Sorry it has been a while since i've written. I just got back from leading a trip to the inner city of Milwaukee, one of InterVarsity's short term mission trips. There were about 40 students on the trip, and it was a great time! I got to meet a lot of cool people, have lots of interesting discussions, and serve in many helpful ways.
A big part of our trip were bible studies looking at why the city needs Jesus, and what God says about serving the poor and doing justice. The term "justice" has been a difficult one for me. It is true that God loves justice and calls His people to carry out justice- we see that in Isaiah 58 and 59. Also perhaps in the kind of religion that God finds pure and faultless. So what is my problem with justice? Justice is scary to me because if God is a just God, which He says He is, then my sin should be punished, which it either will be or has already been. How do we distinguish between the justice God wants for His people to execute, and the justice God gives? Someone I look up to explained to us last week that justice was a horizontal action (man to man), while justification was a vertical action (God to man). My problem with this is simply i don't think we can think of justice as only a man to man thing. God is just, and does not only deal out what we know as justification. If justice is "getting what we deserve," then justification would be 100% grace. Well, i'm tired, so to prevent from dragging this on further; do we need different definitions of justce and justification? Can we see justice as a horizontal act while justification is the vertical one? What do the two have to do with the other? Does God use justice to proclaim justification, or does He desire them both equally? What't the deal? Thanks for your input on this poorly written post.
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Before getting at the questions near the bottom of the post I have a couple prefatory questions.
1) You say God calls "his" people to carry out justice. Is "his people" the church? Is it the job of the church to carry out justice?
2) How does this idea of carrying out justice relate to the Sermon on the Mount where Christ seems to do away with "personal" justice (viz the doing away of the rex talionis-eye for an eye).
Right, thanks Kyle. This post comes from a few years of thinking about this stuff off and on, so there's more behind it than meets the eye in the post. Sorry about that. To keep the argument to the term "justice," i'll write down a handful of verses that talk about Israel or God's people doing justice. First off, God commands Israel in a number of places to not withhold or pervert justice, one place is Deut. 27:19. I want to deal with Isaiah a lot here, so i'll skip ahead there. Isaiah 56:1 states "Thus says the LORD: 'keep justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed." Isaiah 59 calls injustice a sin. Most of us IV people say that what God desires in Isaiah 58:6-7 is what He calls "justice" in Isaiah 59. So if that is true, there is no good way to argue against God wanting The Church to carry out justice. Is. 61:8 "I, the LORD, love justice..." Another interesting passage is out of Zechariah 7:9- "This is what the LORD Almighty says:'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor." (NIV) a little interjection here, i found that the NIV uses the word "justice" about 5 times more than the ESV. Not exactly sure why. Also Micah 6, "what does the LORD require of you but to do justice...?" There are a dozen verses in Amos regarding justice, you can read that book yourself- it's pretty short.
Out of the N.T., one of Jesus' beefs with the Pharisees is that they neglected justice (Luke 11:42). In 2 Cor., an eagerness to see justice done was one thing that godly sorrow for sins produced in believers (7:11).
So in this sense, it would seem that the justice God wants believers to administer has to do with the oppressed, poor, hungry, widows, foreigners, and the like. But should we be calling this "justice?" It looks like God does, but how do we see this kind of justice in light of the kind of justice we deserve as sinners from God. There is both a horizontal and vertical sense of justice, but they are a little bit different.
Mr. Lickel,
Thanks for the thoughts. But I want to be sure I'm understanding what you are saying and not talking past you.
We are agreed that in the OT the people of God were called on to administer justice. That is, it was the responsibility of church to administer and uphold the law. When the law was breached the offender was given an exacting punishment (eye for an eye). This is the principle of the retributive law, or the "lex talionis" (to use the sexy Latin term; c.f. Genesis 9:something or another). In the OT God ruled the civil affairs by the authority of the church. In that sense it was the church's job to administer justice.
But I think we see an abrogation of this in the NT. The church is no longer called upon to administer the lex talionis, rather we are called to turn the other cheek, to repay evil with good, etc (c.f. Sermon on the Mount). Further, Paul says (see 1 Corinthians 6) very clearly that if two believers disagree they shouldn't bring the issue to a civil court, rather: "Why not rather suffer the wrong." Paul is making a very clear statement that the order of the church is not to be ruled by justice or the lex talionis, but by mercy. Otherwise he would have said, if someone rips you off get all your money back! The punishment should fit the crime. The same goes for church discipline. We don't, or rather, we shouldn't discipline members of the church in order to see justice done, it's not to exact a retributive attitude. The reason we should discipline is to show mercy that they might come back to God (c.f. 1 Timothy 1:20; Corinthians 7:12). Discipline is not to enact justice, discipline is a means of mercy which we use to bring an unrepentant sinner to repentance.
