“God … devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast.” 2 Samuel 14:14
The woman from Tekoa said many things that were sadly misleading, but she also spoke this wonderful truth that points us forward to the very heart of the gospel.
God is a loving Father, and yet God is also the King. God loves sinners, but the wages of sin is death. So God does what David could not do: He devises means to solve this great dilemma.
Think about David’s pain and what it was for David to live with his awful dilemma. It gives us a shaft of light into the heart of God himself. David loves his rebel son, and he will not let him see justice. David is saying, “He’s my son. I cannot give him up!”
That is how God loves you at your worst. God says of his own people, “How can I give you up?” (Hos. 11:8). He says, “I can’t give you up to justice. So here’s what I’ll do. I’ll stand myself in the place of the justice that is due to you. I’ll take it in my own self; I’ll take it in the person of my own dearly loved Son.”
God did not abandon justice for the sake of love. And he did not withhold love for the sake of justice. He brought them together at the cross where his own Son stood in our place. Jesus faced justice so that we should enjoy the Father’s love. And to every person who is in Jesus Christ, to all who will come to him in faith and in repentance, he offers this amazing forgiveness and reconciliation and access into his grace and presence forever.
Give thanks that God has brought his love and justice together at the cross so you can be reconciled to him.
