“Yet you say, The way of the Lord is not fair and just. Hear now, O house of Israel: Is not My way fair and just? Are not your ways unfair and unjust?” Ez 18:25 AMP
One of the greatest challenges to our faith is a line of thinking that calls into question God’s fairness, His goodness, and His plan. Sometimes when we are under the gun, when we are in the thick of life’s challenges, because I don’t like what is currently happening, I may be tempted to conclude: God is unfair. Because the circumstances that are playing out in my life or another’s seem overwhelming, as a result, I may label God as unfair in my heart and thinking. This is a problem: God is greater than the circumstances I see; and God is fair.
This is the line of belief that I believe the Lord is crafting and sculpting in each of His believers. But unlike you and I, He is not afraid to allow many and varied opportunities to arise where we easily can indulge a less charitable estimation of Him.
I want to assure you: He is good (fair); and He is greater than any situation we face.
Sometimes in our haste to process events before us, we label them too quickly. We seek to orient ourselves to the issue, so we begin to decide that it is either good or bad. But even Jesus Himself abstained from judging the situation.
Listen to John 5:30:
I am able to do nothing from My-self [independently, of My own accord – but only as I am taught by God and as I get His orders]. Even as I hear, I judge [I decide as I am bidden to decide. As the voice comes to Me, so I give a decision], and My judgment is right (just, righteous), because I do not seek or consult My own will [I have no desire to do what is pleasing to Myself, My own aim, My own purpose] but only the will and pleasure of the Father Who sent Me.”
What He is describing here is His operation in the Spirit. He did not even trust His own soul (His will, intellect, or emotions) to decide a thing, for His own soul would have brought forth a rendering in the flesh. That is what our soul is … flesh.
Instead, He abided in faith with the Father and received through the Spirit the opinion and dictates of the Father, and acted upon those. He was obedient in all His ways. And He has through His Spirit abiding and dwelling in us, made a way for us to live in the same deference to the Father as He did. We too can live in such obedience … through the Grace that He has extended to us.
Now, back to the topic at hand…
In Ezekiel chapter 18, the Lord presents a defense of how He is fair. He presents descriptions of righteousness juxtaposed with wickedness. A life of righteous deeds leads to living. A life of wicked deeds leads to death. This is just one such description:
But if the righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity and does according to all the abominations that the wicked man does, shall he live? None of his righteous deeds which he has done shall be remembered. In his trespass that he has trespassed and in his sin that he has sinned, in them he shall die.” Ez 18:24
This death He describes is because of an important condition known as sin that has become fully matured. James 1:13-15 discusses how we are all tempted by our evil desire (lusts and passions). When this evil desire is conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully matured, brings forth death.
This is the death that was first set in motion in the Garden of Eden. This is the death that Adam and Eve passed to all mankind as an inheritance: the death of our connection and fellowship with God in the spirit; and a capacity to forever after only be ruled by sin.
Enter then the Son of God as the Son of Man: God incarnate — the Living Word made flesh. He takes upon Himself the sins of the World and dies upon the Cross with all of our sins ( and the note that was in force against us). He rises after three days to a new life and gives us who would receive it, a new life in Christ.
For the first time ever, man is not held captive to his old man nature to sin and self, but now he can live according to God’s new nature in us!
The problem back in Ezekiel Chapter 18 is that ultimately no one under the law could become righteous. The law itself could not make us better; it could never give us a new nature. It could only condemn or approve us. God was looking for more that just qualified behavior – He was looking for a return to the fellowship with man that was lost with Adam. Why? Because only then could He reveal, and disclose, and transmit the love that He has for us – through the agency of His Son’s death on the Cross, and the Holy Spirit coming to dwell inside us.
Now the discussion in Ezekiel 18 is about God’s fairness in assessing right and wrong. Because there is no darkness in Him, His judgment is always perfect. But because God wanted more than just to be right about us – He wanted to be with us (Emmanuel – God with us), the grace of the Son was required to cover us from all iniquity – even the operation of our own soulish derived thinking and doing that fell short of the glory of God.
So that is what He does. God gives us grace (God’s riches at Christ’s expense) to cover us with love against judgment while He works in us to make us what we ought to become. The Lord is ever working upon us and within us for a long-term, eternal destiny of fellowship that exceeds all time and overcomes the oxidation power of the world to derail us.
That’s what He did — now what are we to do?There are requirements for us as well to live a life that includes obedience, repentance, worship, and being a disciple of Christ. (But that is another topic).
So, is God fair? That’s like asking if eternity is endless. That is not even a debatable question: He is as far above fair as the heavens are to us. He has given us all things for life and godliness — and by means of these He has bestowed on us His precious and exceedingly great promises, so that through them we may escape [by flight] from the moral decay (rottenness and corruption) that is in the world because of covetousness (lust and greed), and become sharers (partakers) of the divine nature. (2Pet 1:3-4)
He has freed us in Christ from fears, agitating passions, and moral conflicts. By His boundless mercy we have been born again to an ever-living hope in Christ Jesus. We are born anew into an inheritance that is beyond the reach of change and decay, and is kept for us unfading, and unsullied in heaven. We are garrisoned (guarded) by God’s power through our faith until we fully inherit the salvation held for us in the last days. And we should be exceedingly glad about all that, even though we may be distressed by trials and suffer temptations. Because this testing is going to prove the genuineness of our faith and will redound to our praise and glory and honor when the Messiah is revealed. (1Pet 1:2-7)
Is God fair? A better question might be: “What more could have been done for My vineyard that I have not done in it? (Is 5:4) What has God left undone that needs to be done?
That answer was declared by Jesus at the Cross: “It is finished!” Jn 19:30 Nothing more was needed of Him at that time in His earthly life. Yet He ever lives to make intercession for us. He will never leave us or forsake us. And He has gone to prepare a place for us so that where He is we can be also. And there is a day ahead, when we will be gathered before Him at the marriage supper of the Lamb…
So, is He fair? More than we can ever imagine. More than our greatest hope… We can trust Him. We can lean on Him without caution… He is worthy of all our confidence and more.
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