God is Just

Sermons Archive - Greenview Church

Thanks Douglas, good evening everybody. We’ve not got an opening Bible passage tonight, it’s a bit more of a kind of topical kind of Bible study, but we do have quite a lot of verses to look at, but they’ll be on the screen to save you having to sort of fumble about continually. Well we live in a world that seems to be obsessed by justice.

The demands are everywhere. Economic justice, racial justice, climate justice, each one of those has a whole bunch of sub-categories of its own. The list goes on and on.

And of course we are rightly shocked, aren’t we, by miscarriages of justice when we hear of innocent people who have been imprisoned for years or decades. And of course nothing offends us more than when we are personally cheated or treated badly by people who then just seem to get away with it, whether that’s an online scam or just a queue jumper. Justice is a huge issue.

We feel it personally and our world cries out for it. Now when we come to the subject of God is just, this great attribute, justice is a huge issue and God’s justice is equally prominent. All God’s attributes are equally excellent, aren’t they? And indeed as we go through this series we’re realizing that all God’s attributes are equally essential if we are to have a right view of God.

That incidentally is what theologians mean when they talk about the simplicity of God. If you ever come across this idea of the simplicity of God, it’s not that God is kind of easy to understand or to figure out. It’s the idea that every attribute of God runs through every other attribute of God.

So you can’t prize apart God’s holiness from his love or his power from his eternity. God’s not a kind of Lego model that you can kind of take a bit off and still have 95% of God left. No, God by definition can only be God if every one of his attributes are fully present all the time.

Because the God of the Bible is by definition the most maximally excellent being. So God is always fully all-knowing or else he couldn’t be God. God is always 100% holy or else he couldn’t be God.

We can’t separate these things from each other. Think of any of God’s wonderful attributes that we’ve been going through in the series or we find in the Bible. God is the 100% fullness of them.

So when we go back to justice, an idea that God is just, it’s not in that sense more important than any other divine attribute. But I think it will often have, particularly in our world and time today, a very immediate relevance for people, both pastorally and evangelistically. The question is constantly asked, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s shouted as an allegation.

Is God just? And if so, why is there so much injustice in the world? Well, firstly, I guess we should define what we mean by saying God is just. The word just or justice, when you see it in the Bible, actually comes from the same root, the same group of words that are often translated in the Bible as righteous or righteousness. That’s true both in the Old Testament and the New Testament.

It’s a word, the original word in the Hebrew or the Greek that means in accordance with that which is right. Old English translations used to use the word right-wise when they were translating it. It’s the idea of being straight, not deviant or crooked.

And so when the word just or righteous is applied to God, it’s the idea that God always acts in line with what is moral, good and upright, which means for God always acting in accordance and alignment with his own nature. After all, God is himself the standard of righteousness. See that in Deuteronomy chapter 32, this great hymn of praise in that chapter, he is the rock.

His works are perfect and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he. God is the benchmark of righteousness or justice.

There is no standard of righteousness. There’s no concept of justice beyond God or outside of God. Indeed, we would have no idea or even inkling of such a standard were it not for God.

You see, the only reason why any of us, any human being has any sense of good and evil, that there is such a thing as right and wrong isn’t because you are a highly evolved ape, it’s because you were made in the image of God. I mean, why do you care when the weak are walked over? What’s it to you that children thousands of miles away are exploited? Why do the statues of long dead slave owners rankle you? Why were you so indignant when you watched Mr. Bates versus the post office? That deep visceral reaction you have to abuse and unfairness exists inside of you because of a God implanted conscience. Your sense of justice is an echo of your divine origin.

Now, of course, because of sin, our internal sense of justice or righteousness often gets distorted. We can twist it. Our self-interest bends it.

It gets obscured by bias and selfishness and greed, which is why we need the Bible. We need God’s word to clarify and take us back to true justice and righteousness. You can see this right across the Old Testament and the New Testament, many of the Psalms, Psalm 19, the precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.

The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm.

All of them are righteous, or it’s the same word, are just. Psalm 119, teach me, Lord, the way of your decrees, that I may follow it to the end. Give me understanding so that I may keep your law and obey it with all my heart.

Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight. Turn my heart towards your statutes, your law, your commands, your words, and not towards selfish gain. Turn my eyes away from worthless things.

Preserve my life according to your word. And we could have read many other verses. We could have read the whole of Psalm 119 to make that point.

You see, that was the purpose of the law. That is the purpose of God’s words, not to give us a list of arbitrary rules, but the Old Testament law was given to reveal to us what righteousness looks like, and in doing so, to reveal the character of God behind all those laws and commands. So our starting point for understanding justice, what is right, isn’t the European Court of Human Rights or the UN High Commissioner, but God, as He has revealed Himself in the Bible.

