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Acquitting the Guilty

             Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent— the Lord detests them both. (Proverbs 17:15)

There’s a lot of acquitting and condemning going on, and those who are doing it are sure that they are acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty. But of what are they innocent or guilty? How can we determine it? For some (and I am not among them) the guilty and innocent include anyone within certain collectives: one skin color is guilty, another is innocent. One income bracket is guilty, another is innocent, etc. And above all else, those who agree with someone are innocent, while those who disagree are not only guilty, but guilty of all of the worst possible crimes. Those who disagree are “literally Hitler” even if they don’t agree with anything Hitler believed or did.

Some people believe that what makes a person guilty or innocent is entirely up to the subjective perspective of the observer. If that is the case, then anyone can condemn anyone for anything. If someone thinks it’s wrong to walk down a specific street at a certain time of day wearing a particular outfit, they are justified in assaulting or even killing the guilty party. We might think the assault or killing to be the crime. If there is no objective standard, there is no standard at all. You could be declared guilty by one person and innocent by another, and whether or not  you live depends on who gets to you.

God has a different perspective. Some might say that (if it exists) God’s perspective is entirely subjective because it’s all up to what God decides, and God can change His mind at any time. He punishes one person for something seemingly little, but lets a whole group of people get away with something terrible. Or, sometimes, He forgives one person for doing something that He doesn’t forgive another for doing. How is that objective? The problem, of course, is that these statements are simplifications and subject to incomplete understandings of the situation. If nothing else, since these accusations are made by someone other than God, they lack God’s understanding or perspective. We have not been God. On the other hand, God (the Son) has been a person. He has already paid the price for all sin (even those sins we attribute to Him.) His perspective certainly deserves greater respect than our own.

Even if we didn’t agree that condemning the innocent and acquitting the innocent were wrong in all cases, in general we agree. The application gets skewed by our perspectives, but the principle, and God’s agreement with the principle is obvious

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