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Justice: Continuing the Conversation
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Proverbs 28:5
Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord understand it completely.
This is our hope and aim as we continue this series.
We are seeking the Lord to align our hearts with HIS heart regarding the issues of our day.
We want to know Christ’s stance on justice and how to respond as the people of God.
Focus: We will come to understand Biblical justice when we embrace empathy, lament and the centrality of Jesus as our hope.
Empathy
We come to understand Biblical justice through empathy.
Our charge before Christ is to continue the conversation, and fight for change in all godliness and love.
God intended the church to be the pillar and foundation of the truth in society. (I Timothy 3:15)
The church is not to respond as an echo to the culture, but as a voice to help shape it.
How do we do this with the thoughts and heart of God?
Romans 12:15
Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.
This is a picture of Biblical empathy. Empathy enters into another person’s experience and helps them shoulder it as if it were your own.
Galatians 6:2
Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
You can not be loving and dismissive at the same time.
This is true in any relationship, whether it be in a marriage, between friends or between people of different nationalities, cultures and ethnicities.
“Love for your neighbor means caring deeply about things that do not touch you or affect you in any way.”
-Paul David Tripp
In regards to societal racism, a lack of concern would be perpetuating the problem. At the same time, we need to make sure that our love is sincere.
Romans 12:9-12
Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.
As we posture ourselves in this way, remember that our social media world can be deceiving.
This venue can somehow encourage us to empathize with the people who we don’t know to the neglect of the people who are actually right in front of us.
When empathizing, we need to “Think globally. Act locally.”
The question is:
How have you not just hopped onto an ideological bandwagon, but instead loved and supported the people you actually know?
This is where true Biblical justice begins.
Empathy provides space for understanding.
When people are weeping in this hour because of the pain and trauma that has been inflicted through the sin in our land, we need to enter into that weeping with the love and hope of Christ. *Healthy empathy actually leads to mourning.
Yet mourning also leads to healing when we turn to the Lord.
Matthew 5:4
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
May we provide comfort to others, even as we learn the importance of lament.
Lament
We come to understand Biblical justice through lament.
“Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
Lamentation is a biblical term referring to a passionate expression of grief or sorrow.
This is what the prophet Jeremiah was doing in his canonical book of note in the midst of Israel’s sin. Where as mourning and weeping can be an individual activity, lamentation involves interaction.
It should begin with an interaction with God. From that place, lament should produce godly action in our involvement with others on behalf of God’s righteous purposes.
As an example, birthed out of the church, peaceful protest was the foundation of the civil rights movement on whose shoulders our world is standing today.
DON’T EVER BELIEVE THE LIE THAT GODLINESS DOES NOT WORK.
We see this going back even further. Amidst the backdrop of unjust persecution of Christians in the first century Roman Empire, the Apostle Peter authored these words to the church by the Holy Spirit.
1 Peter 3:8-12
Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. For “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
I believe the track record of God being involved in such responses to injustice speaks for itself as the group to whom Peter was appealing went from 120 on the Day before Pentecost to, according to Gordon Conwell Seminary’s research department, 2.5 billion+ who identify with the name of Christ worldwide today.
This does not mean that all of those who profess the name of Christ are representing him accurately, but that the conversations have begun which are leading people to the God of justice. Again, speaking by the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul continues his earlier exhortation regarding weeping with this instruction to the church:
Romans 12:16-21
Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
So what we see in the Scripture is that true justice is in God’s hands.
God’s wrath will be realized by the unjust. We should not look to avenge ourselves or take revenge against others.
God has set a day where he will bring every man and woman into judgement for the things that they have done, whether they be good or evil. That means your wrongdoing. That means my wrongdoing. That means the wrongdoing of everyone else to whom I might point fingers.
We need to lament not only over other people’s sin, but first and foremost, over our own.
Romans 3:23-24
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus
So we see that God intends justice and redemption to work hand in hand.
Yet to redeem us from our sin, Jesus had to absorb the penalty of our wrongdoing at the cross to so satisfy the justice of God.
A price always has to be paid for justice to be done.
Yet justice can be done without redemption. Justice alone can end a matter, yet not fix it. Redemption is needed to fix it.
This is true individually as well as societally.
Yet just as justice comes at a cost, so redemption will always come at a price.
The price will always be someone carrying a cross.
And in our laments, God calls us not to forget redemption.
We need to look for the goodwill of the very one who is declared our enemy to win them over with the same grace that Christ Jesus first extended to us.
This is God means when he says, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”
Specifically,
Romans 12:21
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
This is our charge.
People continue to ask when looking to God for how join the fight for Biblical justice, what they can actually do to help.
Positive actions can be taken to seek the welfare of our cities as we live out the justice and redemption that God desires.
What does doing good and righteousness look like in our different spheres of society?
As examples:
If you work in government, you can labor to help develop policies that intentionally uproot the systemic injustices entrenched in our society.
In business, you can proactively look to extend merit based opportunity and promotion to individuals who have been historically overlooked because of their ethnicity.
In advertising, entertainment and art, you can change negative rhetoric by highlighting the noble and true attributes of misrepresented people groups.
You can look to invest through patronage and through service in communities that have been underdeveloped through preferential bias.
Anyone can educate themselves about the metamorphosis of racism, as it evolved from forced slavery (which was defended morally, and ultimately legally in the U.S. from 1619-1865) to Jim Crow (discrimination that was lawful and defended both morally and often violently from 1865-1964) to the 1964 Civil Rights Act that did not end legal discrimination, but gave African Americans legal tools to fight back against injustices to the business associated with things like the privatization of prisons today.