Now, at the heart of God’s justice, and this takes us on to the particular application I want to focus on tonight, at the heart of God’s justice, when we use the word justice even as opposed to righteousness, I think is the idea of fairness. Romans 2.11, God does not show favoritism. 1 Peter 1.27, you call on a father who judges each person’s work impartially.

That is, God treats people fairly. It’s not a case of one rule for some and another for others. Fairness is at the heart of justice, and fairness is the idea of getting what you deserve, being treated fairly.

So when justice would be to punish somebody who was innocent, would be to put that innocent person in prison for 20 years, they didn’t deserve that. It was unfair. Equally, not getting paid your agreed wages is unjust, it’s unfair, because you were denied what you were entitled to, what you should have received, the payment for your labor.

And the Bible wants us to know that in an unjust world, God is just. He is never, ever less than fair. And I say never less than fair because such is the grace and kindness of God, he’ll sometimes be more than fair.

You know, sometimes when people owe you some money and they top it up a bit or they put an extra tenner on it, you think, well, that’s more than fair. God will sometimes give us favor and blessings beyond anything we might actually expect to receive, but we’ll come back to that. But if justice is fairness, the big question must be, what do we deserve? What does fair treatment from God look like? After all, many people today are very quick to accuse God of unfairness, of not being just.

They might point to atrocities in the world or just their own personal circumstances, and they’ll ask, how is that just? Or the anguished cry, this isn’t fair. How can a God who is just allow this? And those are real, genuine pastoral questions. Indeed, for some, they are faith-blocking questions.

Like the famous objection, if God is truly loving and all-powerful, he would surely stop evil and suffering. And so the fact that he doesn’t, hasn’t stopped evil and suffering must mean that he’s either not truly loving or he’s not all-powerful, or perhaps he’s just not just. Well, I guess one way to respond to that is, and you need to know who you’re talking to, we don’t like glib answers, but one answer to that could be, be careful what you wish for.

Because the Bible is very clear when it comes to what we deserve, we’re all actually in a bit of trouble. Because none of us have lived the righteous life that would be deserving of God’s blessing and favor. Our lives have not been right-wise.

If we’re honest, we’ll know that in so many ways and at so many levels, our lives have been crooked. We have willfully deviated from God’s laws. Times where we have suppressed our consciences, not least in our own outworking of justice, that is in how we have treated others.

No one has consistently treated others as they ought to have done. Tim Keller in his book, Making Sense of God, says this in chapter 10, he says, every Christian who understands the gospel admits that he or she has been an oppressor. When we lie, we deprive people of the truth they have a right to.

When we break our promises, we deprive people of the goods they have a right to. And if we are not poor and we close our hearts to those who are, we deprive them of sustenance they have a right to. Christians know they have the heart of oppressors.

And just as that image of God within us cries out for accountability, for redress, for consequences when we see injustice elsewhere, when we cry out for polluters to be sanctioned, for post office CEOs to be stripped of their CBE or corrupt MPs sent to prison, so likewise if God is just, we too must face a reckoning. That’s only fair. And actually I think that’s a point that we can be bolder in making in our justice fixated society.

Those who study these things tell us that the baby boomer generation as a whole, obviously lots of exceptions no doubt here as well, but the baby boomers evangelistically hated the idea of hell. Talk of hell to them was just harsh, unpleasant and mean. That kind of fire and brimstone preaching as they viewed it was to be left behind in the Victorian era.

And perhaps there was some validity in those complaints inasmuch as perhaps people had used that subject and preached on it with maybe a bit too much enjoyment as a stick to beat people with. But in response to that kind of rejection of hell, a lot of preaching moved away from that subject, or at the very least it kind of soft peddled it. But perhaps in a cancel culture world that demands justice, perhaps there is an open door to speak to people about a God of justice, to talk once again even about hell, to speak about a God who will put things right, who will call wickedness to account, who will not let the guilty go unpunished, but whose ultimate concern for justice doesn’t conveniently stop at the boardroom, but it penetrates into the deepest corner of every human heart.

And on the day when God brings his judgment to bear on the world, when everything that is done in secret will be brought to light and every injustice uncovered, there’ll be no arguments, there’ll be no self-justification, there’ll be no dodging the truth, because every life will be held up against God’s own righteousness. So as Romans chapter 3 says, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. And because God is all-knowing and utterly righteous, we know that his judgments will be fair.

There’ll be no missing documents, no unknown motives, no one pulling the wool over his eyes, no one on that day will say at the judgment seat of God, you will not hear the words, this isn’t fair, or I don’t deserve this, because justice will be done. But of course, even as we take that message to a world that demands justice, it begs the question, what hope for us? How then can anyone be saved? Well, that of course is the glory of the gospel, because Romans chapter 3 continues, God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished.

He did it to demonstrate his righteousness or his justice. You can get that translated both ways depending on your version, your Bible version at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. What Paul the apostle is saying here is at the cross, God punished sin just as it deserved to be, but because Jesus took the punishment for that sin, those who have faith in him, those whose lives have been folded into Christ’s can go free, because their penalty has been paid.

