Man Is Not
Last week, I wrote about how judges must be careful to neither justify the wicked nor wrongly accuse the righteous. To continue that topic today, I’ll be discussing where those who do seek after justice should ultimately not trust in the wisdom of men, but only in God, to deliver that justice.
Many seek the face of a ruler,
Proverbs 29:26
but it is from the Lord that a man gets justice.
It is the natural bend of man to assume that they could get justice if they could only get the attention of those in charge. If they could make their case before the heads of state, they believe it would make all the difference in obtaining what is fair. However, the “many” in this verse are barking up the wrong tree! Rulers are still men like the rest of us. They are tempted by sin and lack a full understanding.
Even if they were to seek to deliver justice as God has revealed it, they have an incomplete view of space and time to have all the facts of a case. To depend solely upon the wisdom of rulers to right every wrong is foolishness. It also venerates man far beyond the reality of our abilities in our fallen state to think any ruler (no matter how wise or well-intentioned) would ever perfectly deliver justice.
And it’s not just rulers with a flawed perspective of justice. Often those seeking an audience for what they would consider “justice” are looking for that which is not justice at all but rather privilege. Sometimes, people can feel wronged when no wrong was done simply because their pride was injured. They can believe the lie that everyone else has life easier and therefore feel entitled to that which rightly belongs to another. The “justice” they seek, then, is not actual justice at all.
God’s Justice
This leads to the biggest issue yet! Most rulers in this world do not even attempt to seek true justice (which we can know only by God’s revelation of his will and character). In fact, even many professing Christians still labor under the idea that it would be wrong to use the divinely revealed definition of justice. Instead, it is proposed that man puzzle out what is “right” or “fair” according to principles such as minimizing suffering.
That, however, can lead to great injustice! When a man grows rich due to his labors and is robbed by a man who has labored little but instead depends upon theft to grow his wealth, it may reduce the suffering of the thief far more than it causes suffering of the one who has lost. However, it is also a great evil to attempt to say that this is actually good.
These alternate proposals for determining what is right are only as good as they reflect the judgement of the true judge, who is God. The further the courts of this world deviate from God’s way, the more impossible it is that man will ever receive justice.
This is because God is the only source of all justice. If our courts here rule well, it is only because God has used them to deliver his justice. The governments of this world can only act as agents of God’s justice. Should they fail that, all they will do is increase injustice.
How To Seek
With this in mind, those who desire justice should first endeavor to check their own understanding of what is right against the standard God has given in scripture. We must be careful not to be seeking favor from leaders (which would be injustice), but rather to seek righteousness as God has declared. Also, we must understand that, while God may use rulers to enact justice here, he is the origin of all justice.
It is madness to seek after the attention of the rulers of this world when we haven’t taken it to the only one who can give justice! This means prayer, and that continually. If we truly want justice there’s no better use of our time than persistently seeking it from the one who gives it perfectly instead of from judges like the one in Luke 18!
As the world gets more evil every day, the hope of justice coming from our godless institutions may discourage us. However, knowing that all justice comes from God we must understand that justice will ultimately be done regardless, and if we want to see it on earth as well we must start with recognizing God within those institutions. For our neighbors sake, our families sake, and our own, we should desire to see the judges of this world reflecting the justice of God. There is no justice in any other way.
