God’s Judgment: When Love Hurts
“. . . One who in judging seeks justice and speeds the cause of righteousness.” Isaiah 16: 5b.
The passage is part of a prophecy Isaiah the prophet spoke about Jesus hundreds of years before His birth. In essence it’s saying that He would bring about justice and righteousness.
I want to talk a little bit about the mechanics of that.
God’s Judgment Is Justice
The purposes of judgment are set forth in this verse. The first is to bring about justice. Because judgment on sinners is justice for the sinned against.
To read this chapter for context, click here.
And the second is to “speed the cause of righteousness”. And this is what I want to expand on in this post.
God’s desire is that we learn righteousness from His word and not have to experience painful correction to learn His ways.
God Doesn’t Give Up on His Stubborn Children
But if we refuse to learn the easy way, God doesn’t just give up on us. He is a good parent.
If we refuse to learn the easy way with a word of correction, He’ll bring out the belt. (God isn’t always one of those “gentle parents” we hear about now days).
He does this all in an effort to cause us to get the message, turn and be healed, and “speed the cause of righteousness”.
I’ve experienced this myself. I had an out-of-control tongue and temper for many years. I know the Lord tried to deal with it using His Word. Both from my personal bible reading and the sermons I was hearing at church.
But I didn’t get the message. And He finally had to bring judgment on me so I would turn and be healed. And to “speed the cause of righteousness”.
I didn’t get the lesson from the first judgment, or even the second. But finally my son’s illness (read the story here) and an extremely painful trigger from my traumatic childhood brought the message home.
I want to elaborate on my son’s illness because I know this is a prickly statement. Because of my rage, there was a lot of stress and strife and fighting in our home when the kids were little. And this son also bore the brunt of an older son’s bullying.
Stress and the Immune System
And there is now plenty of scientific evidence to support the idea that stress adversely affects the immune system in significant ways. In fact, most of the things we go to the doctor for are stress related at bottom.
Additionally, because he was born with a genetic defect, he was more susceptible than the rest of the family.
I also don’t think God caused the illness. But you reap what you sow if you don’t repent. We were sowing to the sinful nature and reaped destruction (Galatians 6: 7, 8).
God’s Judgment Not His First Choice
This was not God’s first choice for us. But it’s infinitely better to learn the hard way than not at all.
This idea seems shocking and unbelievable to us because for so many decades there has been such a focus on the love and grace of God in the church. Almost to the exclusion of any talk of divine judgment.
If not for those judgments, I’m convinced I’d still be wallowing in my sin and misery. Those painful corrections were the greatest expression of love God could’ve shown me under the circumstances.
Because it caused me to turn from my sin and begin to live in God’s blessings.
We should be infinitely grateful for whatever discipline God brings into our lives if it “speeds up the cause of righteousness”. Because it’s only when we’re righteous- when we walk in love- that we begin to also walk in the favor and blessings of God.
To read another post related to God’s Judgment: When Love Hurts, see He Draws Near to the Brokenhearted in Unexpected Ways.