So I don't think it's the church's job to administer justice (lex talionis). Unless one (which it sounds like some in IV do) equate justice with feeding the poor; but I think that's called mercy (c.f. Acts 6:1-7). That doesn't mean we neglect justice but it does mean it is the job of the state who "bears the sword for a reason" (Romans 13: something or another). This is the reason why I asked what you meant when you said "God loves justice and calls His people to carry out justice." Is that a function of the church? Many people in today's evangelical world want to say "Yes." And so our pulpits become political platforms and that rancid social gospel goes forward. We confuse the state with the church (which I think our founding fathers were dead right with the first amendment). No, administering justice is not the duty of the church (God's people), it is the duty of the state, and if the state should fail in her duty it does not give the church *proper* a right to become a political agenda. Preaching politics is not the job of the church.
Now I might be talking past you, but I may not. I don't think this is a useless to point to bring up, because if you want to know how justice is to be defined, we must also know how justice is to be administered. The two play off of each other. In determining how it is to be administered we are largely aided in figuring out what justice is (I think). So I'm not trying to pick on petty things.
Any thoughts?
Grace
Right, right. Thanks Mr. Borg. This is what i am getting at; whether we can say that caring for the poor and feeding the hungry is justice. It's truly the terminology that trips me up, not the idea. We have all this talk about "justice" within IV and this "new friars" movement- among other movements. The problem (what i see as a problem) can get so big that all of a sudden the reason Jesus died was to administer social justice. But that's for another day- we'll work our way there. Right now i want to explore why we might call our mercy on our fellow man "justice." I'm going to email my friend who knows more than i do and ask if he will comment for us. He understands the views well. We can talk about "lex talionis" some more, but what we seem to have been talking about last week was not that but something other than that. Like Mr. Borg said, more mercy than "justice," if we define justice as "getting what is deserved."
Hey guys. I just wanted to toss something into the mix. I once heard the justice that Andy is talking about (caring for the poor, widows, etc) explained as "rightness". If it is right to do these things, then by doing them we are acting justly. Maybe that could be a way of understanding this particular kind of justice as compared to other kinds.
Thanks Dana. "rightness" is a new one. All this terminology is the hard part to understanding what we must do as Christ followers. We call it justice, but justice is defined as "getting one's correct retribution." Normally with God, justice is a scary thing. We've also called it mercy, but mercy on God's part is not justice, is it? Do we need to just completely distinguish between the mercy and justice we are to show our fellow man and the mercy and justice God shows man? "rightness" is a good term, but it would take a lot of work to make it a universal one.
"but mercy on God's part is not justice, is it? " See Romans 3:26
Well, i was hoping it would take a little longer for that passage to come up. Is Paul talking about "justice" or "justification" there. Both? What does it mean in Romans 3:26 when it says "so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus."? Most would say that verse is addressing those faithful ones who walked the earth before what is talked about in verse 25, namely Christ bearing our sins.
What Mr. Borg is getting at is that if God "passes over sins" as it states in 3:25, then it is mercy. But in the same breath is states that He did so so that He might be "just." So they have to go together here. But the eyes of my heart must be seeing dimly, because i still don't quite understand how God carries out justice in delivering mercy.
Not to get too far from the other problem of what we should call caring for the poor and hungry and widows, but as long as Romans 3:25-26 is out there...any thoughts?
p.s. Kyle, i realized i made an assumption as to what you were "getting at" with your post- please correct me if i am off base.
Some scholars, when referring to Isaiah 58:6-7 (namely, "not to hide yourself from your own flesh"), draw the comparison to 1 Timothy 5:8, which states:
"But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." (KJV)
This is an amazing passage. The Greek word here for "infidel" is on par with "faithless" and "unbelieving." To be WORSE than an unbeliever is quite a heavy condemnation.
Just an insight, I don't know if it helps...
JOE ARANT
Are you part of the Reformed Church in America?
Anonymous,
My membership is in the RCA, although i attend a Babtist affilliated church right now since my home church is hours away. Don't worry, i still hod to the 3 forms of unity. How did you guess and why did you ask?
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