The light of justice

Sherry injured her back on the ice and then lost her job because she couldn’t work. Disability pay wasn’t enough to cover the bills but if she got a part-time job she could handle, she lost the disability check. It wasn’t fair.

Mike and Jill knew their second child was probably doomed at birth. The doctors said so and advised termination. But the couple finished out the pregnancy, held their baby as it died in their arms, and then endured horrible complications resulting in a complete hysterectomy. It wasn’t fair.

Jeff had been upbeat in his cancer fight and saw the treatments work. Coupled with good food choices and healthy living, he was restored. Then six years later, leukemia struck him down like a blitzkrieg. It wasn’t fair.

Unfairness may separate more people from God than anything else. Once the label is stuck on God, people drift away. If God is unfair, goes the thought, how can I follow him?

But maybe we have confused fairness for justice. God is just. Fairness may be our construction and expectation.

The words just, justice and justly appear nearly a hundred times in the Bible, mostly in the OT. What can we say about God’s justice?

“He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.” Deut 32:4

When we consider fairness, is that what we really want? It stems from an idea that we are worthy of something, that we deserve equality. Yet we live in a world of darkness. Left in the shadows, we serve our own plans and our own appetites. We champion our own defense and swing a sword for our own rights.

What, then, is fair? Getting what I have earned? Receiving what I deserve?

The outcry is often why me? But our question should really be, why not me? How have I earned better?

The Rock brings justice. Justice means to do what is right. God is eternal justice, always faithful and always reliable. Justice may bring discipling and it may bring mercy, but it is always right, always directed at our good.

Fairness is based on what I expect, but justice is based on what is eternally right. We can stand on the Rock.

My justice will become a light to the nations.

Isaiah 51:4