And this is Revelation's statement of the answer the Lamb has conquered, has defeated the powers of evil And now (Revelation 5:9-10) the Lamb has ransomed people from every nation in order to make them a royal priesthood, serving God and reigning on the earth.
This theme, so frequent in the New Testament and so widely ignored in Christian theology, is part of the solution to the problem. It isn't that the cross has won the victory, so there's nothing more to be done. Rather, the cross has won the victory as a result of which there are now redeemed human beings getting ready to act as God's wise agents, his stewards, constantly worshiping their Creator and constantly, as a result, being equipped to reflect his image into his creation, to bring his wise and healing order to the world, putting the world to rights under his just and gentle rule. A truly biblical ecclesiology should focus not so much on the fact that the church is the community of the saved but that the church is the community of those who, being redeemed through the cross, are now to be a kingdom and priests to serve God and to reign on the earth. Our fear of triumphalism on the one hand, and on the other hand our flattening out of our final destiny into talk merely of "going to heaven," have combined to rob us of this central biblical theme. But until we put it back where it belongs we won't see how the New Testament ultimately offers a solution to the problem of evil.
God, then, will put the world to rights and will do so in a manner consistent with the design and plan of creation from the beginning. And now it should become apparent that God's action in Jesus -- to redeem a people for himself and to set them in authority over the world -- leaves God, so to speak, in the clear. (Evil and the Justice of God, N.T. Wright,139-140)
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From this, I come to understand that God is just in that He does not succumb to the accusation from Satan that creation can no longer be redeemed in the way God designed and promised it would be. God denied evil's insistent that creation must be destroyed before it can be renewed and the accusation that God is wrong in how He designed creation and how He promised to redeem it after its fall in Genesis 1-3.
God is justified because He redeemed creation in the way He designed it and in the way He promised in His covenant with Abraham. He redeemed through another Son of Man or the Last Adam, Jesus, who is also the Seed of Abraham. (Romans 4-5)
God does not succumb to evil's accusation that creation is beyond all redemption in the way God designed it and it must be destroyed. And God must admit He's wrong in His creation and redemption plan. God defeated Satan's accusation that God is wrong and He's not God and good. Because if He destroys His creation, He is a destroyer rather than the Creator. If He destroys rather than restores, God has become bad rather than good. God would be denying Himself. God is no longer God and Satan would have succeeded as the accuser and the usurper.
Hallelujah that through Jesus, the Last Adam, God defeated evil and redeemed creation in the way He designed it, through a Son of Man, and as He promised to Abraham, through his Seed. All glory be to Jesus. Amen.
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