15 If you put these people to death all at once, the nations who have heard about your power will say, 16 ‘The LORD was not able to bring them into the land he promised them. So he killed them in the desert.’
17 “So show your strength now, Lord. Do what you said: 18 ‘The LORD doesn’t become angry quickly, but he has great love. He forgives sin and law breaking. But the LORD never forgets to punish guilty people. When parents sin, he will also punish their children, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren, and their great-great-grandchildren.’ 19 By your great love, forgive these people’s sin, just as you have forgiven them from the time they left Egypt until now.”
20 The LORD answered, “I have forgiven them as you asked. Numbers 14:15-20
We condemn this wicked idea about works. First, it obscures the glory of Christ when men offer these works to God as a price and propitiation, thus giving our works an honor that belongs only to Christ. Secondly, they still do not find peace of conscience in these works, but in real terror they pile up works and ultimately despair because they cannot find works pure enough. The law always accuses them and brings forth wrath. Thirdly, such people never attain the knowledge of God, for in their anger they flee his judgment and never believe that he hears them.
Shortly after being tortured she was transferred to another cell, where she found a tattered Bible. She opened it, and the first thing she saw was a picture of a man prostrate under lightning, thunder and hail. Immediately she identified herself with this man, saw herself in him. Then she looked further and saw in the upper part of the picture a mighty hand, the hand of God, and the text from the eighth chapter of the Letter to the Romans, a text that comes straight from the center of Resurrection-faith: “Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ” (8:39). And whereas at first it was the bottom half of the picture which she experienced, her being invaded by all that was terrible, crushing her like a helpless worm, she gradually came to experience more and more the other part of the picture, the powerful hand and the “Nothing can separate us”. At first she still prayed, “Lord, let me out of here”, but this interior shaking of the prison bars turned more and more into that truly free composure which prays, with Jesus Christ: “Not my will, but thine, be done.”
Injustice, some would say, is in the eyes of the oppressed. They get to consider what is just, and what is not, or at least a neutral court does. And if the court decides there is more oppression the the judgment isn’t right, the cries of injustice increase, and protests and even civil wars erupt.
I cannot find that sort of reaction in the writing of then Cardinal Ratzinger. I think if you asked the lady tortured about injustice, or it’s pseudonym–unrighteousness–you would get a far different attitude. For she found justice, real justice, in the pages of scripture and the etchings in that Bible. (I wonder if it was a Lutheran Bible – and the picture being of Luther’s desperate plea for God to save him.) The justice she found was so satisfying, that she could leave her situation in the arms of God, and welcome His actions, or inactions.
I envy her spiritual maturity….as I deal with my own challenges.
She encountered the love of God that would not let her go… and it didn’t.
And as she grew to depend on Him, His declaration of her righteousness took hold, and she knew peace in the despair.
That is why Melanchthon and Luther and the group around them so fought that injustice could only be defeated by Christ. That His forgiveness was not dependent on my, or the extreme measures I could take to stop sinning, and pay for those I’ve committed. (nor pawn them off on my descendants and friends – who have their own to deal with!) There is nothing I can do to fight injustice in war-torn regions of the world, but pray and try to help them see Jesus’ power to deal with their own sins, and then, they can see the sins of their “oppressors” dealt with as well.
THis is so clear in the passage from Numbers – Israel’s injustice had to be dealt with. They were rejecting God, they were looking to their own wisdom, they were dismissing His care for them. But God, in His mercy, hears the cry of Moses, and forgives them as promised. Why? Because they were His.
As was the lady imprisoned,
As were you and I…
“Apology of the Augsburg Confession: Article IV, 204” Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959), 135.
Joseph Ratzinger, Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year, ed. Irene Grassl, trans. Mary Frances McCarthy and Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 25–26.