I greatly longed to understand Paul's Epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the
way but that one expression, "the justice of God," because I took it to mean
that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My
situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled
in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did
not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to
the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant.
Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the
statement that "the just shall live by his faith." Then I grasped that the
justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies
us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors
into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the
"justice of God" had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly
sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven . . . .
If you have a true faith that Christ is your Savior, then at once you have a gracious
God, for faith leads you in and opens up God's heart and will, that you should see pure
grace and overflowing love. This it is to behold God in faith that you should look upon
his fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is no anger nor ungraciousness. He who sees
God as angry does not see him rightly but looks only on a curtain, as if a dark cloud had
been drawn across his face.
