Believer, is God unjust in His dealings with humanity? May it never be! Our God is a just God, and any penalties He imposes for sin are surely earned and absolutely justified.

Yet God is also a merciful God. In His patience, He delayed punishment for many, waiting for the appointed time when His salvation would be revealed in Christ. And so, He how shows mercy and justifies those who believe (Rom. 3:21-26).

To whom does He show this mercy? To whomever He pleases, according to His will. As Scripture says, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy…So then, He has mercy on whom He desires…” (Rom. 9:15-18). Does that make Him unjust? By no means!

As already stated, He is just and justified in condemning those who sin, for that condemnation is earned. Showing mercy to some is in not injustice - it is grace. “Where then is boasting? It is excluded” (Rom. 3:27), because our justification is not earned, it is granted.

It is God who justifies. It is God who saves. It is God who chooses, as Jesus even said to His disciples, “you did not choose Me, but I chose you” (Jn. 15:16).

Let us therefore be humbled by the fact that God is “just, and the justifier of the one who has faith” (Rom. 3:26). We have contributed nothing to our salvation except the sin that made it necessary. We do not justify ourselves, but in His mercy, God justifies us according to His will, for His glory. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9).

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Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening Devotions

Morning, September 25

"Just, and the justifier of him which believeth." Romans 3:26

Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Conscience accuses no longer. Judgment now decides for the sinner instead of against him. Memory looks back upon past sins, with deep sorrow for the sin, but yet with no dread of any penalty to come; for Christ has paid the debt of His people to the last jot and tittle, and received the divine receipt; and unless God can be so unjust as to demand double payment for one debt, no soul for whom Jesus died as a substitute can ever be cast into hell. It seems to be one of the very principles of our enlightened nature to believe that God is just; we feel that it must be so, and this gives us our terror at first; but is it not marvellous that this very same belief that God is just, becomes afterwards the pillar of our confidence and peace! If God be just, I, a sinner, alone and without a substitute, must be punished; but Jesus stands in my stead and is punished for me; and now, if God be just, I, a sinner, standing in Christ, can never be punished. God must change His nature before one soul, for whom Jesus was a substitute, can ever by any possibility suffer the lash of the law. Therefore, Jesus having taken the place of the believer- having rendered a full equivalent to divine wrath for all that His people ought to have suffered as the result of sin, the believer can shout with glorious triumph, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" Not God, for He hath justified; not Christ, for He hath died, "yea rather hath risen again." My hope lives not because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am holy, but that being unholy, He is my righteousness. My faith rests not upon what I am, or shall be, or feel, or know, but in what Christ is, in what He has done, and in what He is now doing for me. On the lion of justice the fair maid of hope rides like a queen.