THERE IS LOVE IN DIVINE JUDGMENTS
In general we see things, situations and the world from perspectives that we acquire throughout life. Therefore, a certain fact can receive several interpretations. However, our value judgments do not always correspond to reality, because things and situations have their own intrinsic senses regardless of the opinions and visions they receive.
How to understand the plagues allowed by God over Egypt? They transformed the greatest economic and military power of the time into a devastated country. And what about the last plague? The text says, "At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as weell" (Exodus 12.29). Would God delight in human suffering? Is He evil?
In the book of the prophet Naum it is written, "The Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished" (1.3). Evil will not prevail or go unpunished. Accepting this means seeing this question from the divine perspective and not ours. Egypt represents the typical man-made world after the Fall in which many gods are worshiped, but not the Creator; and the human being is reduced to mere object of exploitation by the stronger one. In those judgments, God has shown that this system will not be perpetuated, but it will have an end.
An accurate reflection will show that in those plagues, in those divine judgments there was love. He did not need to reach the tenth judgment; only came because of Pharaoh's obstinacy. Love was in the fact that at the same time the pain came upon the Egyptians; salvation came upon the Jews. There is love in the divine judgments, but it is necessary to understand that for the good to prevail; evil must be extirpated. It follows, then, that love involves a certain amount of suffering. But this is not by divine will, but by the human condition of decay.
He sent a flood upon mankind to purge it, for evil had become widespread. Israel was taken into the Babylonian captivity so that it would not be extinguished in the practices of the Canaanite religion. The Apocalypse is the narrative of his judgments to put an end to this world system and establish an order in which He Himself will live with men. And what about his own sacrifice in the person of the Son, for man, delivering him from the condemnation of eternal death? There is love in divine judgments.
Brunner (2010, p.301), in his Dogmatic, speaks of this "dialectic tension between Wrath and Mercy" of God. He writes:
Even in hell, God is present, not as the God revealed in Jesus Christ as Love, but in his wrath, which is a Consumer Fire. Where Jesus Christ is, there is Light and Salvation; where Light and Salvation are not present, Jesus Christ is not present. But God is still there, as the God of Wrath: "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on them" (John 3:36) (BRUNNER, 2010, p. 298).
This aspect of being God can be difficult for man to understand and accept, because the fallen human being has his visions about Him and lives the illusion of wanting to domesticate Him. Brunner (2010, p.299), however, points out that "the mystery of God is not exhausted by the Son". "This freedom of God, for the purpose of salvation and judgment, light and darkness, life and death, is the inscrutable mystery of God, which even in the revelation of the Son remains a mystery.
Antônio Maia - M.Div.
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BRUNNER, Emil. Dogmática – Vol 1, Doutrina Cristã de Deus. São Paulo: Fonte Editorial, 2010
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