INTRODUCTION
In the beginning, the eternal and holy God chose to create the world and us. As the holy, eternal, sovereign Lord of all that exists, including us, God is the One who is the Ruler of the world. He is the One in authority. He is, therefore, the One who determines and defines the appropriate boundaries for human life, the One who makes the rules and dictates the outcomes for disobedience to those rules.
In this module we look at God in the context of sin, a context in which law, order, justice and government are necessitated. It is also the context in which God becomes known as a God of mercy and grace, in which the immeasurable extent of his love becomes evident.
It is not that in the context of sin God becomes anything that he was not in his eternal existence, nor that he becomes in the context of sin anything that he was not in the context of the virgin creation. But here, in the context of sin, what God is and always has been, is seen and known.
He has always been the Righteous One – he has always been just and pure and good and light.
He has always been the God of incredible grace, the very existence of the creature is evidence of that.
Here, in the context of sin, we are confronted, in a way we were not confronted in the primal virgin creation, with God as the righteous Judge, and God as the God of grace, the Saviour, the Redeemer.