Summary:

 God is a God of justice, and justice demands judgment. God is also a God of grace. How crucial that we, as Seventh-day Adventist Christians, proclaiming the three angels’ messages, understand both these divine truths and what they reveal to us about our God.  

How do grace and judgment work together? Here’s how inspiration reveals it.

“While Jesus is pleading for the subjects of His grace, Satan accuses them before God as transgressors. The great deceiver has sought to lead them into skepticism, to cause them to lose confidence in God, to separate themselves from His love, and to break His law. Now he points to the record of their lives, to the defects of character, the unlikeness to Christ, which has dishonored their Redeemer, to all the sins that he has tempted them to commit, and because of these he claims them as his subjects.

 “Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known”(Matt. 10:26).

Looking around at the world, we shouldn’t have a problem understanding the idea of judgment and condemnation. One doesn’t have to be a believing Christian to realize that something is radically wrong with humanity. Who can’t see what a royal mess, even disaster, we’ve made of things? Maybe we cry so hard at birth because, instinctively, we know what’s coming. “I cried when I was born and every day shows why,” a poet wrote. Who can’t relate? Who hasn’t himself or herself been the victim of just how greedy, selfish, and mean people can be? Or who hasn’t at some point been the greedy, selfish, and mean one?

Thus, if God is just, and if justice were His only major attribute, who among us would stand before Him? If the Lord knows even our secret things, our secret deeds (Eccles. 12:14) (much less what we have done in public), what chance would even the godliest among us have on the day of judgment, when all these things will be revealed?

Fortunately, though, our God is also a God of grace. The whole plan of salvation was established so that every human being could, ideally, be spared the condemnation that God’s justice would demand. Without grace, we’d all be consumed by God’s justice. Our only hope, then, standing before a just God, is grace.

Read the first angel’s message in Revelation 14:6, 7. How do these verses reveal the link between God’s justice and His grace? How do they also parallel what we saw in Genesis 3 and how it showed the relationship between grace and judgment?  

How interesting that before the warning that the “hour of His judgment has come” (NKJV), the angel is proclaiming the “everlasting gospel.” It has to be that way, otherwise the judgment would condemn all humanity. No one would have a chance because all have sinned, all have violated God’s law. Here, among the last warning message to the world, God’s grace is proclaimed. Otherwise, judgment would condemn everyone, without exception. Without grace, what message would we have for the world other than that God is going to destroy us all and there’s no hope of escape? Fortunately, the message we have has the “everlasting gospel” as its foundation.

What role are you playing in helping spread this message of judgment and grace to others? What more could you do to help spread it because, most likely, you could be doing more, right? Right?   

Most everyone is familiar with John 3:16. What comes after, though, helps flesh it out and explain it even better.

Read John 3:17–21. What does it say about judgment? About grace? How do these verses reveal to us how grace and judgment work together?  

The word translated “condemn” in verse 17 is also translated in some versions as “judge.” Clearly, though, the context is that of condemnation, because God has made it clear in numerous other places that the world will be judged.

Two themes appear in these texts, grace and judgment, and they are radically intertwined. Sin and darkness and evil have brought the need for a God of justice to judge and condemn these things. At the same time, God’s grace offers those who are guilty a way out, and that comes by faith in Jesus Christ.

He that believes in Jesus is not condemned. That’s what the texts say. It’s that simple. Christ’s righteousness covers that person, and that person stands without condemnation, now and in the judgment.

What reason do the texts give for condemnation?  

According to these texts, the default state of humanity is that of condemnation. And that’s because all have sinned and all deserve the death that sin brings. These texts clearly debunk the notion that, after the Cross, all humanity was automatically justified. Instead, after the Cross, the whole condemned world was now offered salvation through the atoning death of Jesus Christ, which was sufficient for every human being. Everyone stands condemned; everyone, though, who through the grace of Christ accepts the provision offered, stands pardoned, justified, and redeemed through Jesus. The condemnation that was theirs is, through the merits of Jesus, canceled, and they stand in His perfect righteousness.

In fact, what does grace mean apart from the prospect of condemnation? Just as the idea of condemnation implies judgment, so does the idea of grace. Were there no potential for judgment (and condemnation), there would be no need for grace. The notion of grace itself all but demands the notion of condemnation. Hence, more reason to see how grace and judgment are linked.

