Justice is a word that you hear a lot in the world today. Social Justice has become the battle cry for a new generation of Americans. It is the headline in newspapers and magazines, a talking point for politicians, and the subject of many songs written today. You can barely look at any piece of pop culture and not see it. It has also started to creep into the Christian world and shows itself in many places throughout our subculture. This is not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. Our culture has a great need for justice today, whether it be for the poor or the rich. The only problem with this Americanized idea of justice is that it is only half full. The other side of the coin is missing.
The American ideals of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (which is something to be dealt with in another post) have taken the fullness of justice and created a warm and fuzzy version of it that is lacking in all of the rough edges. This, of course, is the trend with all things in our post-modern society today. We live in a Teddy Bear world with no GI Joe. We take the things that we like out of an idea, but leave anything of controversy out because of a fear of actually offending anyone. The only problem with a society that does not offend is that it does not allow for anything to be absolutely true. Truth always offends someone, no matter how big or small that group might be. The gospel does not fit into that mold, and justice also has a really difficult place fitting in.
So what does real justice look like? Well, we could look to a secular definition and get a glimpse of the truth. Dictionary.com defines justice as “the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness: to uphold the justice of a cause.” Our real definition, however, will come from Scripture. Micah 6:8 says “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” So yes, justice relates to kindness and Christians are to have it as part of their lifestyle. Amos 5 takes a little different view when it says “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Here we begin to see the other side of justice, and realize that kindness and mercy is not the only part to it. A responsibility exists for the believer to live out a life of righteousness, as well as the reality that God is a just God who requires that sin must be punished.
God is love, yes, but God is also holy and His justice must be carried out. Thankfully, we are offered a pass from our punishment of death by accepting the love, grace, and sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. He willingly accepted the justice and wrath of God towards sin on our behalf. Isaiah 53:10 states “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; He has put Him to grief.” First John explains that God sent Jesus to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins, to take the penalty for our sins. We see God’s love and justice in this. His justice requires sin to be punished, but His love for us is so great that He takes the punishment for our sin in our place. A great mistake of our day is to take this sanitized version of justice, without the reality that justice requires responsibility as well. Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, says this in his book Death by Love: “This aspect of the atonement is under the most vehement attack today by people who do not believe that people are as sinful as they truly are, that God is as holy as he truly is, or that God has chosen an appropriate penalty for sin (death). Curiously, such critics are also commonly known to be the most vocal of hypocrites, simultaneously demanding justice on the earth for the poor, oppressed, and abused, while denying God the same kind of justice that is due him by those people that he created to glorify him with sinless obedience.” Both aspects are important, and must be seen in order to have a correct view of God, love, and justice.
