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Vital
Issues: Justice For All
By: James C. Vallance
"With liberty and justice for all."
These words once echoed in our schoolrooms as we daily
stood and recited the Pledge of Allegiance with hands
pressed over our hearts. These principles were embraced
by our forefathers and are the foundation of our
country. And with good reason. We naturally want to live
our lives in freedom and expect to be treated with
fairness.
Webster’s dictionary defines "justice"
as the administration of reward or penalty as deserved.
Justice is served when someone receives what he
deserves, whether it is a paycheck for a job well done
or a jail sentence for a crime committed. In today’s
world, however, justice seems to have fallen by the
wayside. "That’s Outrageous, " a column in the
Reader’s Digest, reminds us monthly that there are
glaring injustices in our society. Several
high-publicity court cases in the last couple of years
have also highlighted injustice in our judicial system.
Loopholes, technicalities, plea bargainings, and the
latest defense that "wrong isn’t always wrong" cast
serious doubt that there ever could be "justice for all"
in our country.
Injustice in this world raises
disturbing questions not only about human government,
but also about God. How can a just God look down from
Heaven and permit injustice to go unchecked? Is God
aware? Is He concerned with justice? Could He enforce
justice in this world if He wanted to? Will there be a
day of reckoning when all wrongs will be made right?
Such questions are not unique to our
age. In fact, they greatly concerned people in the
Biblical times, people who had grown disheartened as God
appeared to stand by and allow oppression and terror to
run unchecked. Nahum was a prophet of God who explained
the justice of God to the oppressed people of his day.
Nahum assured his people that God was truly just, and
fully in control. To help them understand why God
operated as He did, however, Nahum dealt first with
God’s character: "The Lord is slow to anger and great in
power; the Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished"
(Nahum 1:3). An understanding of these characteristics
of God will help us understand our country and world.
The phrase "slow to anger" may seem to support a popular
opinion that God is easygoing and has a long fuse when
it comes to wrongful behavior. However, the Bible is
clear that God has only one reaction to sin: anger! He
hates sin with a holy passion and His anger burns
against those who disobey His law (2 kings 22:13).
Hence, His wrath is directed "against all the
godlessness and wickedness of men" (Romans 1:18), and He
is "angry with the wicked every day" (Psalm 7:11).
Clearly, then, God is not impassive when it comes to
sin. "Slow to anger" instead indicates that God is slow
to express His anger.
This is truly one of the most beautiful
discoveries in the Bible. God is not eager to display
His anger because "God is love" (1 John 4:8). In love,
God devised a just way to spare sinners from punishment.
He provided His own Son as a substitute for them. Men
crucified the Lord Jesus at Calvary, but more
significantly, God punished Him there for man’s sin. In
doing so, God was able to provide forgiveness of sin, or
salvation, to man as a gift. The cross makes this
salvation perfectly just, because God separated sin from
the sinner at Calvary and fully dealt with that sin in
Christ.
Like any gift, however, salvation must
be accepted. To receive salvation from God, you must
come to Christ in repentance and accept Him as your
Savior. Since God desires all men to be saved, He has
granted a period of grace, allowing you ample
opportunity to accept His Son. God is slow to anger and
patient with sinners, "not wanting anyone to perish, but
everyone to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).
Unfortunately, this wonderful
characteristic of God is misconstrued and abused by
many. They mistake God’s lack of action for leniency.
Because God is a God of Love, they think that He will
never hold people accountable for their sin. They say
there will be no day of reckoning. The Bible says that
this belief will be prevalent in the last days before
the second coming of Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:4). Since
we have not seen God intervening up until now, why
should we believe He will ever act?
Nahum overturns this mistaken thought
with a second characteristic of God: God "will not leave
the guilty unpunished." While injustice may reign today,
there will be a future day of reckoning when God will
make everything right. The guilty may elude justice in
the judicial system of men today, but God will hold them
accountable in the future.
However, the point is not for us to find
solace in the fact that criminals will be brought to
justice, but to take a long Biblical look inside
ourselves and realize that we are all guilty before God
because of our sin (Romans 3:19). Beyond this life, our
eternal souls will exist in one of two places: Heaven or
Hell. If God acted in immediate justice, we, the guilty
, would all be in Hell. But God chose to postpone
justice so His grace and mercy would have ample time to
operate.
This explains why there will be people
in Heaven. They have taken advantage of their God-given
opportunity to come to Christ in repentance and faith
for salvation. God no longer regards those who trust His
Son as guilty, for He accepts Christ’s death as just
payment for their sins. But those who ignore or reject
God’s offer of mercy will stand before God guilty as
charged.
Make no mistake, justice delayed is not
justice denied. While God restrains His wrath to allow
time for repentance, the wrath does not dissipate. On
the contrary, it stockpiles with every sin committed
(Romans 2:5). If you die without having your sin removed
you will find yourself unsheltered from God’s wrath for
all eternity. Recognize God’s delay in justice for what
it is, an opportunity for you to come to Him for
salvation. Miss it and you will find yourself face to
face with divine justice.
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