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Christian Network

"You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." Genesis 50:20

In these words spoken by Joseph, the cast-off boy, later made virtual prince over Egypt, is the essence of the grace of God. Out of what man intends for evil the God of Israel brings good. The Light of the World co-opts even the darkness that opposes Him to serve His redemptive ends.

Grace is defined as unmerited favor. Perhaps never was grace more unmerited than in the case of the brothers of Joseph, who sold him into slavery out of envy and, for all intents and purposes, wrote him off as dead. From our human perspective such an act would seem to make them prime candidates for a divine "smiting." Instead they and their families are saved from famine by the gracious hand of a deeply wronged man who was, like David, a man after God’s own heart. It is stories like these in the Bible that reveal the character of a Deity none of us would have ever created for ourselves. We are a vengeful race. When people do something we consider wrong often our first inclination is to condemn them. This temptation towards angry judgment is not limited to those who do not know the Lord. We Christians are just as likely to have that initial impulse as anyone else.

Sometimes the Scriptures do seem to back up "an eye for an eye" as the only divine answer to wrongdoing. From the 20,000 Israelites swallowed up by the earth in Exodus to the swift punishment visited upon Ananias and Sapphira in Acts we are sobered by the manifest vengeance of God and its ramifications for our own lives. Yet this same Bible speaks of a God who over and over again forgave His erring people, who forgave the adulterer and murderer who was once their king and who, in the likeness of a man, bled and died on a cross to redeem we who were complicit in his murder. A God of judgment, yes, but also One of mercy.

In Joseph we see a type of Christ, an early scriptural figure representing God’s unmerited favor towards guilty human beings. Joseph suffers at the hands of elder brothers who had reason to be angry because of Joseph’s unusual position of favor with their father, yet who ought to have restrained that anger from birthing the sin that made their youngest brother a slave in a far country. But in captivity Joseph proves to be a righteous man and even in the years of hardship springing from what his brothers did to him God prospers everything he touches. Ultimately he is put in a position where he can easily exact revenge against his brothers. Instead he forgives them in tears. Not only does this bring healing to him and his immediate family but also is used to save and prosper the infant people of God and prepare them for the latter miracle of the Exodus. Ultimately Joseph’s act of forgiveness becomes a great link in the chain of destiny of a people who would bless the entire world though Jesus Christ.

We do well to learn from his example.

Elsewhere the Bible tells us that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He is a God of justice but never a God of sadism. The whole counsel of Scripture and, above all, the witness of the cross are testimony to His first desire being the repentance and restoration of human beings to Himself. We are also told that it is His kindness that leads us towards that restoration and repentance. We love only because our Lord first loved us.

Yes, God’s ways are mysterious. We cannot completely comprehend the reasons why He appears to be unbelievably merciful in some situations and sternly punishing in others. But if we take a long, hard honest look at ourselves in the light of what people just like us did outside the walls of Jerusalem 2000 years ago we may come to realize this; that we are always deserving of worse than what God gives us, not better. It is only once we arrive at this place of conviction and humbly cry out to Him for mercy that it becomes possible for His loving grace to turn our own evil, like that of those long ago brothers, into good. As with them we have only to trust the God of Joseph, now revealed to us in Jesus Christ, for the redemption we so desperately need. Then we will know, like Joseph, that for those who truly trust Him, mercy forever triumphs over justice.