Thoughts on Justice and Mercy
Here’s some thoughts I had in response to some prose musing about justice.
I like the idea that the Church is embodying justice, working in the world to show it. I think when we pray “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” that this is part of our prayer; just as there is no injustice in heaven, we pray for the end of injustice on earth, and we work toward it. One good example, I think, is William Wilberforce, the devout Christian who worked to abolish slavery in the British Empire. Here was a man whose conviction that Jesus was Lord did not remain a privatized, sentimental faith, but worked itself out into decades of passionate, seemingly futile, but ultimately successful advocacy for the devalued and degraded.
I also think it’s good to remember that justice is not impersonal. While it may be blind in the sense of not showing favoritism, justice is really an attribute of a very personal God. There is not some vague, universal principle out there that is Justice; rather, there is a holy and just God, who is intensely angry with all rebellion against His perfect law.
I would caution here that we should make sure we distinguish between justice and mercy; they are by no means the same. Loving enemies and acts of charity are properly called mercy, not justice. Strict punishment and just deserts are the stuff of justice. These seem to be opposing forces.
And yet we know that even though God is just, He is also “rich in mercy.” Now it would seem that God cannot be just if He shows mercy to people. This dilemma is reconciled in the cross. In the atoning death of Jesus, the unflinching demands of God’s justice were satisfied. Mercy and justice are both at the cross; God’s fierce wrath carried out on the only perfect sacrifice, Christ, but God’s mercy given to those who were “by nature children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3) and could never deserve it. In this way, God can truly be at the same time “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26).
In this the Church gets its mission of mercy. Because we are undeserving sinners, former children of wrath, whom God raised up even when we were “dead in our trespasses” (Eph. 2:5), we can in turn show mercy and kindness to those who are undeserving. Because we have been forgiven much, we can forgive much. Because we have been loved by the One who first loved us while we were His enemies, we can likewise love those who do not love us. And in this way, we reflect the character of God: working for justice, but showing mercy.
