20 1May the LORD answer you when you are in distress; may the name of the God of Jacob protect you."
The Psalmist teaches that every thing that has ever come into the world has been devised and decreed by God. God is the Elohim of reality. God is the creator and Lord or Jehovah. Jehovah is the God who his purposes are fulfilled according to His covenant. In other words God did not create in order to right one law for one miss deed, but in order to establish a relationship with mankind. Instead of demanding complete obedience to the law as a prerequisite to being acceptable , God entered time and accomplished the work by carrying the whole weight of distress that resulted from a fallen world, upon Himself. So there is only one problem with mankind. It is the the problem with sin that brought an adversarial relationship with God. The cry of all mens hearts is to be accepted. When man is not accepted he is distressed.
But the problem is much deeper than designing a world where all men are unified by all other men accepting them. The problem is that when man sinned he fell from the ability to deal with the level of distress that must be carried in order to be the final help to other men. Because sin brought corruption and corruption is a violent act against God and other men. In other words God acts according to what He has accomplished. God is the only one who can promise and demand perfect obedience because He accomplished that in Christ. You see the whole purpose of Christ dwelling among men was not to destroy them by each encounter in the demands that He met and they failed ,but it was to be the Savior who walked as a substitute in a love that demanded for them to be treated like He wanted to be treated.All men deserve to be accepted because the law is that we are to treat other men like we want to be treated. So the object of our acceptance has no bearing on demands to offer acceptance. This is why where ever Christ walked He healed all men. How do we become a person like the apostle who says that he does not view men according to the flesh?
We must understand that all sin is the cause of the destruction of relationships. The problem is that because we live in a fallen world all men face an enemy that violates our desires and purposes. Because the law demands that ever person be the true image that God created them to be. But we display an image that is obnoxious to the desires of other men.This is the problem, even if we gave it our best try our relationships would still be unsatisfying. Because satisfaction is only experienced when our needs are met by someone who knows us better than we know ourselves. That Someone must not only see our need and meet it but He must know by action the perfect experience of desire unified to action. This is the problem.... there is no man who is able to display this by action or to be the perfect answer to our needs. This is why our great enemy in this fallen world is to be in bondage to living our lives through other people.
Think about this. If God just came to be the example and to heal all mankind is that enough to create His kingdom on earth? A kingdom that is completely unified and fully satisfying? No because God must deal with the corruption and the violence. You see this puts God in an impossible situation. If God were just to accept the sin and the violence for the sake of peace then He would be the author of allowing violence and murder. He would be over looking the sins of sinners which is good thing but the world would never know what true satisfaction was because the opposition would remain. And God in overlooking the sin and violence could not be the defender of the victim.
This is why sin demands death. Every small departure from the law demands death. If God were to judge on a scale then there would be no need for grace. The whole point of the value of grace was that it came from the accomplishment of Christ who died in our place. You see the value of grace is the freedom to live in a world where sin has been dealt with by death. This is why in the covenant relationship God offers no other remedy than meeting us by forgetting our sins.Because if God remembered our sins then the death of Christ would not be satisfactory and we would never be accepted. We would always be left in distress. Because all distress is the need to overcome pain by being accepted. This is why God views His elect as weak. Because our ability to keep a record and confess our sins is never acceptable. So God meets us according to His forgetfulness and not according to His demands. We act according to His grace.