Slogans come and go. People will want to say all sorts of things. The message of the Church remains. It is not a threat. It is not ambiguous. It is an open declaration of truth and a constant offer to all: to know justice and to know peace. God is just. This is part of His character, which means that He is always righteous. He cannot be unjust, and He sets and sets the standard of justice. Here`s another thing that means: the government can do these things well, but the government can also do these things wrong.
When the state wields its sword on the basis of a false understanding of man, it is obliged to commit an injustice. This means that we can and must speak and work for justice in our systems of government. Abraham Lincoln was right in his day, as was Martin Luther King Jr. in his. Both appealed to human conscience and our universal sense of responsibility to something higher and truer than the state. When human government uses its sword for evil, its legal systems become multipliers of injustice. The riots on Capitol Hill were an atrocity that was strongly and universally condemned, and rightly so. Some of the laws passed on this floor are even bigger. My point is that the government and the news will describe some things as bad and others as good, but they are not and cannot be our litmus test of right and wrong; They are not a reliable measuring instrument. We have Bible verses that govern Israel`s national life in relation to the poor with laws that allowed the poor to learn from the fields (Ex 23:10; Deut. 24:19-22). One could argue from these texts about social safety nets of one kind or another.
But today`s calls for social justice are not just stronger calls to help the poor, but something quite different. This is what we usually think of as personal justice. In Scripture, the language of justice is often associated with righteousness. A righteous or just person is a pious person, a person of integrity. He is someone who does the right thing and does the right thing for others. We could even include voluntary generosity in helping the poor (Lk 12:33). Noah was “a righteous man, blameless in his generation” (Genesis 6:9). When the Bible mentions righteousness, this is what it usually talks about. In this conception of justice, the full meaning of the New Testament has not yet been attained. This does not mean the absence of sin or moral perfection.
Job knows sin in his heart (Job 13:23, 26; 7:21) and yet speaks of himself as a righteous or righteous man (12:4; 13:18). The psalmist relies confidently on the righteousness of God, even though he knows that no man is righteous in God`s sight (Psalm 143:1, 2; compare Psalm 7:8; 18:20-24). It is not a lack of humility or dependence on God that the psalmist asks to be judged according to his justice. In relation to God, the righteous or righteous person is one who clings to God and trusts in Him (Psalm 33:18-22). This is not late Judaic legalism with its merit and reward, where God`s justice is simply to give every man what he deserves. One of the reasons authoritarian governments suppress Christianity and the Church is that they will not accept any standard of judgment by which they can be convicted. If a State ceases to be accountable to its own people, it will soon cease to do justice to the voice of the people. Christians are notoriously resistant to government pressure.
We are gracious and happy to live a quiet and peaceful life. But we are not easily forced – and we should not be. We know better because we know God. The pursuit of justice begins and continues with a foundation of prayer because we know that this is His struggle, not ours. It takes time and sacrifice. It means stepping out of our comfort zone and persevering with patience. It means walking in wisdom and not jumping into it arbitrarily or foolishly. Our righteous God guides us and we follow as He gives us power through the Holy Spirit. So, here we go. Let us fight for biblical justice. These two words roughly correspond to what some have called “primary” and “corrective justice.” Correcting justice is a hodgepodge. This means punishing wrongdoers and caring for victims of unfair treatment.
Primary justice or tzadeqah is a behavior that, if widespread in the world, would render the rectification of justice useless because everyone would live in the right relationship with everyone else. Although tzadeqah is primarily about being in a right relationship with God, the resulting righteous life is deeply social. Correcting justice or mishmat in our world could mean prosecuting men who beat, exploit and rob poor women. It could also mean pressuring a local police department until it responds as quickly to calls and crimes in the poor part of the city as it does in the rich part. Another example would be the creation of an organization that both persecutes credit companies that exploit the poor and elderly with dishonest and exploitative practices and seeks justice. Commercial justice is justice in the marketplace. The Lord is for it. “A just balance and a right balance belong to the Lord; all the weights in the bag are his work” (Proverbs 16:11).
“You will have right balances, just weights, a right Ephah and a right path; I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Lev 19:36). The poor or the less wise must not be exploited. We should adopt fair practices in our businesses and welcome government regulation of the marketplace to ensure fair transactions. As a subset of distributive justice, social justice advocates argue for the distribution of resources in order to achieve equal outcomes – usually economic outcomes. She sees inequality between groups as a problem rooted in injustice in society, the result of oppression by oppressors. According to supporters, eliminating these differences is a fundamental responsibility of the government. Not everyone who adopts this vocabulary embraces this whole program of reflection. Nevertheless, it is the philosophical and scientific basis of social policy, which today lies under the banner of social justice. One day there will be perfect justice, accomplished by a perfectly holy and just God. Meanwhile, evil is pervasive around the world. Children are sold as sex slaves.
The poor are beaten and forced to work without pay. Human trafficking or modern slavery continues in all countries, cities and communities. There are more than 35 million slaves in the world today, more than at any other time in history. According to the biblical model of healing, God`s righteousness means doing what is right according to the law of love, which is to restore, heal, and save a righteous state. Justice, when it is truly done in love, is to seek first the good of others, it is not a question of pursuing injustice to compensate for the score. Justice is restorative, but when it is unable to restore, it simply frees the author from the inevitable consequences of sin, which is death. This attitude (attributed to Satan above) is consistent with what has evolved over the centuries regarding people`s understanding of God`s righteousness—that sin must be punished or God is not just. This is the basis of human justice and the concept adopted by most Christians.
The question is whether it is the same as God or not. When these two words, tzadeqah and mishpat, are linked, as they are more than three dozen times, the English expression that best conveys meaning is “social justice.” That should seem obvious to us. But to whom does true justice belong? Here, Christianity presents us with a second absolute claim. The first is that there is such a thing as evil. The second is that God`s view of these things is the right one. The perpetrator may have been negatively influenced by others, but blame cannot be transferred; He must be held personally responsible for his own fault. In connection with Israel`s teaching on righteousness, the Law of Moses wrote: 3. equality; compatibility with the law; When he proved the correctness of his claim. Strictly speaking, it should be justice. “The clear meaning of `justice` is `what is right` or `what is normal` – the way things are supposed to be.” We often hear that God is love and God is holy, rather than hearing that God is just. And we can easily agree that God sets the standard of love and holiness, but do we understand that He also sets the standard of justice? The pursuit of biblical justice means that we follow God`s way to correct what is wrong, and we turn to Scripture to define what is “right.” Moved by Christ`s compassion, we engage in issues of injustice – protecting the vulnerable, fighting for the oppressed, walking alongside the wounded and directing them to the One who heals, restores and redeems.
Nations come and go, but as a friend said recently, the Church is the only institution Jesus promised to build, defend, and preserve. Knowing God`s righteousness is one way to do this. It was faith in this God of perfect justice that anchored Christians in the first century. They faced many injustices. But even as Rome fell into disrepair in the second and third centuries, the church emerged intact. He was not supported by a pantheon of false gods who could not give him true meaning or hope. It was sustained by the God whose throne is founded in righteousness, who judges and justifies. In the Sunday sermon “What Caesar Is,” we reflected on the role of governing authorities in our lives and in God`s world. While there may be a deep disagreement between two people about the exact extent of the government`s real authority – whether it belongs to education, whether and how it should intervene in markets, foreign policy, etc. – everyone agrees that government is in the business of doing justice. According to the Bible`s basic job description, this is half the government`s job. The governing authorities are sent “to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good” (1 Pet.
