“Justice” is a word that is used quite frequently these days, including in the church. Which is fine, because justice is a biblical word. However, the way the word is used in many cases, especially today, is only faintly related to its biblical usage.

Too often, justice is used today to mean fairness or equity. “Justice warriors” aim to make sure that everyone is treated fairly and that all outcomes for all people are the same. “Justice” in this sense is all about everyone getting the same things, or, better, everyone sharing everything and no one having any personal belongings. The extreme “justice warriors” would do away with all private property and would institute something akin to communalism. Further, they would require that the prison populations would reflect the general population in terms of ethnicity, religion and social economic class. Even further, some of these folks demand that there should be no distinction between male and female or any of the other dozens of “genders” that they seek to have recognized.

But justice in the Bible is something else.

Justice, biblically, refers to judging people righteously: judging the guilty as guilty, and the non-guilty as innocent. It is about holding people accountable to the Law and effecting justice fairly, with no preference for the rich OR the poor (Leviticus 19:15). Far from giving everybody the same thing, justice means giving people what they deserve, according to the law. So, if someone violates the law, justice requires that they be given the punishment proscribed by the law, regardless of their ethnic, gender or whatever status.

True, biblical justice is about the law being fairly applied. But modern “justice warriors” want the law to be applied in a way that addresses past discrepancies. As though letting someone off today for committing a crime will make up for someone else (in their ethnic or other “group”) having been unjustly punished in the past, sometimes the very distant past. Letting someone off who deserves to be punished is what grace is all about, and that is God’s domain, not humans’. When human beings let someone get away with a violation of the law without punishment (or reduced punishment), it is just as bad, Biblically speaking, as punishing an innocent person for a crime they did not commit. In both cases, justice is not done.

Consider the two thieves on the crosses next to Jesus on the day He was crucified (Luke 23:32-43). The one cursed Jesus but the other recognized that he and the other thief were being given a punishment that they deserved, while Jesus was being punished unjustly.

So, when you encounter people, especially other Christians, who want to conflate the meanings of justice (biblically and worldly), ask deeper questions and don’t assume they are the same thing. As I said, there are similarities, but for the most part, the modern notion of justice is not what the Bible means when it says justice.

Peace,