Day 4: Justice
What were your first thoughts when you read the word JUSTICE? What sort of feelings came up for you? Any particular images flash before your eyes? Before we head anywhere go ahead and ask “What does justice mean to me?” and write it all out.
Now, according to the Webster dictionary justice means, “The maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments.” Continued definitions from Webster include: “The quality of being just, impartial, or fair; the principle or ideal of just dealing or right action; conformity to this principle or ideal: righteousness; the quality of conforming to law; conformity to truth, fact, or reason.”
If I’m being honest the word righteousness stuck out to me as I was reading and righteous means “acting in accord with divine or moral law: free from guilt or sin; morally right or justifiable; arising from an outraged sense of justice or morality.” Interesting…the immediate passage of scripture that came to mind was John 8:1-10 when Jesus was teaching and then the scribes and Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery. They wanted to test him, because according to the Law she was to be stoned.
Before we continue I have always wondered, “but, what about the man? Isn’t he just as much in fault?” That is for a different time though…Jesus hearing them bends down and starts writing in the dirt, and simply says “He who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” After a while him and the woman were alone and He goes to her and says “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She replies “No one, Lord.” “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” Jesus says to her.
What is different with the way Jesus approached judgement upon this woman? How about with the scribes and Pharisees? Because clearly the woman was in the wrong, yet He let her go, technically by the law she should have been stoned and yet she wasn’t. How does that make you feel when the person who is clearly guilty gets to walk away free? It’s difficult really, because we want to see true justice reign, we want the guilty to get their rightful punishment. And yet, Jesus gives us a different picture, one that I don’t have full understanding or answers to. But today, while there are so many injustices in the world around us, and there is so much that I want to see changed, how do we not cast the first stone, actually set it down and approach the person before us and say “neither do I condemn you?”
Jesus, thank you that you are the One who sees all and knows all. You are the One who looks at the inside to the heart of a person and you see their true nature and heart. Lord we live in a broken world that is filled with so many injustices, God, teach us what it looks like to walk in a manner of love towards even our enemies, to those who have hurt and have caused years of pain. As is written in Amos “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” and may this cascade into our hearts and minds today. Jesus you showed a different version and understanding of justice, you flipped it upside down and so we pray for our court systems and those that work within them, we lift up the social injustices and we cry out and ask that our nation would be one filled with your understanding of justice! God, there is so much change that needs and should occur and we thank you for what you are doing in the midst of the unseen today. We continually pray that your will be done here in the United States as it is in heaven. Amen.
