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You must have come across parents who protect their erring children because they think they love them. Love is a great virtue. But if we allow love to overrule honesty or justice, we go wrong, don't we? In the above example, such a misplaced love will harm the children in the long run. But we can see how this tendency is in our sinful flesh to justify the wrong we do by thinking of some virtue we are supposedly trying to uphold. We are deceived into thinking that we are right even when we are doing wrong, because at that moment our focus is on a real virtue. In the process, we ignore or negate another virtue.

The great thing about God is that He is always, simultaneously, a personification of all virtues. The Bible says that He is light and there is no darkness in Him (1Jn.1:5). There can never be anything wrong or bad about anything He does. But until we think deeply about this, we cannot really understand the implications. That is why many people question God about, for example, how a loving God can allow His children to suffer injustice or how He can discipline them.

Christians have heard that God is love. We associate His love with His mercy, patience, compassion, kindness, etc. But along with that, at the same time, God is also completely holy, righteous, just, sovereign and impartial. For example, He could not ignore His justice on one side and forgive our sins, saying He loves us. He had to punish our sin because of His justice and righteousness. But in order to demonstrate His love and mercy towards us, He took the punishment on Himself through His Son dying for us (Ro.5:8). Thus He was both just and loving at the same time. Do meditate more on this with reference to different questions we may have about this.

A father who denies his child's wrong behaviour before the teacher, thinking that this is how he shows his love for his child does not understand that we cannot deny one virtue in order to follow another. What a child learns from such a father are 'cheap grace' and 'forgiveness without repentance'! But if the father accepts the truth about his child and makes amends with the teacher, he can show his love to his child by standing with the child in the shame and humiliation that come from it. One one side he can take on himself the repercussions such as paying a fine or expenses for damages. On another side he can take time to explain to the child what was wrong with his or her behaviour, teaching the child how to behave in the future in such situations, disciplining the child and explaining how that discipline is coming from true love and a desire for the child's eternal good.

By nature, all of us have different inclinations towards some virtue more than other virtues. For example, some find it easier to overlook someone's faults, while some others cannot let go of a sense of justice. We have to learn not to remain 'natural' in this way, but to become balanced in order to become really godly.

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