the surprise of justice and love

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.

And we’ve only scratched the surface of a complex issue of God’s justice and sovereignty, why evil people prosper, why bad things to happen to good people–it can quickly become overwhelming. Perhaps like Job, I should end here saying, “I am of small account; I lay my hand over my mouth.”

Perhaps. Or perhaps I can say, “I can’t figure out everything, but I can figure out something.” For me, the place to go when my head starts swirling with questions and objections and uncertainties is Scripture. What do I find when I look for the word justice?

First, I see that God values justice. Moses describes God as impartial, saying, “He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.” God the Father is adamant that those in precarious positions receive justice and that they are adequately cared for, and just in case we miss this aspect of His nature, the Holy Spirit brings it out a number of times in the Old Testament.

But look more closely at what Moses says. “Execute justice” sounds rather cold, but then he tells us that God “loves the sojourner.” This, for me, is unexpected–justice and love together take me by surprise. And the next verse makes clear that this is not a verbal slip on Moses’ part. He immediately tells–commands, actually–the Israelites: “Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”

I love the flow of thought in this passage; it’s full of surprises. Let’s get the context:

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:17–19)

Moses has been telling the Israelites that they need to get their act together and serve God. Here he reminds them of God’s majesty and power. But this “awesome God” isn’t capricious; He is just. You don’t have to read much mythology to know that consistency and fairness were not hallmarks of ancient deities. God, however, is different; we have incredible power coupled with justice. And then Moses gives a specific: God’s justice extends to those who could least expect it. In a male-dominated culture, widows and orphans lacked an advocate; thus David tells us that God is “father to the fatherless.” God goes beyond serving as lawyer or representative for those in need–He acts based on a relationship of love.

Moses emphasizes love here in Deuteronomy, telling us that God “loves the sojourner.” Other translations use the word alien or stranger–that is, those from outside the culture. Like orphans and widows, foreigners could expect to be taken advantage of. But not with God; He loves them, and He shows that love in tangible ways by meeting physical needs. And lest we want to somehow minimize the impact of this word love, it’s the same one we find when we are commanded to “love the Lord your God” and when Moses tells the Israelites that God “set His heart in love on their forefathers” just a few verses before our passage.

Moses extends God’s example of justice and love to the Israelites, telling them to “love the sojourner.” Surprise! Don’t just tolerate them; love them. And he provides them a reason: you were in the same position once. Long before Jesus gives us the Golden Rule, God through Moses gives us the principle: put yourself in the other person’s place and act accordingly.

Who would have thought that we would get from God’s justice to loving our neighbors as ourselves? Back to the prayer for the week, we ask God to give us grace so that we may “minister His justice with compassion.” I understand why the authors of this prayer added “with compassion”–our experience of the world tells us that justice and compassion are not natural companions. If we truly understand justice, however, we know that compassion will be right there. As I said at the beginning, God sometimes (often?) has something different in mind, even when He uses the same word. It seems clear to me that in God’s dictionary, justice and compassion go together; I would venture to say that they are in fact so intimately connected as to be inseparable. For me, then, this prayer is not just asking God to help me minister justice; I’m asking God to give me His perspective that colors that justice with love.

Tagged as: compassion, foreigners, Golden Rule, justice, love, orphans, widows