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Many people seem to have the idea that God is so nice and merciful that He is willing to forgive everyone. When they go to Him and ask for forgiveness, they take it for granted that it will be given. Following the same line, they think that when someone else is caught doing something wrong, he should be shown mercy, and punishment, if any, should be minimal. Except when someone does wrong to them! Then they say that it is not fair, and that this man should be punished! Suddenly they bring justice, and right and wrong into the picture!

Justice and righteousness are always there with God, even when He shows mercy. That is why our sins had to be punished in order to fulfil His justice before we could be forgiven. He could not just decide to forgive everyone just because He is merciful.

Think of this when it comes to dealing with some loved one or friend who has been doing wrong. Because of our love for him, we want to show him mercy. Then we are also tempted to ignore righteousness and even defend what he has done, even when we know what he has done is wrong. We think that is just our love for him and that it excuses our being unrighteous for his sake!

This is why Jesus said that one of the marks of His disciples would be that they did not allow their love for any of their relatives to become stronger than their love for Him (Mt.10:37). He said the same thing in another place in a stronger manner, that we would even need to 'hate' our loved ones when it came to following Him (Lk.14:26). Of course, this does not mean hatred in the way we normally understand, but that if we had to choose between Him and anyone else, and we chose Him, it would look as if we hated that person.

God is true, righteous, just, impartial, loving, merciful, kind, compassionate, etc. If we think we can be unrighteous or partial, for example, to show love for someone, we are not being true to God. For example, if we were to tell a lie in order to defend someone because we think we love him, we are choosing to 'hate' God. Jesus said we could not serve two masters; in situations like these we would show who our real master is. A similar thing happens when some leader does something wrong, and people think they are being loyal to him by defending him without questioning whether he is right or wrong.

Someone falls in love with an unbeliever. Actually God warns against such a thing because a disagreement between them on such an important issue like faith is going to bring unimaginable tensions between them in the future. But how many people have argued that 'the love they have between them' is so strong that they would easily survive any such differences, and discovered the misery that followed later!

We cannot afford to emphasise one part of God's character to the extent that we override another part. No. God is One, He is unchanging, and He cannot deny Himself. We must learn to know Him and deal with Him as He is in all His manifold nature.

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