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Acts 12:18-19a  In the morning, there was no small commotion among the soldiers as to what had become of Peter.  After Herod had a thorough search made for him and did not find him, he cross-examined the guards and ordered that they be executed.

This is one of the many instances in the Biblical record when we might feel a little bit uneasy about the outworking of God’s inscrutable justice.

Presumably, not everyone in the time of Noah was equally wicked, and yet everyone except Noah and his seven family members perished in the world-wide flood (Genesis 6:13).

Only Ahimelech the priest was cunningly tricked by David into helping him escape from Saul, and yet he and all in his family were slaughtered by Saul as a consequence (1 Samuel 22:6-19).

The Babylonians or the Romans did not distinguish among different levels of guilt when they destroyed Jerusalem and its inhabitants in 586 BC and AD 70 respectively.

Herod the Great killed all the infants in Bethlehem when he was tricked by the Wise Men, assuming one of them might be the Messiah; and here in this passage his grandson, Herod Agrippa I, killed all the guards who let Peter escape when, in fact, the miraculous rescue of the Apostle had nothing to do with those poor unfortunate individuals (Acts 12).  In fact, God had allowed James to be beheaded by this same Herod, but enabled Peter to escape in answer to the prayers of the Church.

Why are some people today miraculously cured of cancer (or other major illness) in answer to earnest prayer, while others are not?   At least the countless examples in Scripture of what might seem to us, from our very limited perspective, to be ‘inconsistencies’ in the outworking of God’s justice, can help us to bow humbly before his often perplexing, Sovereign Providence, and say confidently with King David, “You, LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light. … As for God, his way is perfect:  The LORD’s word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him” (Psalm 18:28, 30) – and what could be more comforting for us on our often taxing pilgrimage to Heaven?

“‘Forever with the Lord’, ‘Amen’, ‘so let it be’!  Life from the dead is in that word, ’tis immortality! Here in this body, pent, absent from him I roam, yet nightly pitch my moving tent a day’s march nearer home” (James Montgomery).

– Bruce Christian