God, the One who LOVES Justice

This article was first published on the Justin Rizzo Blog.

Someone once asked me the question… “Why should we ask God for His justice? Shouldn’t we ask Him for His mercy?” I began to think about this question, because we should ask Him for His mercy. But should we juxtapose these two attributes of God and set them against each other? Can God love mercy and love justice, yet have no contradiction?

“For the Lord loves justice, and does not forsake His saints; they are preserved forever…” (Psalm 37:28) 

Justice is at the core of the gospel of the kingdom. A description of God in Psalm 97 says that clouds and darkness surround God and “righteousness and JUSTICE are the foundation of His throne.” The establishing of justice is not only at the core of God’s throne, but central to the 1st and the 2nd coming of Christ. This is seen clearly in Isaiah 42 when God speaking through Isaiah says about Jesus (“My Elect One”), that “He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles… and He will not fail nor be discouraged, till He has established JUSTICE on the earth.” 

God’s mercy and His justice are both expressed equally and without restraint through the cross. His heart for justice was never lessened when He displayed His mercy by becoming sin for us so that we might be justified before the Father. It is because God is a just judge and loves justice that a sacrifice had to be made in the form of God living a sinless life and dying in our place for our sins.

Our God is good with no shadow of evil. All of His ways are right, blameless, perfect and faultless. It is because He is righteous that His justice required Himself to become sin for us so that we might escape the consequences that we so fully deserved. What Jesus came to do on the cross and what He is coming to do at His 2nd coming is this: to make wrong things right. When sin entered the world it affected all areas of life as we know it, which immediately made it necessary for a sacrifice to be made. We are able to stand justified before God because of God’s mercy and His justice at the cross.

At the same time God cares immensely about injustice in the earth. Isaiah 59:14-15 shows us a God who is not indifferent about injustice, but is displeased when He looks on the earth and sees the injustice of the orphan, the poor, abortion, sexual immorality, racism and much other corruption at the hands of humans.

God become a man, took on our flesh to make the wrong things right so that we might be saved and His goodness would be seen throughout the earth. God has given us the solution to injustice and that is intercession. Intercession is the action of intervening on behalf of another. We must first act through prayers of intercession, yet it must not end there. We must also physically act and be the hands and feet of God’s desire to make wrong things right.

We must not downplay the effectiveness of prayer. Our God moves at the sound of our voice. Jesus even said in Luke 18 that God will bring about justice for His elect who cry out to Him day and night. Yet we must also not neglect doing good and displaying the goodness and love of Christ through deeds.

James 2:14 says “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” 

We must love justice, just as God loves justice. Jesus came the first time to make wrong things right and He is coming again to make wrong things right. We must agree with His heart through prayer and commit to making wrong things right through action in both word and deed.