What I'm trying to say is...

I feel like such a plodder, but I'm taking my time for a reason. I've looked at biblical justice in its three forms--retributive, restorative, and distributive--and while my posts are far from exhaustive, I am satisfied that God's justice falls equally on all of God's creatures. Not just on the ones who know about him. Not just on the ones who understand what he prefers (I number myself among those who have not figured this out). Not just on the ones who love him. On all of them. Through God's grace, we all pass the justice test.

Jesus, in love, took on the full force of God's wrath at wrongdoing. We don't have to bear it because Jesus did (Father forgive them for they don't know what they're doing). He died not just for the sins of us Christians, but for the sins of the whole world.

God in Christ is now reconciling the whole world unto himself. He is not willing that any should perish (spiritually that is). God takes no pleasure in the death even of the wicked (Christ took on any displeasure in his death).

God has never reserved his mercy and protection just for "his" people, whether Israelites or Christians. He instructed the Old Testament Israelites to love the alien. He instructed New Testament Christians to love their neighbour (i.e., anyone in need), using one of the "out" crowd (the ostracized, hated, and theologically confused Samaritan) to instruct the "in" crowd of priest and levite.

Does all of this love in action stop at death? Does God then aim his wrath once again at the same creatures for whom Christ had previously made sufficient atonement? Does he, all of a sudden, lose interest in reconciliation and restoration? Does he withdraw the same protection that he commanded his people to provide? And all because we lucky few never got around to telling them about our faith? Despite the fact that we were explicitly commanded to go into all the world to preach the gospel--and didn't?

No, no, a thousand times no. I won't accept a just God suddenly abandoning his own justice. I am forced to conclude that on the basis of God's justice all of his creatures are under his wings unless they choose to fight their way out.

This to me is the fundamental premise behind God's justice. Other uses of the term have short-term implications. Of course God still hates wrongdoing, injustice, selfishness, gossip, exploitation. In justice he moves to intervene at times to stop it and to punish the perpetrators. This applies to all of his creatures as well. But God is evenhanded--or else he is not just.

Now what of love?