Google describes ‘justice’ as just behaviour or treatment, the quality of being fair and reasonable.
The question arises, “What is fair, reasonable, or just?”
What is our world view? Where is our benchmark? These questions will depend on your ‘ism’, whether you are a believer of humanism, Darwinism, relativism, communism, capitalism, postmodernism, or even christianism. So it should be apparent that justice is not a concrete concept, but very much a personal or social reality. But generally we can say that we perceive justice as recompense for what we perceive as a “wrong” against us (either real or imagined).
Of God
His justice needs to be filtered through the quintessence of His love (1 John 4:8),(see 1 Cor 13:4-7) when reading that God holds no record of our wrong.
Love is large in being passionate about life and relentlessly patient in bearing the offences and injuries of others with kindness. Love is not spiteful and gets no mileage out of another’s mistakes; it bears no record of wrongs (1 Cor. 13: 4-5 Mirror Bible).
God says, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” (Exodus 33:19b) And He has compassion on all mankind, for God is love.
Psalm 103:12 – As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Thus, we can see that God’s justice is an extension of His love (Him). His justice towards us is His mercy and compassion that none shall perish (2 Peter 3:9) and that He gives us His all (Ephesians 1:3-14). However, as part of His love (justice), He does not “see joy in injustice” (1 Cor 13:6 Mirror Bible). So how does God deal with injustice? The injustice against God was how You-manity believed the lie of Satan that You-manity is not of the essence of God, thus we read in Rev 20:10 where the perpetrator of this injustice (Satan) is cast in the lake of fire for his reward. God made recompense towards us on the Cross, destroying the works of Satan, Sin and Death.
Between people
So how do we as ‘children of God’ deal with our concepts of injustice/justice? Going back to our definitions at the start of this section, it may well depend on our ‘ism’. If an injustice is a wrong done against us, then justice will correct that. However, is it truly a question of righting wrongs (we need a superhero), of getting an eye for an eye? If we are truly ‘children of God’, then it is imperative that we accept the truth of love (1 Cor 13:6b) that we are all images of God and therefore should act as God acts towards us (ie mercifully, compassionately, lovingly, kindly and with forgiveness). As Jesus tells us, “Love your enemies”.
As God gave the Israelites the Laws to behave as a society (see Deut 16:18-22:30), so too we have laws for our behaviour within our society (Romans 13:1). It is not wrong to obey our laws, nor is it wrong for our law-enforcers to act according to the law when they are broken. Does that mean our laws are always right and that the actions taken under our laws are just? Not always, but by judging law in light of God’s love, we find that against God’s love there is no law by which we can be wronged (Gal 5:23).
