By Dillon Schupp
God cares about seeing justice done in this world- which means injustice is an affront to God.
That should make sense. After all, He cares about all people. He made all people in His image. And surely it bothers Him when some people treat other people as if they are not equally made in the image of God. It bothers God for some humans to treat other humans as less than human.
For some of us, that brings hope. It comforts us that the injustice we see in the world is something that also bothers God.
For others of us, it creates tension because it pushes back against some of our assumptions- namely that the church should “just preach the Gospel”…and not worry about issues of justice in our world.
If you are in the second group of people, I would say this: A God who care about sin must certainly care about injustice. He must certainly care when people are treated unfairly by others. And if He cares, then we should care. We do not have permission to sit behind the walls of a church building and not speak up when injustice is present. To do so is to convey the message that, somehow, God is only concerned with the spiritual realm and the heart- and not the practical actions that we witness each day.
Such a distinction is unbiblical- and wrong.
Amos 5:15 (NIV) says this:
Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts.
God cares about justice being executed- and part of His call to Israel to repent was to not maintain justice. How much more, on this side of the cross, should we care about justice being done!
However- for those in the first group, we have to realize something very important, or we will also do something unbiblical and wrong. That thing we have to realize is this:
The God who loves justice is also the God who judges. The God who cares that right is done also defines what is wrong- and He does not bend on either of those things.
In other words, not only is He just- He is also holy. In fact, God also said this through Amos:
There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court and detest the one who tells the truth.- Amos 5:10, emphasis mine
The title of the series we are currently in- “Only God Can Judge Me”- touches on the idea of “Only God can judge my behavior.” This phrase is often used to ward off criticism from other people, and is often said with the unspoken mindset that- though God could judge me- He won’t judge me, because He wants me to be happy.
God does want you to be happy. But He does not give us permission to pursue happiness outside of His holiness.
God’s holiness is what informs His desire for justice. His holiness is what qualifies Him and Him alone to be the Perfect Judge- because only He is perfect, and only He has the perfect perspective.
If we forget about that, then we begin to mold God into a social justice warrior and begin to use His words for causes that blatantly go against what His Word commands. And then, when His Word is brought into the equation, we either outright dismiss it (claiming the culture and times are different- while ignoring that God never changes) or we twist ourselves into knots trying to explain how the Bible doesn’t mean what it clearly means.
The end result of that is we begin to filter God’s Word through our cultural trends instead of filtering our cultural trends through God’s Word- and even many in the church begin to advocate for positions that are clearly not biblical.
**Let me note here that- even when the issues go against Scripture and we should not advocate for them- we should never use that as an excuse to be unkind to people. Not supporting an issue does not mean you get to be a jerk.**
So, yes- let’s advocate for justice in our society. Let’s do so passionately- which, by the way, will cause people to take notice of the fact that we care and ask “Why?”- and it can open a door to share the Gospel. Loving our neighbor as ourselves is often the door to which making disciples is opened!
But let’s make sure that we are doing so only as it lines up with God’s holiness. Because, at the end of the day, it is only right to advocate for what is right as defined by God- not by what we or culture feels.