Quick question from Mark here.

Hi, Dr. Craig.

I love you and your work and have learned so much through watching your debates and lectures.

I cannot thank you enough, but my question is about God's justice and mercy, and are

they compatible?

The atheist Matt Dillahunti says that mercy is a suppression of justice, so to say that

God is perfectly just and merciful causes a contradiction for if God is perfectly just

than he has to punish sin, but if God is perfectly merciful, then he can suppress justice

and therefore forgive you.

I don't really know how to answer this and I'm really hoping you could help me.

Well, I want to commend Mark my book on the atonement, atonement and the death of Christ

because it deals precisely with this issue.

In the book, I take the view that Matt is correct, that mercy and justice do cancel each other

out, that these are antithetical.

But then the question is, is there a way for God to be perfectly just and perfectly merciful?

And I argue that the doctrine of the atonement provides a way for God to be just that, because

God is perfectly just, he must punish every sin that is committed, because he is perfectly

merciful, he must offer forgiveness to every sinner by coming into the world in the person

of Christ and bearing in our place the punishment for sin that we deserved, Christ satisfies

the perfect demands of God's justice, thereby freeing up God's mercy to offer us an unconditional

pardon of our sins for anyone who will freely accept it.

And so I think that the genius of the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement, is it enables

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