An excerpt from "Christian Today" entitled, "Is God Unjust?" by Jared Oliphint, states: "The phrase must have looped over and over in Adam's mind after he took his first bite of the forbidden fruit. "In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:17). This was the day he ate of it, so this was the day he would surely die. I can't imagine the terror Adam felt as he stitched together a few fig leaves for make-shift clothes. Adam was now on borrowed time before his inevitable punishment. Judgment day had come.
While God introduced earthly justice that day, He also restrained His judgment's full weight and granted Adam and the now sinful world a delayed sentence. His merciful delay of final judgment set a gracious but sometimes frustrating pattern for our battle between sin and justice—not every earthly evil will see an earthly, just answer.
As God withheld immediate death when Adam swallowed that first bite of forbidden fruit, He showed them two more new ideas: grace and mercy. The opposite of justice is injustice, but the complement to justice is mercy. Both justice and mercy flow from God's good character, and on the day creation needed mercy to survive, God promised a Savior (Gen. 3:15)." This article may be viewed at: Is God Unjust?/christiantoday.com
Reference: Romans 9:14