How should we act if we discovered that the Second Advent would occur today? John Wesley somewhere put it correctly when he said that if he had such information he would go on doing just what he did every day in preaching God’s message and loving God’s people.

William Barclay points out the bottom line of the practical lesson of the synoptic apocalypse. It means “that we must so live that it does not matter when He comes. It gives us the great task in life of making every day fit for Him to see, and being at any moment ready to meet Him face to face. All life becomes a preparation to meet the King.”

-George Knight, “The Apocalyptic Vision and the Neutering of Adventism”

Critics of the Bible make a big deal of the fact that other ancient civilizations had their own flood stories. They argue that the Bible story isn’t unique, original, or even true but is merely a copy of some previous myth or legend.

On the other hand, those who believe that the Bible is the Word of God see these stories as a confirmation of the reality of the Flood. The Flood happened, and Genesis gives the inspired account of it. This account stands in contrast to the other versions, such as the one that says the Flood was sent because humans in their nightly feasting made too much noise and disturbed the gods’ sleep. The gods, cranky from lack of rest, sent the flood to punish them.

What reason does the biblical account of the Flood give for the judgment that was to come upon the earth? Gen. 6:5.  

The idea of humans being so evil that they deserved death and destruction shouldn’t be that hard to fathom, not for us today, living as we do in a world where evil just gets worse and worse. The Christian view of human sinfulness, though often derided, is constantly being verified. That we are capable of good deeds doesn’t make us good. After all, American mobster Al Capone loved children, was generous to a fault, and treated his friends kindly. Who, though, would call him a good man?

Even amid the impending promise of retributive judgment, how is God’s grace revealed in the Flood account? (See Gen. 6:14–22, 2 Pet. 2:5.)  

By building the ark, Noah was giving the world a warning about judgment. What’s implied, too, is that there was a grace period, a chance for the world to turn from its evil ways and accept God’s salvation. Ellen White wrote that had “the antediluvians believed the warning, and repented of their evil deeds, the Lord would have turned aside His wrath.”—Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 97. The building of the ark offered anyone who would heed the warning a refuge of safety from the coming destruction. No question, judgment was coming. But grace was offered to all who would accept it until it was too late, and the door of mercy was shut.

How often has God revealed His grace to you? More times than you can count, probably. How can you learn to better surrender to that grace and have it mold you into the image of Christ?  

Think about this: before sin, there was no need of grace because there was nothing to forgive, nothing to pardon, nothing to cover. It’s the same with judgment. Before sin, there was nothing to judge, nothing to condemn, nothing to be punished. Both grace and judgment arise, at least in a human context, only because of humanity’s sin.

Read Genesis 3, the account of the Fall. In what ways are both themes, that of judgment and grace, revealed?  

Satan succeeded in bringing sin into the world, changing everything as a result. Immediately, though, the Lord entered, calling out “Where are you?” This question doesn’t have to be seen as condemnatory; it was more an invitation to come to Him, the One who created and loved them. It was a call to turn away from their deceiver and to return to their Maker.

Notice, too, what happens. The first few lines from the mouth of God in this fallen world are questions (see Gen. 3: 9, 11, 13). Then the first thing God says after He’s done questioning is to declare His judgment against the serpent. But next, in verse 15, even amid His judgment against the serpent, what does God say?

Verse 15 is the first gospel promise. As soon as He declares His judgment against the serpent, He then immediately gives the first message of grace, of redemption, of salvation for humanity. And only then, only after that gospel promise, does He start declaring His judgments against the woman and the man. Though they fell, the first things God gives them are hope and grace—the grace that forms the background against which judgment is to unfold. Thus, even before judgment, the promise of grace is given for those who will accept it.

It’s too late for Satan; his destruction is assured. But there, even amid the judgments passed on to the man and the woman, God makes His grace known.

At the beginning of fallen human history, then, a relationship between sin, judgment, and God’s grace emerges. Though God must judge and condemn sin, the promise of grace is always there, always present, always available for those who will claim it for themselves.

In what ways might the Lord be saying to you, “Where are you?” What are you doing that, perhaps, is causing you to hide from Him? Why is understanding grace a crucial first step in heeding His call to draw near to Him and away from the deceiver?