Thursday, June 19, 2025

The Justice of God

I'm reading through The Great Divorce (C.S. Lewis) again and came across this quote:

"That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it" not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into glory."

This reminded me of a thought I had some time ago. Justice seems like a pretty strong theme throughout Scripture. I did just a cursory Google search on the subject and it returned many verses, from Genesis to Revelation, here are just a few:

- Deuteronomy 32:4 - "The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and with iniquity, just and upright is He."

- Job 37:23 - "The Almighty - we cannot find him; he is great in power; justice and abundant righteousness he will not violate."

- Psalm 33:4-5 - "For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord."

Isaiah 30:8 - "Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all of those who wait for him."

Isaiah 61:6 - "For I the Lord love justice; I hate robbery and wrong; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them."

Micah 6:8 - "He has shown you O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."

Here is the thought I was reminded of: our earthly concept of Justice, I want to argue, is just a shadow of what actual Justice is. Take, for example, murder. If someone commits murder, we say that the murderer is "brought to Justice" when they are arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced for their crime. There is a rather bombastic state's attorney in the county that I live in and he like to release press bulletins when a  particularly heinous criminal is 'brought to justice' through a conviction and prison sentence.

Is that justice though?

Think about the person who was killed...does it matter for them if the person who killed them is sentenced for the crime? What about the family - does it bring their family member back? Does it reduce the trauma of what has occurred, in any way? Let's take an even more slippery example. A couple of years ago, our friends lost their 5-year-old son...the medical examiner couldn't find a cause of death. One day he was here, and the next day he was gone and there was no cause to point to, no one to blame for his death. No 'justice' to be had. He was just a child - considered by almost every society on the face of the earth to be younger than the age of accountability (aka, blameless, innocent). Dead purely as a product of the fact that the Earth is cursed by death as a result of sin. Lives forever changed in the wake of tragedy. Where does justice enter in to that situation?

But that's why I say I think our earthly concept of Justice is just a shadow. Jesus promises actual justice. God, over and over, describes himself as a God who is just and who embodies Justice. What would actual justice look like and why are God/Jesus uniquely able to embody true justice? It must be because they have the ability to actually reverse the consequences of sin. The person who was killed? Jesus can bring that person back to life. The reputation that was unfairly lost, the indignity suffered because of racial ignorance, the suffering caused by systemic injustice...restoring a child to broken-hearted parents? Jesus can not only fix those problems, but he can actually restore what has been lost - as if it never happened in the first place. This is what I think Lewis is getting at; if the consequences of sin are nullified, it would completely change our view of whatever happened. It would, in a real sense, redeem even our memories of suffering and pain.

One of my favorite passages in Scripture is Isaiah 2 and it speaks to this kind of true Justice:

"In the last days, the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted about the hills, and all nations will stream to it. Many people will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths." The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and settle disputes for many people. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, not will they train for war anymore." (Isaiah 2:2-4)

We can pursue justice on this side of Jesus' return, and I'm not here to suggest that it's wrong to pursue justice, but earthly justice will not satisfy. True Justice can only be brought by God because as the C.S. Lewis quote I shared at the top points out...his Justice actually goes back in time and turns agony into glory.

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