During Lent I was moved to take on something instead of give up something. What Ive taken on is to write a weekly series on biblical justice. Here is #3. The Bible and Justice: Week 3 - Justice, Punishment & Mercy This week I write about God’s justice, punishment, and mercy and hope to show how they are related. When God made life, he had something specific in mind: it was to be Good. God’s intent is to bless everyone with none left out. This goodness was built in to the world from the beginning which, to my thinking, explains why every person has a sense of justice. Justice may be difficult to define, yet even a child knows when he or she experiences injustice. Injustice goes against the original plan of God for the creation so restoring justice is the work of God to make the world right again. So what should be done when injustice occurs? Is this where punishment comes into play? Many modern people are turned off by the Biblical portrayal of God as the Divine Punisher. But a closer reading will reveal not just an angry God bent on punishment but more of a jealous lover who is trying to woo his lost children back to their home with him. This “home” is the place of goodness and justice for all people. For us mortals, we mostly deliver punishment out of anger and revenge which has no redeeming value except to make the punisher feel better and results in furthering offences. Not so with God who does not punish for its own sake but to make things right, to bring about justice, to restore broken relationships, and to heal individuals and society. Yet it may seem to us that God’s punishments cause more suffering. But consider this; when we get sick, we do not call it punishment when we are poked with needles, cut on, or nearly killed with toxic chemicals and radiation. These are means of healing and restoring health. These harsh measures are not punishment but mercy. Such is the intent of God; not to punish wrong doers but to restore his children to the life of goodness for all people. The mercy of God is not the opposite of the justice of God. Mercy is the means to achieve justice. In fact, mercy is the best way to make justice for the long term. When injustice is committed, how can justice be restored? The human way of retaliation and revenge has been proven by millennium of human history not to cure anything but rather it just furthers the brokenness. God’s way is the way of mercy that brings together those on both sides of justice. So what should God do with a sick society where goodness is violated and justice is denied to some? Should God not take some action to bring about the lost goodness and restore justice? In the OT when the land of milk and honey turned sour for some people who were pushed aside by the majority, God took notice and sent the prophets with warnings and threats of punishment. Their message was that God is on the side of all who suffer from injustice and against those who cause it or could relieve the suffering but do not. This is still true for modern times. Those who would seek a life with God will have to espouse justice since justice is in the heart and character of God. To love God puts one on the side of justice, an all-inclusive, world encompassing justice, not just a tribal justice for one’s own people. Unless, of course, one’s god is a tribal god that permits and even encourages ill treatment of one’s enemies and others out of favor with the tribal god. The Bible seems pretty clear on this, especially in the New Testament. “How can you say you love God and hate your fellow man?” (I John 4). Another consideration: view punishment of oppressors from the side of the oppressed. Rescuing the oppressed will probably seem like a punishment to the oppressors but mercy to the oppressed. When broken justice gets made right again, it depends on which side of justice a person was on as to how it gets interpreted. But even to the oppressors, God desires to show mercy. The offer is always made to the offenders to turn from their wicked, hurtful ways and be restored and healed into right relations again - to be made righteous. I have a theory that since God made life to work a certain way where all his children are blessed with God’s goodness, that to live some other way will not work very well and lead to all kinds of discord, injustice, and violations of the common good. These natural consequences are the “punishments” for trying to live outside of God’s good way. Last week I referenced an excellent book on justice and I wish to conclude with this quote from The Little Book of Biblical Justice by Chris Marshall: “A brief word needs to be said, finally, about the mechanisms for dealing with sin in the Bible. Modern readers sometimes assume that because the atonement rituals of the Old Testament involve the sacrifice of animals or the use of scapegoats, the whole system depended on vicarious punishment (see Leviticus 4-5, 8-9, 16; compare with Exodus 29, Numbers 19, Deuteronomy 21, Hebrews 9-10). In this view, sacrifice was the means by which God could redirect judgment away from sinful people onto an innocent victim, thereby clearing the way to confer forgiveness on sinners without compromising the demands of justice. This scheme is then used to explain how in the New Testament the atoning death of Christ achieves salvation. “But this is an unlikely explanation for atonement practices in the Bible. In the biblical worldview, sin is considered to be not only a matter of moral failure incurring guilt, but also a source of pollution or contamination which threatens to spread like an infectious disease unless it is eliminated. In this respect, the sin-offering functions as a means of vicarious cleansing, not vicarious punishment. The sacrificial animal serves to represent those who offer it. By laying their hands on the animal, the offerers symbolically transfer their sinful identity to their representative so that it can be expunged. Forgiveness results for them. “But this forgiveness is not granted because substitutionary punishment has occurred, but because the people have exhibited remorse and dedication through their participation in the ritual. The covenant relationship, broken by the people’s sin, is thus restored, and it is this restoration, not some act of vicarious punishment, that turns away God’s wrath and satisfies God’s justice. Things have been made right again. In the New Testament, of course, it is Jesus’ representative sacrificial death that serves as God’s definitive means of “right-making” for human sinfulness and impurity.” p. 19-20 Next week I hope to explore Jesus and Justice.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 20:55:38 +0000
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