Robert Lucas was less than thirty years old when he murdered a man and was sentenced to life in prison. After serving seven months of his sentence he escaped and went into hiding.
In a different state he adopted a new name and began a new life. Using his new name, he got a driver's license, held jobs and even got married.
The years went by, and Robert Lucas lived the life of a model citizen. Ten years—twenty years—and still he lived quietly with his wife and "maintained a low profile."
Twenty-three years after his escape, plainclothesmen came to his door and asked if he were Robert Lucas. One agent later reported, "He didn't say much. He just stuttered and stammered for a while, then he said he had a heart condition.
The heart condition was real: two months later he died of a heart attack while still fighting extradition to the state from which he had escaped.
Friends from his new life bitterly blamed the authorities who ordered his re-arrest. "Going to jail and worrying about it—that's what killed him," they said.
But a State Bureau of Investigation official said agents had no choice but to arrest the man. "You've got to understand he killed a man," said the head of the fugitive squad. "It's our job to find him whether he's been gone one, two, ten or thirty years. You can't just forget a man who killed another man. It's our job. The law says we've got to do it."
Was it justice? Was it justice to take a man who lived an apparently blameless life for 23 years and to put him in prison for a long-ago murder? Was it justice to take him from his wife of 20 years? Was it justice to discount all the good things he may have done in that time?
Yes, it was justice. It was THE LAW. The law cannot forgive. Like the mirror, it can show you how dirty your face is, but can do nothing to clean you up. Whether man's law or God's law, it can only judge and condemn; it cannot forgive. It has nothing to do with mercy!
There is no escaping that law. The sentence has been pronounced on every soul that has ever sinned and, postpone it though we may, in time we must face the fact that "it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment." Heb. 9:2727And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: (Hebrews 9:27).
The law can do no more, but God can! No, He cannot change His law, which is "holy, and just, and good," but He can cleanse that sinful heart because "the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin."
"God could not pass the sinner by;
His sin demands that he must die,
But in the cross of Christ we see
How God can save, yet righteous be!"