Psalm 33:5

The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.

Psalm 89:14

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; love and faithfulness go before you.

Ephesians 1:7, 8

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.

Colossians 1:19, 20

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Reflection

Having considered justice and love in relation to God’s character, we may go back to one of the basic questions in this study and indeed in life, and ask, “Are justice and love incompatible, or at best completely distinct?”

Because God is one, and because God is both just and loving, justice and love cannot be essentially incompatible or distinct. In God’s character and purposes, they meet and agree. Certainly justice and love are united in God.

In the world as God intended and created it to be, justice and love were meant to be completely harmonious, interdependent and mutually reinforcing. In God’s good creation, justice is meant to spring from love for God and for people and to seek shalom for all people. Correspondingly, love is intended to seek justice and build shalom among people.

Yet the world is not as God intended it to be. We are sinful and have fallen short of the original goodness created by God. We ignore and rebel against God’s good purposes and order, thus marring existence for others, ourselves, and the creation itself.

God, however, has not abandoned us in our sinful, fallen rebellion. Instead, God has responded justly and lovingly to overcome evil and to remedy the ills and death resulting from our sinfulness.

So justice and love are still interdependent and mutually reinforcing, as God shapes and pursues them in and through our lives. However, now they are interdependent and mutually reinforcing in complex and difficult ways. Tension and even pain characterize their joint working out in our world.

We see this most clearly and concretely in Jesus on the cross. There, both God’s hatred for sin and his care for the world come together – they “meet and agree” – in judgment and salvation. In suffering for us, Jesus holds together God’s justice and God’s love for us.

In our sinful world, then, God’s justice and love take the shape of a cross, the cross of Jesus. God does not ignore wrongdoing, evil, and sin. The cross truly and fully executes God’s absolute and holy judgment on sin. At the same time, it also enacts God’s saving love.

Without the cross of Jesus Christ there would be no accountability and justice; justice would be only judgment and punishment. At the same time, without the cross there would be no love; love would be mere sentimentalism. The power of the cross is this: that God brings his justice and love together to condemn and to save both sinner and victim.

Of course, the cross is not final; resurrection follows the cross. The New Testament, especially the Gospel of John, presents the cross and resurrection as one continuous work of God. In John 13:31-32, on the verge of arrest and crucifixion, Jesus asserts that now he is glorified and God is glorified in him. We may easily recognize this in the res- urrection, but according to the New Testament it begins in the crucifixion. Both glorify God and Jesus. The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus constitute one unified act of God for overcoming sin and saving the world.

Specifically then, Jesus died that we, in our sin, would die. Jesus was raised that we, dead in him, would be raised to new life. Thus through cross and resurrection, new life in Jesus yields transformed life, beyond our sin and its devastating effects on our relationship with God, with others, with ourselves, and with creation itself.

The re-creating, transforming effects of the cross and resurrection then – of God’s justice and love – are new and right relationships with God and with others. We will explore these effects further in the next lessons.

Used by permission - www.restorativejustce.org - a ministry of Prison Fellowship International


Last modified: Tuesday, August 14, 2018, 11:20 AM