June 2008

The prayer for the week offers all sorts of things to meditate on, but minister justice catches my attention. I’ve never had a good grasp of justice from a biblical perspective, in part because I’m not certain that what we mean by the word is always exactly what God means when He uses it.

Word geek that I am, I usually start with the dictionary when I have questions like this. Both just and justice have to do with right and moral behavior and fairness; the root comes from the Latin for law. And that’s where I get hung up: part of the good news of the gospel is that we don’t receive what the law demands for our sins–we don’t get justice; we instead receive mercy. And fairness doesn’t seem to be part of God’s plan. Yes, God is fair in that His standard is applied equally: all who come to Him for salvation receive it; He doesn’t apply it willy-nilly or according to whim. But fairness in the way that children mean it–“Mom, she got more than me! That’s not fair!” or “Dad, all my friends get to go. Why can’t I? You’re so unfair!”–the sense of fairness our kids desire (and if we are honest, we want it too) is rarely at work in the world.