He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).
God is just, and he also requires that we, his human agents, act justly toward one another. Justice is a major theme in the Bible. As the psalmist writes:
The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love (Psalm 33:5).
and:
Blessed are those who act justly, who always do what is right (Psalm 106:3).
and:
Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice (Psalm 112:5).
Through the prophet Isaiah, God commanded:
Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow (Isaiah 1:17).
There are hundreds of passages in Scripture that speak about justice. For this article I want to look closely at one passage, which is found in the third chapter of Genesis:
And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
The man said, “The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:11-15).
One of the first things I notice when I read this passage is that God does not ask the serpent what happened, or give him a chance to explain, or to take responsibility for his actions. God’s decision is based solely on the testimony of the man and woman, and on his own knowledge.
Now, obviously, God is omniscient, and he does not actually need to ask anybody anything; he already knows the answers. Nevertheless, he gives the man and the woman a chance to confess, despite already knowing what they will say. And they actually do confess. Yes, they both try to shift the blame for their actions, but they do, at least, admit that they have eaten the fruit. We don’t know what the serpent would have said, however, or how he would have defended his actions, because God did not give him a chance to do so. Nevertheless, because we know that God is just, we can accept that his decision here is also just.
This is the very first judicial inquiry recorded in Scripture, and I can’t help but think that part of the point is to teach the Israelites, and us, something about justice. In particular, God seems to be showing us that justice is not measured by a having a fair process, which this inquiry does not appear to have, but by having a just outcome. In the language of ethics, we might say that a fair judicial process is an instrumental good. That is, it’s only good as the means to a good end – in this case, a just verdict, which would be the intrinsic good. We could think of it as being similar to proper nutrition, which is not especially good in itself, but it’s good because it contributes to staying healthy, and being healthy is intrinsically good.
It seems obvious that the goal of any judicial process should be a just outcome, yet this principle – that the process serves to produce a just outcome and is not a valuable thing in itself – turns our entire western system of jurisprudence on its head. To say that police, attorneys and judges should only follow the established judicial process when it leads to a just outcome, and should discard it when it doesn’t, would throw our entire legal system into chaos. And yet, the one perfect judge, God, does exactly that. Didn’t Paul write that the events recorded in the Scriptures were given to us as examples? (1 Corinthians 10:6,11).
And I think there’s a sense in which we already understand this. We do recognize that there is a difference between a fair process and a just result. Court procedures, after all, are only followed in legal cases; we don’t use anything of the sort when we make informal judgments in our everyday life. Large companies have written procedures they follow to resolve issues with their workers, but small businesses often don’t. Schools have official processes of discipline, and yet every day, teachers in classrooms make informal decisions about how they respond to minor misbehavior by students. Most significantly, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of parents who follow any kind of judicial procedure in deciding how to discipline their children. We all seem to recognize that there are situations where a formal process would only get in the way. Even in the stories we watch or read, how often can we see vigilantes presented in a favorable light? More than that, how many of our fictional heroes are heroes precisely because they go outside the legal process in order to fight for a just outcome?
At this point, I’m sure somebody is going to raise the obvious objection that human beings, who are both finite and fallen, can not be trusted to make just decisions on important matters without following a fair process. There is some merit to this argument, but not if we overlook the fact any process we follow was also created by human beings who are, as we just admitted, both finite and fallen. Whatever legal or judicial process we might follow is flawed; none of them is any more trustworthy than the people who implement them. And the cost of giving too high a priority to the process is that it tends to reduce accountability. As long as we follow the law, or the official rules, or the established procedure, we can tell ourselves that we’re not responsible for the outcome. Rather than being a means to establish justice, the process then becomes a substitute for justice. The problem is not in following a process to establish justice; the problem is treating the process as something good in itself, rather than as a means to an end.
So what’s the takeaway here? I’m not sitting as a judge, and I certainly don’t have the power to pass laws or issue findings that alter our western system of jurisprudence. I don’t make legal decisions. I do make decisions, however, as do each of you reading this. Decisions that affect our families, our neighbors, our co-workers, and everyone we interact with. It’s far too easy to point fingers at others – police, judges, legislators, even the president. But what did Jesus say?
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:3-5).
It might make me unpopular to point this out, but this principle applies to criticism of those in government as well. Before we start a campaign to reform the justice system, we need to reform ourselves. Before we can demand accountability from police or judges or government leaders, we need to hold ourselves accountable. It’s when we are faithful to act justly in our own lives that we can expect God to use us to help establish justice in our community and in our nation (Luke 16:10).
Act justly. Treat people fairly, even if the law or the rules or the established procedures don’t require you to. That doesn’t mean break the law (Romans 13:1-7 still applies as well). On the contrary, it means that simply following the law is not enough. God did not tell us to act legally, but to act justly (Micah 6:8). In fact, I would go so far as to say that acting justly is a necessary part of loving our neighbor. But to be clear, God does not require us to act justly because we follow Christ, but because we are human; we bear his image (Genesis 1:26-27). Justice is a universal requirement, which is why, once we ourselves start living up to it, we do have every right to teach others to do so as well, even if they are not believers. That includes the people in government, although it is by no means limited to them.
On a cord around my neck I wear a wooden cross that has been inscribed with Psalm 82:3-4:
Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
I don’t consider this a calling to the president or to the legislature or to the courts; I consider it a calling to me. It’s a calling that I don’t always live up to, but it’s also a reminder that God’s justice doesn’t just warn wrongdoers against sin, it also challenges all of us to live up to the calling we were created for. To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.