Written By: Chris Barber

Scripture again and again (in both the New and Old Testament) calls God a God of justice (or a just God). Yet at the same time it repeatedly calls him a God of mercy, grace, forgiveness and love. These words are very much diametrically opposed to what most of us think of when we think of justice (for the in the Western world) we look at His justice as primarily retributive. With this being the case mercy and justice (in a retributive since) can not take place at the same time toward any single individual.

Let me explain, The Western (retributive) since of justice demands equal payment for ones crimes and for the hurt one has caused to another individual. However, Love “keeps no record of wrong” – 1 Corinthians 13:5.  In the Greek  this is “ou logizetai to kakon” which translated literally does not mean that love isn’t aware of or does not acknowledge when wrong is done and the damage that wrong can do but “ou logizetai to kakon” when literally translated correctly from the Greek means love does not “logically recount ones wrong in order to pay back evil for evil or wrong for wrong ” and so it is better understood that while love is aware of the wrongs one commits it does not hold it against them in a unforgiving, vengeful, or retributive “eye for an eye” since. Forgiveness cancels a needed payment and doesn’t demand that what is owed is paid (if it does it ceases to be forgiveness), Grace  offers a good thing or standing when it is not deserved, and Mercy cancels a deserved punishment for a said crime and instead gives good standing when it is not earned. All four of these things run contrary to the western understanding of (retributive) justice.

I do hope to dive further into this idea in later posts (specifically on the atonement) but for now let us consider this question: Is God at odds with himself because of his justice and mercy?

Obviously many have endeavored to explain away this controversy in God saying at times he expresses his justice and at other times he expresses his mercy but the truth is the problem runs deeper than that. For if God is both retributively just and constantly loving and merciful he is always at conflict (even diametrically opposed) with Himself. This contradiction within God himself was one that I lived with for a long time. How can he both forgive and punish, both love and enforce penalty for transgression against his law, and show mercy and uphold retributive justice? For most of my Christian life I have accepted the diametrically opposed character of God as a necessity taught in scripture but what if I have been wrong? What if there is a correct biblical understanding of justice that makes it possible for God to be both just and show mercy at the same time? Mercy after all is an essential characteristic of love and love is not only a characteristic but we are told that God in and of himself is love. If His love and mercy were dependent on weather or not God’s justice is being shown that makes this version and understanding of love very conditional and inconsistent. A more accurate statement in this western way of understanding justice, mercy, and love is that God is love and shows mercy only when he decides not to be just, thus making His love and mercy conditional and not consistent. However, a  truth that is very persistently expressed of Love (true agape love) that comes from God is that is unconditional and remains for the individual even if the individual is fully opposed and against it God who is love is unconditionally for the individual it loves.

Justice as Righteousness

So what are we to do with the fact that the New testament writers do describe God clearly and often as a God of “dikaiosuné” (justice). What we need is a different and better definition of the word justice that flows more evenly with the way God is portrayed in the rest of the New Testament when dealing with sin, wrong doing, or injustice. However, while doing this it would be important to not change the meaning of the word  “dikaiosuné” (justice) to what fits best with ones theology but rather to look back to what the original meaning truly was. What is interesting is that the early and eastern church has held onto a much earlier meaning of the word justice.

Perhaps the first thing to understand when considering this is that the word we often translate as justice (“dikaiosuné” and the entire dikaioó family of words) could just as easily have been translated to the word righteous, righteousness or even more simply as one who does what is right. Note what AW Tozer states in this regard:

“In the inspired Scriptures justice and righteousness are scarcely to be distinguished from each other. The same word in the original becomes in English justice or righteousness, almost, one would suspect, at the whim of the translator.”

There is not in scripture two different words being translated but rather one family of words (the dikaios family) translated in two different ways. What is truly at the heart of this set of words is that one who is dikaios is in the right or does what is right. However, (at least when it comes to justice) I don’t think the original meaning of justice is totally lost in our western culture in that we sometimes use the idea of justice to correlate to righteousness. This is actually seen in scripture translation itself as the word “dikaiosuné” is still often rendered as righteousness in the New Testament when it is referred to in a loving or merciful manner but it could just as easily be rendered as justness or justice.

