Two Sides of Justice

Many consider the God of the Bible as One of judgement, a hard taskmaster. In reality, He is a God of justice (Isaiah 30:18) and does all things according to justice: “all His ways are just” (Deuteronomy 32:4). This Hebrew word for justice is mispat, a legal term and it means that He is the judge who renders justice faithfully, consistently. He is “a God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is He”. Yet, many can only see one side of justice. 

In Exodus 34:6-7, “Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.’” These verses reveal the two sides of a perfect judge, One who is slow to anger, longsuffering and compassionate, yet will not let the guilty get away unpunished. 

Justice for Nineveh 

 

Consider the Assyrians. Jonah was called by God to Nineveh to offer them reconciliation if they would believe in God and turn from their wicked ways. This is the nation that was as wicked a civilization as the world had seen, yet God was offering them a “get out of jail free card”. Jonah had a real problem with this; he wanted to see the guilty punished. When they did repent, Jonah wanted to die. In Jonah 4:11, God speaks to him, “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?” When man sees injustice, he wants to see retribution, but the Lord is not a God of retribution.  

 

God gave Isaiah a prophecy about Assyria in Isaiah 10:12, saying, “I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the pomp of his haughtiness.” The fulfillment of this prophesy took place nearly 150 years after Jonah’s visit to Nineveh when God sent “a wasting disease among his stout warriors; and under his glory a fire will be kindled like a burning flame. And the light of Israel will become a fire and his Holy One a flame, and it will burn and devour his thorns and his briars in a single day” (verses 16-17). There is divine energy that works toward and for the righteous while the wicked will always be resisted and suffer consequences. Those consequences can be measured in the quality of life while on earth as well as the abruptness and severity of its conclusion.  There are two sides of justice. 

The righteous and the wicked 

 

The wisdom literature, particularly Proverbs is filled with many references to the way God treats the righteous verses the wicked. For example, in Proverbs 11:8, “The righteous is delivered from trouble, but the wicked takes his place.” And then there is Proverbs 11:31, “If the righteous will be rewarded in the earth, how much more the wicked and the sinner! His justice is realized not just at the judgement seat, but it is also fulfilled in the opportunities that life affords the righteous and the divine ramifications of the wicked.   

 

In the New Testament, we have another example. Paul writes to Corinth that a man in the congregation who was carrying on an affair with his stepmother needed the church to be addressed publicly: the man should repent or be turned over to Satan. So they did. In his second letter to the same church, he addresses either the same or similar issue with the church since they had not welcomed back a repentant believer (2Corinthians 2:5-8). The justice of God is always welcoming back anyone who repents.  

 

King David, being a man after God’s heart understood the repercussions of his failures and wrote about them regularly in the Psalms. In Psalm 37, he addresses the struggle that we all have at different times, that the wicked appear to go unpunished for their wickedness. As this psalm is inspired of God, it provides solutions of how we deal with these feelings, especially when we feel like we have been wronged.  

Psalm 37:3-7 

 

3 Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. 4 Delight yourself in the LORD; and He will give you the desires of your heart. 5 Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He will do it. 6 He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday. 7 Rest in the LORD and wait patiently for Him; do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who carries out wicked schemes.  

 

David’s first encouragement is that evildoers will quickly fade away (verse 1-2). So how do believers actually embrace this as reality? The answers are found in verses 3-8. The first is to trust in the Lord, that He will do as He promises. It means a confidence in God not evidenced by feeling, but a decision of the will to believe God. Next, verse 4 promotes the idea of becoming delighted or glad in the Lord. It is the result of a willingness to quiet oneself before Him, to submit the emotions to His rule. In so doing, His desires become our desires. Then, committing our way to the Lord is to roll the burdens of life on Him, to cast our cares on Him (1Peter 5:7). In not holding back, we find His righteousness revealed in the light of our lives. Finally, we find our rest in Him because we have allowed ourselves to wait for Him. Since we are no longer emotionally involved, we can wait with patience.