice and mercy while exhibiting the blessed consistency and harmony between the two. He showed compassion for the oppressed and pronounced judgment on the oppressor. No moment in human history better illustrates the convergence of God’s justice and mercy than Jesus’s death on the cross. Jesus simultaneously satisfied God’s justice and mercifully liberated sinners from their bondage to sin.