Now because the term justice in the west has come to be defined in a dictionary since as – “the process or result of using laws to fairly  judge and punish crimes and criminals,” western translators rarely opt to translate the word “dikaiosuné”  to justice in the positive contexts because the context in these areas of scripture indicate a contradiction of their understanding of justice as retributive but even despite this most western concordances show that the words righteousness and justice could be used virtually interchangeably when it comes to the word “dikaiosuné”.  Thus it is probably not surprising  that justice is still on occasion used in its older and perhaps more original meaning even in the western translations.

For example, if you were to say someone is a just person, that would actually be taken to mean that the person consistently acts rightly in any given situations. However, acting rightly does not mean always upholding and punishing people who break the law but would most certainly (from God’s point of view) entail things such as love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness. The opposite is true for the term injustice. When we think of an injustice being done we think of something that is being done that is not morally right or loving. However, this does not always have to do with breaking or not breaking laws but simply whether we see it to be an unrighteous or evil act. If what is morally right is defined in terms of always acting in a loving, merciful and graceful way, it is no longer about the law but about doing what is morally right. Yet because what is morally right and wrong is written on our hearts we understand when someone transgresses the law of love and call it injustice even if technically no actual laws have been broken.

The problem is that the term justice in our modern day English has for the most part dropped this understanding (of being and acting in line with a moral rightness and righteousness and acting in the ways of love) and replaced it with ideas of retributive laws in lines with “eye for eye and tooth for tooth” because of its use to describe our juridical system and upholding the law and making sure offenders of the law get what they deserve. In turn this has become the main meaning of justice in the Western world and as you can tell this is very far removed from its original meaning of acting in a morally correct or right way.

Consider what Alexandre Kalomiros (of the Eastern Orthodox Church) explains:

The Greek word diakosuni ‘justice’, is a translation of the Hebrew word tsedaka. The word means ‘the divine energy which accomplishes man’s salvation.’ It is parallel and almost synonymous with the word hesed which means ‘mercy’, ‘compassion’, ‘love’, and to the word emeth which means ‘fidelity’, ‘truth’. This is entirely different from the juridical understanding of ‘justice’.”

In fact, supporting Kalomiros’s statment there are many places even in the Old Testament (in addition to what we just addressed in the New) that make it exceedingly clear that justice from the perspective of God should be defined and actually pertains to doing the right things such as love expressed by mercy, grace, and compassion.

We in the West (because we have come to believe God is retributively just) have come to believe a doctrine that basically says something along the lines of God’s mercy, grace, and love save us from His demand for justice. However, in the scriptures (as seen all the way back in the Old Testament and then clarified by Paul in Romans in the New testament) it is because God is just, upholds justice, is righteous, and does what is right that He saves us. Salvation then is not a saving from His demand for justice but rather God gives salvation because He is just and does what is right. There are plenty of places in the scripture that indicate this to be the case but perhaps none more clearly than when God shows the correlation by declaring Himself that:

My mercy and justice are coming soon.

My salvation is on the way.

My strong arm will bring justice to the nations.

All distant lands will look to me

and wait in hope for my powerful arm.

– Isaiah 51: 5

 With this in mind could it also be that that mercy is not then diametrically opposed to justice as we have so often presumed to be true. Yes that is this case both justice and mercy work together in bringing about our salvation and they are often seen as a tamdem working together at the same time throughout scripture. Consider carefully these verses:

“This is what the LORD Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.’ – Zechariah 7:9

Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him. – Isaiah 30:18

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

From everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s mercy is with those who fear him, and his justice with their children’s children – Psalm 103:17

and the Lord is:

Full of splendor and majesty is his work, and his justice endures forever. He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered; the Lord is gracious and merciful. – Psalm 111: 3-4

 

With this being in mind “dikaiosuné” clearly rules out retributive justice because it (and its corresponding Hebrew word) seems to be used regularly with the idea that it is expressed by and through what is the exact opposite of retributive justice (that is God’s justice according to scripture is often times best expressed by His mercy). This is because there are ways of handling wrongs in a way that is just (in line with this scriptural view of God’s justice) but still not using as its motive of revenge or even retribution because as even the apostle John explains: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just (does what is right) to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. – 1 John 1:9