Divine justice

Justice for me is deeply personal and it is something I have, in this journey of life, realized that we must look at through a divine lens that steers us away from simple legalism into something profound. Simply put, justice for me revolves around God’s justice which isn’t just about punishment but about restoration and wholeness. Human justice often focuses on what a person deserves, while divine justice often asks how a situation can be made right.

It is safe to say that all of us have been wronged at one point or another. Sometimes or even many times, undeserved. While setting the right boundaries is important, holding on to the pain can harm you more but reframing the experience helps us to view the situation as an opportunity to grow stronger.

Human justice is like a courtroom and the result is the verdict. God’s justice however is like a hospital – it’s all about the cure because it seeks to heal the damage caused by the wrongdoing rather than just simply closing a case file.

In the New Testament, Jesus flips the script on divine justice by moving it from law books into the human heart. For Jesus, justice is inseparable from love. In those days, Jesus was perceived as a rebel by the Pharisees who strictly followed the letter of the law. They were meticulously religious but ethically bankrupt. Jesus confronted them for being obsessed with tiny details while ignoring what actually mattered to God.

For Jesus, justice means the “first shall be last and the last shall be first.” He blessed the poor, the hungry and those who mourned. His version of justice was “pro neighbor” – people whom the justice system of his day had cast aside.

The prevailing logic at the time of Jesus was an eye for an eye, something that may seem to be just as prevalent today. Jesus, on the other hand, broke the cycle of revenge into transformative justice, where he taught that reacting to violence with more violence isn’t justice; it’s just more pain. Jesus famously said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” and He shifted the focus of the crime from the individual to the character of the community.

The experiences of the last few months in our country have been beyond redemption – at least for me. But God opened my eyes to see that He is still in control and is doing something good for our nation. Human ways have focused our goals on punishment and retribution while restoration, as Jesus continues to teach us, is real justice and moves our intentions and motivations closer to our hearts.

Protecting the status quo was once the goal in the days of our Lord but in reality, we ought to be more focused on protecting the marginalized and lifting them up as participants of our society, equally deserving of the same justice we are all striving for.

Most importantly, Jesus teaches us that we cannot have justice without mercy. If we are applying the law without love, we are just being rigid instead of just. The last famous parable of Jesus redefining justice can be found in the story of the Good Samaritan. The Jews and the Samaritans shared a deep-seated ethnic and religious hostility. By making the Samaritan the hero, Jesus dismantled the “us vs them” mentality that often passes for justice. In a story where a man is beaten, robbed and left for dead, we see the three types of people who see him and the only person who helped him was an outcast.

Justice has no borders and Jesus teaches to act justly even if we come from a different race, religion or political party. Justice is not a status you have or a group you belong to. It is simply something you DO for the person in front of you who is hurting.

Ever wonder why Jesus always said “Shalom?” It is after all the Hebrew word for peace and it is the ultimate goal of justice. Justice is the floor but love is the ceiling and justice is the tool that clears the obstacles so that love can finally do its work.

As the American philosopher and theologian Cornel West said, “Justice is what love looks like in public.”