Justice Meets Mercy (Lent 23, 2024)

It’s such a beautiful thing! Though we were thoroughly condemnable on account of sin, and God has full power to condemn us, He does not. Instead, He made a way for the two facets of His own love to be displayed simultaneously without conflict. Justice meets mercy.

For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life
in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

Justice is love … refusing to let deadly sin rob people of eternal life. Refusing to let death be victorious.

Mercy is love … cradling humanity in kindness and forgiveness, Even while putting sin to death, God offers hope in salvation by faith and rescues those who accept the Cross of Christ.

Exercise: Think about all the ways the word “justice” is used today and its context. If we consider only the biblical meaning, every one of us deserves death and hell. Think about how the word “mercy” is used in today’s culture and by whom. Why might the word “justice” be used more often than “mercy?” How is the authority to condemn connected to one’s reasonable demand of true justice?

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Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014.
Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations. We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17.
ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ. It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.
Lent 2018, we explored the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We asked and answered the questions “Why?” from the movie Life of Pi as we discovered the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in a world of many faiths.
Lent 2019 gave us a deeper window into Easter “More to the Easter Story” since we miss so much when we rely only on a superficial understanding of the work of Christ. These devotionals are archived beginning March 6, 2019.
Our Lent 2020 devotional series offered prayer points surrounding “Be Thou My Vision” and were aimed at helping us to see God for who He is. The full set of devotionals are archived beginning February 26, 2020.
The theme for 2021 Lent Devotionals was how to live between two worlds while waiting for Christ’s return. Into the gap between the City of Man and its fixation upon sin and the City of God with its demand for holiness, two words minister peace: But God. Praise God for His intervention! They are archived beginning February 17, 2021.
Revelation in 40 devotionals for 2022 offered 40 vignettes, scenes, concepts, and thoughts to inspire us to read the Book of Revelation as it is written and to go deeper. They are archived beginning March 2, 2022.
Last year’s devotionals “Created to Display His Image” explored what it truly means to be made in God’s Image and the profound significance of that fact. They are archived beginning February 22, 2023.