Justice and Virtue

This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark to tie it all together. 

Today's devotional is taken from: Zacharias, Ravi. The Logic of God: 52 Christian Essentials for the Heart and Mind. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019. [E-Book] Chapter 17: Justice and Virtue

Opening Thought: Today’s reading is very much a continuation of yesterdays. Yesterday I spoke about judgement, and how we can learn to use judgement well. The underlying point to the devotional yesterday was that God is the ultimate judge because his foundation is perfection, all that is measured in life can only be compared to the rubric which is God. Today’s readings are more focused on the justice side of judgement. There two certainly go hand in hand but they are distinct. Now this premise takes one more step with Zacharias’ work, when he links justice to love. As a result, we have judgement à justice and justice à love. Zacharias ends his devotional with the reflection question “You can judge without loving, but you can’t love without also being just. Explain.” I would say this goes back to the fire metaphor, (if you put fire in a fireplace it warms the house, but if you put it on the curtains it burns the house down). Love is the fireplace, if judgement is done with proper love and to the will of God, it can move us towards justice and to be just is loving and loving just. If you remove love from judgement, us miss understand judgement.  

The devotional begins with: Galatians 3:11-14

Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.” The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, it says, “The person who does these things will live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.” He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

Second Thought: We know love and justice are linked because if you were in a relationship and your partner was unjust to you, the love would be betrayed. If their behaviour were continually unjust, but that spouted out “but I love you” the words would be empty. In previous works I have talked about how justice is restorative in nature, it moves to put back to the status quo of God’s will. This is because God’s justice works with God’s mercy, mercy plus justice equals restorative. Therefore, if one is unjust, they can become forgiven for the injustice. Meaning that once forgiven and they have welcome that forgiveness, they can move toward living justly. We have this in our own human relationships, if someone is unjust to us, we can be merciful and that injustice can be forgiven, but unless that person welcomes that forgiveness, (to a degree where they welcome it because they recognize the wrong they did and held repentance), then their worldview in which allowed them to act unjustly can change to support justice. In all ways this restoration is justice itself and serves justice. None of this transformative justice can take place without a judgement because the actions of the unjust will only be revealed in contrast to the ultimate justice in God.  

Continual Work: Think about the link between judgement, justice, and love. Next time you hear someone say “you should never judge” how will this discussion effect your response?      

What Rev. Jacob is Working On: I have a built-in fear to share my opinion, because usually an opinion comes with judgement. If you think one course of action is wiser than the next, you have made a judgement. I think this “do not judge” narrative that was so aggressively imposed on my generation when we were growing up has developed a lot of fearful people. I will not give in to this fear.

Rev. Jacob’s Scripture time: Matthew 7:3

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

With the love portion of judgement, justice and love also comes humility. We must always look at the self, first. If we are not willing to see our fault but only the faults of others, then any judgements we do make will be void of love, because love comes with a healthy dose of humility.

I think one of the main problems is that we often shift things to extremes, we see judgement as an isolated expression. Which is weird because we know people are more complexed than that, so you can have a judgement and also be merciful, loving, just and humble, along side those. We also need to practice making sure we are being this dynamic in our faith life, because if we just judge for judgement’s sake we are missing the point.

Prayer for your day: God, there is an expression that justice is blind. I do not feel Your justice is. Rather You see all, know all and understand all, that means Your justice is rooted in the most glorious wisdom. Even though we cannot reach that wisdom, let Your wisdom inspire us to being our best selves in all our expressions.  Amen.   

Artistic Close: In Christ, we are not put to scale against our sins, rather, the mercy of God’s justice offers to liberate us from the crushing weight of our sins. Judgement is there, but justice and mercy bring us to live in Christ.

Sidney Hall’s (1831) astronomical chart illustration of the Libra. Original from Library of Congress. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.