God’s Justice
One of the most popular Disney movies of all time is 101 Dalmatians. And as you probably know, the evil, Cruella de Vil, steals 15 Dalmatian puppies from one of her fashion designers for the purpose of making a coat made from their fur. And as the audience, when we watch this happen, it enrages us!
What she is doing is not right! It’s evil! It’s unjust! Everything in us wants justice and to see things restored for good.
We, as human beings in this world, hate to see injustice. Our blood begins to boil when we see characters like Cruella de Vil, Biff in Back to the Future, Johnny Lawrence in the Karate Kid, Regina George in Mean Girls, or Skut Farkus in A Christmas Story.
When people mistreat other people, it makes us angry. We don’t like bullies. We hate to see people who are weaker get pushed around by those who are stronger and in power.
It’s not right. It’s unjust. And we all feel that. It seems to be almost a universal feeling we all share.
There’s a reason for that. The reason is that we are made in God’s image, and God is a God of justice.
As a matter of fact, it’s one of His attributes. God is just.
GOD’S JUSTICE
Divine Justice encompasses both God's righteousness (His perfect moral standard) and His judgment (His response to moral violations). It's the attribute by which God acts in accordance with His perfect nature, upholding what is right and addressing what is wrong.
God is always fair, righteous, and impartial. His actions and decisions are perfectly aligned with His moral law and holy character.
Let’s look at a few Scripture passages that reveal God’s justice:
“The Rock! His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, Righteous and upright is He. (Deuteronomy 32:4)
Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you. (Psalm 89:14)
The Scriptures teach us that “all His ways are just,” God is “without injustice,” and that “righteousness and justice are the foundations of his throne.”
In Psalm 146, the Psalmist highlights a little more of the idea of God standing up for justice. God will make things right in unjust situations and punish those for acting unjustly.
Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God. He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them— he remains faithful forever. He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. (Psalm 146:5-9)
God “upholds the cause of the oppressed.” He stands up for those being unjustly treated. God restores things back to the way they should be for those who are oppressed.
We also see that God “frustrates the ways of the wicked.” Some translations say, “brings to ruin the wicked.”
We love to see is that God is just and will bring justice upon those who do evil. It brings us hope that people who bully and mistreat others will not get away with it. They will be judged and will be punished by a just God.
The problem though with this, however, is that with God being just and it being a part of His nature to bring wrath upon evil and those who are wicked, we don’t usually see that involves us!
WE ARE ALL THE WICKED
It’s easy to see in the lives of those who are like Cruella de Vil, Hitler, or those who kill innocent people in our world today, but it’s not so easy to see in ourselves because after all, we aren’t them. We haven’t done the kind of things they’ve done. We haven’t participated in the depth of evil and injustices that they have!
And after all, God is a God of love, so, we tend to think, “Can’t He just overlook my few mistakes? Can’t He just forgive me for those things?”
But the answer to that is no! God is just and therefore must punish anyone that breaks His moral law in any way or else He wouldn’t be truly just. And that goes for even what we try and categorize as no big deal or minor mistakes.
This is related also to God’s attribute of holiness. In the previous blog post in this series, we looked at Isaiah 6 where Isaiah finds himself in the presence of our holy God. Isaiah’s response isn’t, “I’m good here. I’m not that bad of a person. I’ll be alright.”
His response is, “Woe to me! I am ruined! I am a man of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the Lord Almighty!” (Isaiah 6:5)
Isaiah understood that God is completely morally pure and that he was not. The same holds true of all of us as we are told by Paul in Romans 3:23:
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Ro. 3:23)
In other words, we not talking about degrees of sin when it comes to God punishing the unjust. We have all sinned against a holy, perfect, and righteous God and now fallen short of His glory.
And as a just God, therefore, He must punish sin or He wouldn’t be just. He wouldn’t be good.
This means that all of us are deserving of God’s wrath (Eph. 2:3). Wrath must be poured out on sin. Sin must be punished if God is truly just.
Sometimes, I hear people say things when giving their testimonies like, “I really wasn’t that bad of a person before I met Christ,” and they’ll compare it to like someone who was a murderer, a drug dealer, or gang member who was committing all kinds of violent acts.
In their minds “those people” are the ones who were bad. They themselves weren’t that bad compared to those people.
This is a misunderstanding of our situation as those who have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
We are enemies of God (Colossians 1:20). We are wretched sinners before a holy and righteous God who must punish sin. We must be punished and receive His wrath because of His attribute of justice. Because this is part of God’s nature.
