"What, do ye suppose that mercy can rob justice? I say unto you, Nay; not one whit. If so, God would cease to be God.
And thus God bringeth about his great and eternal purposes, which were prepared from the foundation of the world. And thus cometh about the salvation and the redemption of men, and also their destruction and misery.
Therefore, O my son, whosoever will come may come and partake of the waters of life freely; and whosoever will not come the same is not compelled to come; but in the last day it shall be restored unto him according to his deeds.
If he has desired to do evil, and has not repented in his days, behold, evil shall be done unto him, according to the restoration of God."
Alma 42:25-28
The ideas here about how mercy and justice work together and "the restoration of God" are interesting. It is a good warning for us when we forget and think that God will put up with our crap forever. He is merciful and will give us whatever chances and replays that we need during this life... he offers this to all of us, which is why evil exists in the world, because he delays judgement through the atonement, Christ paying for our sins and for every wrong deed, if we repent. That way we won't have to suffer the eternal consequences of our mistakes OR our maliciousness, as long as we take his gift to us and use it to become better people, to find our way out of our own darkness and stupidity into his light and his saving grace--the power to make us into better and purer people. The kind that wouldn't do those harmful things that we have done.
However, even though so much of what God offers us is given without any requirements--resurrection and immortality for instance. Those are ours without obligation. Physically, we all will get to be immortal, in perfect bodies. Which is already amazing. The spiritual part of the atonement though requires us to make some choices, and is where the scriptures talk about things like heaven and hell and kingdoms of glory. We don't get a free pass on sin for eternity. That one is a limited-time offer, only available while we're alive. And the reason that it is limited is because God can't delay justice forever. Mercy can't rob justice--eventually every single wrong will be corrected, and every injustice answered. God is a God of mercy, but also of justice, and he can't ignore the blood of his children crying out to him against those who have murdered and wronged them. He won't stop justice. He just stands between us and it, if we are willing to repent and change. He isn't saving us in our sins, but from them... we have to step away and change and reject being the person who did them, so that we have room to become something infinitely better.
Today, let's make sure that we are choosing salvation and redemption rather than destruction and misery. Let's plead with God for help with changing ourselves into better people... for help with using our second chances wisely and improving as we go. Direction is more important than velocity... we can't achieve perfection in this life, but if we are moving towards God and working to change, we have time, and will have time to keep working towards that perfect day. If we're headed in the wrong direction though, let's be careful that we don't run out of time, and start repenting now.
No comments:
Post a Comment