Justice is upheld while at the same time paying the debt we could not pay. You see, it’s precisely because our forgiveness and our salvation is based on justice that John can write, we had this verse this morning, if we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Notice that little clause there, God is just to forgive us our sins.

He’s not turning a blind eye to them. In that sense, not to forgive us when we come to Jesus in confession and faith would be unjust. I think it’s good to remember that.

We often look to God’s mercy when we want assurance and reassurance in our faith and our sense of forgiveness, but actually perhaps our greater assurance is in God’s justice. God is just to forgive us our sins. It would be unjust not to forgive them if Jesus has died for them.

But also notice in Romans 3.25 there the idea of God holding back his justice to that time of the cross and his forbearance. You see, God delaying his final justice is an act of God’s grace. Because of course, if God was to instantaneously enact justice for every sin, we’d all have been struck down long ago.

But as Peter puts it, the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. Justice delayed is grace and mercy.

So as we wait for that day, if you’re a Christian safe in Christ, folded into Christ, shielded by Christ, his death counted as your death, your debt written off in Christ as you have been joined to him in faith, how are we to live in an unjust world? Well, Micah 6 verse 8 sums it up. 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. It’s an obvious point, isn’t it? But Christians should be concerned about justice.

Now, the instruction to act justly there is as noted, bound up with the idea of acting rightly. And acting rightly and justly includes being honest and faithful and self-controlled, even as God is. But as we’ve seen, it also means being fair and impartial, treating people equally, not judging people by their social status or because of personal preference, but viewing every man and woman as a God-made, precious, immortal soul.

James forbids favoritism, the idea, for example, of the rich being privileged over the poor. In chapter 2 of James, if you show special attention to the man fearing fine clothes and say, here’s a good seat for you, but say to the poor man, you stand there or sit on the floor by my feet, have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Notice how the Bible calls out such discrimination as an evil, not just a minor social faux pas. And so, in our personal lives, in our church family life, we need to be vigilant, don’t we, and guard against that kind of partiality.

But let me also suggest that we shouldn’t be unconcerned about justice when it comes to wider society. Indeed, historically, Christians led many of the great campaigns and movements against societal injustice. The campaigns against slavery and the civil rights movement in the U.S. The historian Tom Holland writes this, Martin Luther King, by stirring the slumbering conscience of white Christians, succeeded in setting his country on a transformative new path.

This was the same vision that in the 18th century had inspired Quakers and evangelicals to campaign for the abolition of slavery. But now in the 1960s, the spark that had set it to flame with a renewed brilliance was the faith of African Americans. The sound of protest was the sound of the black churches.

Well, of course, injustice sadly didn’t disappear in the 18th century or even in the 1960s, but it continues today. Exploitation of the poor, that could include climate justice, the idea of the rich polluting the countries and lands and habitats of the poor, sex trafficking, abortion, greedy landlords that prey on weak and disempowered individuals in slum conditions and do nothing about it. Now, not every Christian is going to be equally involved in such causes.

Not every Christian is going to have the resources or the energy to be fully involved in many of these great issues. But I think it’s right to prompt ourselves about it. I was convicted of my lack of activism in those areas.

I think especially as there is a tendency for conservative evangelicals to be wary of those kinds of issues, often because of toxic politics and theological liberalism. Conservative evangelicals have tended to view those issues as just left-wing politics, or if we go into those kinds of things, we’ll just end up preaching a social gospel. But I think the Bible is pretty clear that we should be concerned about those kind of things, standing up for the weak, defending the fatherless and widows, loving others, treating other people the way that we want to be treated, and to do those things along with holding on to correct doctrine, and to do those things while all the time pointing people to the greatest injustice of all, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

God not being treated as he deserved to be, not thanked, not honored, not loved, not respected, but nailed to a cross, a monstrous injustice, which in his love he endured that we might be justly forgiven. Justice will be done. Abraham said in Genesis, the judge of all the earth will do right.

So be assured every act of cruelty, every lie, every abuse, every act of exploitation will receive its due and just punishment. You can be assured of that. But in his mercy, if God delays it, it’s only so there’s an opportunity for men and women to go to the cross, to take hold of Jesus before the final judgment falls.

And even as we seek justice rightly, we campaign for it, we seek it on behalf of others, it’s also good to remember that grace that along with justice God extends even now. Remember also to love mercy and to walk humbly, to get the whole verse. And that means we won’t simply rush to cancel other people or condemn them or crush them in the way that our society often seems so quick to do so, that we can turn the other cheek on occasions and in doing so show to others and to the world the grace and the mercy and the love that God has shown to us.

Confident that like Jesus himself, facing that monstrous injustice, we can entrust ourselves to the one who judges justly. And may God bless his thoughts to us from his word. Amen.

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