This is the reality of the situation as sinners before a holy and just God. He cannot simply just forgive sin and let us into heaven. It is a violation of His character.
GOD’S ATTRIBUTES OF LOVE AND MERCY IN RELATION TO HIS JUSTICE
While God is just, we know that God is love and a God of mercy. We see that in Scripture in Exodus 34 when God passed in front of Moses:
And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished. (Ex. 34:6-7)
When you look at this passage, it seems like a contradiction.
IF God is a God of justice and will not leave the guilty unpunished, then how could He forgive wickedness, rebellion, and sin? How could He just let all of the wicked things that go on in the Old Testament continue to happen?
We see the answer to that in Romans 3.
God put forward (Jesus) as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. (Romans 3:25)
Propitiation is a sacrifice given that satisfies justice and removes wrath.
In John 3:16 we are told that God so loved the world that He gave Jesus. What did He give Jesus for? Well, what we are being told here in Romans 3 is that Jesus was given to satisfy God’s justice.
The question is, “What will satisfy God’s justice?” The answer is what we saw in Ephesians 1:3 which is His wrath. God’s punishment on sin will satisfy His justice!
In other words, God so loved the world that He gave Jesus to receive His wrath (punishment for sin).
As bad as crucifixion was physically, think about having the wrath of God poured out on you.
The wrath that was demanded through God’s justice to be poured out on you as a sinner (the wrath you deserved) was poured out on Jesus.
And because “God put forward Jesus as a propitiation by His blood,” it removes His wrath from you (if, as Ro. 3:25 says, you’ve received Jesus’ salvation by faith).
But look at what the verse goes on to say:
This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. (Romans 3:25b)
Do you remember Exodus 34? God said that He was slow to anger. In other words, He could pass over former sins committed even though He is a God of justice because of what He was going to send Jesus to do in the future.
Look at what Paul continues to say in Romans 3:26:
It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:26)
As Jesus was dying on the cross, it was displaying or showing the righteousness of God that He is a God of justice (that He does not let the guilty go unpunished as He said in Exodus 34).
JUSTIFIED IN CHRIST
Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this is that through God’s act of justice by satisfying the demands of His wrath being poured out on sin, He now justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.
When you put your faith in Jesus, you are justified which means declared righteous. You are made right with God!
You go from being a sinner, fallen short of the glory of God, an enemy, and one deserving of God’s wrath, to one who is righteous and made right with God!
This is true of you, not because God looked over your sin, but because He poured out His punishment and wrath on Jesus as your substitute so that He might be both just and your justifier.
Therefore, when we think about how this plays out practically in your life, walk throughout your daily life as one who has been justified and made right with God.
Many of us as believers in Christ, live our lives after salvation continuing to try and justify ourselves before God and others through our behavior, performance, and the way we compare ourselves to other people.
But you don’t need to continue to try and justify yourself because you have been and will forever be justified by Him.
Jesus used His final breath on the cross to declare that “It is Finished.” Therefore, rest in His finished work to make you right with God. Enjoy your relationship with Him.
And as you do rest in Him and enjoy your relationship with Him, let Him show you how you can now act right because you’ve been made right.
You can now act justly because you’ve been justified.
In Micah 6:8 it says that the Lord requires you to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Now, the Israelites couldn’t really do this because it was before Christ, but we see His heart and the way that God created us to live in relationship with Him.
But now on the other side of the cross, we can walk humbly with God because we’ve been made right God. We can love mercy because we’ve been made merciful in Christ. We can act justly and do justice because we’ve been justified by God and we are in union with the One is just.
Therefore, as He expresses His justice through us, we’ll find ourselves standing up for those who are being bullied, for those who are being taken advantage of, and for those being oppressed.
But here is an important truth as I close: if you have never put your faith in Jesus for salvation, then the wrath you deserve for being a sinner before a holy, righteous, and just God as not been removed from you.
Even though Jesus has taken God’s wrath for you, it has not been applied to you if you have not received His salvation by faith. As a result, it will be poured out on you and all evil in this world because this is who God is as a God of justice.
However, because of His great love for you, He sent Jesus to be your substitute, and you don’t have to receive His wrath since Jesus has received it for you. He offers you forgiveness and rescue as a gift. Receive that gift today by placing your faith in Him to be your Lord and Savior. This is the gospel.