Read more: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.history.com/.amp/topics/early-20th-century-us/jim-crow-lawsYou can look to invest financially and through service in communities that have been underdeveloped through political zoning.
These are examples of how we can do good works in Christ, right where he’s placed us, to see the narrative change.
As we do these things, there is a trap of which we need to be aware that can destroy our efforts:
As we are lamenting, we need to make sure that we are not antagonizing one another while emotions are running high.
Just as there have been violent opportunists showing up to disrupt and discredit the peaceful protests, so there are demonic forces at work trying to turn the church on itself with a spirit of accusation.
Let me tell you what will not help the cause of Biblical justice - any of us turning on people who are trying to do what’s right.
Be careful when you say that people aren’t doing enough.
In some cases that can be true, but you don’t know what everyone is doing.
DON’T be prideful.
Don’t be myopic.
Or you also become part of the problem.
To a certain extent, it has become socially profitable to take up the anti-discrimination cause.
When you say someone is not doing enough, what that generally means is that people aren’t doing what you’re doing.
It does not mean people are not doing anything.
There are 10,000 ways to be active right now.
The church of Jesus Christ needs to fight as a team.
Don’t turn on one another. This is the trap of the devil.
As Jesus said in Matthew 12:25,
“Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand.”
Someone in a recent Facebook post said it this way:
“Some are protesting on social media.
Some are protesting in the streets.
Some are donating silently.
Some are educating themselves.
Some are having tough conversations with friends and family.
A revolution has many lanes - be kind to yourself and others who are traveling the same direction.
Just keep your foot on the gas.”
Though this is a good exhortation, there is a cycle of sin that we see repeated throughout Scripture:
Pride/Arrogance - Self-Righteousness - Judgments - Hypocrisy - Discord - Lack of Fruitfulness
Or put another way:
We need to continue to be godly thinkers and not simply get caught up in the emotion of our day.
1 Peter 1:13-16
Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
So what should our action plan entail?
Action plan for empathy and lament:
Ask afflicted individuals to share their story
Actively listen with an open heart
Commit to being a godly part of the solution at the point of pain
Pray for people
Share the gospel
If you aren’t thinking about involving Jesus, your confidence is in the wrong place.
It is a deception to forget that Jesus is GOD’S solution for the ills of the human heart, and thus society.
The Centrality of Jesus
We come to understand Biblical justice through the person of Jesus Christ.
We must preserve the centrality of the person of Jesus as our hope.
Those of the aforementioned civil rights movement, spearheaded by men of God like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., understood this.
The oft forgotten third stanza of Black National Anthem reads this way:
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.
We all should be active for justice now.
YET IT MUST START IN PRAYER AND END IN THE PERSON OF JESUS.
If we’ve been talking about what we need to do before or more than talking to God, we have an idolatry of self and our results will be temporary, at best.
Psalm 127:1
Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
If we’ve been shouting out more than we’ve been crying out to God, than it shows us something about where our confidence is placed.
No one needs to treat God like a cosmic Santa Clause.
Just as our faith is not substantive if we are not doing anything to help real everyday issues, so our faith is not genuine if we find that we don’t go to God to Lord over our responses to these “real issues”.
First, we need to identify our true enemy, the devil, who is working in the men, women and systems of this world. Then we need to address the ideological battle, but spiritually.
We do this even as we educate ourselves academically, communicate verbally, serve physically and reform politically.
Ephesians 6:10-20
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.
Jesus is the answer to societal ills that we face.
It is so because unjust brutality is a product of humanity’s wicked heart. It is so because racism in any direction is also a product of humanity’s wicked heart.
So it is good to:
Get educated, but you still need a change of heart.
Donate to affiliated causes, but you still need a change of heart.
Have tough conversations, but you still need a change of heart.
Participate in peaceful protest, not just to make yourself feel better, but to be a voice, and you’ll still need a change of heart.
And for that, we need a perfect Savior.
There’s only one Messiah, and his name is Jesus.
Matthew 12:17-21
This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets; a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory; and in his name the Gentiles will hope.”
Why does this make Jesus so appealing as the true arbiter of justice?
“It is this paradox - that he is both God and human - that gives Jesus an overwhelming beauty. He is the Lion and the Lamb. Despite his high claims, he is never pompous; you never see him standing on his own dignity. Despite being absolutely approachable to the weakest and broken, he is completely fearless before the corrupt and powerful. He has tenderness without weakness. Strength without harshness. Humility without the slightest lack of confidence. Unhesitating authority with a complete lack of self-absorption. Holiness and unending convictions without any shortage of approachability. Power without insensitivity. I once heard a preacher say, “No one has yet discovered the word Jesus ought to have said. He is full of surprises, but they are all surprises of perfection.”
-Timothy Keller, Encounters with Jesus
Jesus perfectly empathizes with our pain.
Jesus perfectly lamented over our sin. Jesus suffered unjustly at the cross Jesus took all of our sin there. And he rose again to provide forgiveness from that sin and new life in him.
Acts 17:30-31
The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.
This man to whom Paul in the Scripture refers is Jesus.
No one is innocent.
We have all been guilty in some way before a holy and righteous God.
We all need a Savior. Jesus is the one who will bring true justice to victory.
He did it through the cross. He will do it in our lives if we repent and allow him to today.
Study
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Second City Church - Justice - Pastor Rollan Fisher 2020