A Few Words on God's Redeeming Justice

It seems the word “Justice” is getting a lot of attention when it comes to Christians speaking about the whole Bin Laden ordeal. Here are a few thoughts I’ve had on the idea of justice as it is played out in Scripture. I feel like we are throwing the word around in relation to God a little too freely. I’m concerned anytime we start defining God’s justice in relation to the human forms of justice. Or worse yet, defining God’s justice in relation to punishment here on earth that may or may not be divine acts, but merely part of a fallen world, or even the natural order of things.

I’m certainly not saying a human form of justice wasn’t served when the Al-Qaida leader was taken out. I’m not even saying it wasn’t divine justice. I’m just wanting to be cautious about defining this definitively as God’s justice. God’s justice has much deeper spiritual overtones and purposes than a very earthy, human sense of someone getting what is due.

If there is one requirement from God, it is that his people seek justice and act justly. But justice is not simply, “to each one that is due.” It is a very deep, very ethical topic. I believe it is one of the weightier matters, yet one that may surprise us, when we see just what God is talking about when he mentions justice and what justice requires of us. Justice is from the same root as just, justification, and righteousness. It means, “that which is right.” God is just. God is righteous and from his being comes the standard for Justice and Righteousness. One only needs to look back at the record of God and we will declare what Nehemiah declared in 9:33–“In all that has happened to us, you have been just, you have acted faithfully, while we did wrong.” Or the Psalmist 89:14–“Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne.” Or in Revelation 15:3–“Great and marvelous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty, just and true are your ways, king of the ages.”

And God as one whose being is defined by justice and righteousness requires this from his creation. Justice is a requirement to sustain the eternal relationship between God and mankind. Yes, a requirement. In Amos 5:21-24 Israel has turned away from God. The lack of justice as you read through is the overarching problem, especially the Lack of justice for the poor, oppressed, and afflicted. “Let justice roll down like a river, and righteousness an ever flowing stream” God says. Justice and righteousness are the same thing, same idea. That which is right and just. Let that roll on like a river and a never failing stream. Let justice reign in the courts. But, more than that let justice and righteousness reign in relationships. That’s what is really the issue. Justice in relationships. We’re not talking about “that which is due” but the idea that Justice is brought to culmination in the restoring of relationships. Not simply giving or getting what is due, but the restoring, or the building of relationships. Relationships that are right. Relationships that are just and righteous. Justice as the reconciling of relationships is by far the weightier matter in Scripture than merely, “getting what it due.” In Micah 6:6-8 it is asked what God wants? “Act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” God wants Justice, mercy and humility in the community of Israel.

This definition of justice fits Jesus call to ministry in Luke 4:18-19 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Jesus ministry was a ministry of justice, that is, setting the world right. Jesus reached out to the poor, oppressed, hurting, afflicted, and held authorities accountable.

I am convinced that there is an irony of justice. And that irony is that justice being served is not one getting their do, but the complete reconciliation of the relationship. Let me explain.
What we normally think of when we hear justice is retribution. Someone did something and they deserve to be punished. But what about loving, forgiving, and working for the wrongdoer and the wronged to have a right relationship with each other. Could this be an accomplishment of justice?

Person-to-person reconciliation is the practical form of Justice modeled by Christians as we emulate the diving reconciliation we have received through Jesus Christ. Paul’s declaration to the Corinthians 2 Cor 5:20, “Be reconciled to God” has broad and deep implications to the church. It would not be an overstatement to say that the defining event in all of history and creation is the death of Jesus Christ. And that death of the Son of God was brought by justice. A justice that had and has at its very core, love for us. A love of Christ that says, “not them, me.”

The Justice of God seen in the Christ event has as it’s motivator, reconciliation. It wasn’t some arbitrary sacrifice to satisfy God’s law. It wasn’t simply a requirement to appease God’s burden. It wasn’t simply a payment for sin. Here is sin and it needs paid for so here’s the payment. As if God is some pawn dealer and Jesus is coming to pay the price for sin to settle up with God. No, justice as it is seen in the Christ event has as it’s purpose reconciliation. Reconciliation of the eternal relationship of God and mankind.

2 Cor 5:17-21 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

The greatest act of justice of all creation was when God’s justice was met through the sacrificial death of Christ, and that justice is complete when humankind comes to God and is reconciled to God. When the eternal relationship is restored and when the individual is given the ministry of reconciliation.

Moreover, the ministry of reconciliation is complete when that which is spiritually reconciled with God is lived out in our relationships with each other-when we dispense the justice of God that restores relationships, and seeks the good of others and does not harbor bitterness or seek revenge.

For the Christian, justice, is going beyond our mere requirements. Justice is considering ourselves as nothing and others as most important, especially the poor the oppressed, yes even those who are getting what they deserve. Justice isn’t just giving what is due. Christian justice is a love that is so great it moves one to sacrifice for another’s good.

A justice that is so rooted in the love of God that it pursues reconciliation in all relationships. We’ve got a ways to go before justice rolls down like a river. I must confess, I don’t know that I know this kind of Justice. But anyone who receives the true justice of God, the reconciling of our eternal relationship with him, must be ready to let that justice flow through them like a river and a never failing stream.

Susan Boyle

Gospel sighting, or exploitation of our prejudices?

The Road

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

The Lanyard

The Lanyard

Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Theology or Ideology

I found this observation below to be quite helpful. I have wrestled over the years trying to work out a theology (what I believe about God and his interaction with me and creation) that is consistent with how life really works out. I've felt that my theology has always been just one more fix away. If I or the world would just, "x," then we would see our theological constructs play themselves out. It seems to me a theology that does not account for the way things actually are is actually an ideology masquerading as theology.

By ideology I mean a theoretical statement or system of interpretation that functions for its adherents as a full and sufficient credo, a source of personal authority, and an intellectually and psychologically comforting insulation from the frightening and chaotic mish-mash of daily existence. For the ideologue, whether religious or political, it is not necessary to expose oneself constantly to the ongoingness of life; one knows in advance what one is going to find in the world. In fact, the psychic comfort of ideology lies just in its protective capacity, its property as mental and intellectual insulation: one clings to one's system of interpretation as a refuge from the ambiguous, unsettled, and largely undecipherable fluxus of the actual. The ideological personality (and in our time there are many such personalities) is constantly on guard against the intrusion of reality, of the unallowable question, of the data that does not "fit" the system; therefore the repressive and suppressive dimension is never far beneath the surface of the ideological inclination. Jose Miguez Bonino writes of "the ideological misuse of Christianity as a tool of oppression," because he knows that the line between theology and ideology is a very fine one, easily and sometimes unknowingly transgressed.

Douglas John Hall, The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World

A New Gospel Sighting

I don't think this dad is sitting around waiting for God to make the world right. He's participating with God to make it right. I hope I can become half the dad he is.


We could wait. We could wait for that day when God makes all things right. We can sit around and complain that the world is messed up, that we are messed up, that the church is messed up. We can wait for God to make all things right, when there will be no more death or crying, where the lame will walk, no, where they will win. We could wait for the day the hungry will be fed, the marginal will be given a place at the head of the table, when those with no family will sit around the table of the Lord. We could wait for the world to be right. Or, we can join with God in his work to make all things right, right here right now.

Romanticized War

This picture represents the romanticized image of war.
This story about the soldier in the picture represents the reality.