Jessica Nicholas's Blog

The Bible has a lot to say about justice and themes connected to justice: righteousness, the poor, injustice. There are over two thousand verses about justice and poverty. Justice and righteousness are an essential, key part of the Biblical story. If we want to produce the real fruit of justice in our lives, then we need to plant God’s word about justice.

This is meant to be a resource to you to continue to explore justice in Scripture. It is not comprehensive- but it should help you start.

Ju...

“If you’re not living justice with peace and joy, then you aren’t living in the Kingdom”

When choosing a career, I faced a dilemma. I wanted to do was justice work, but that life seemed to come with baggage: hopeless from dealing with injustice all the time, constant frustration at the world f...

This post is part of the series “New Testament Justice.”

When I first started studying what the Bible said about justice topics, I thought I knew exactly how to find them: search for the word “justice.” But there’s a problem with looking for justice in the New Testament. If you type “justice” into a Bible word search engine, it doesn’t appear much. “Justice” appears only 11 times in the ESV translation,[i] 9 times in the NASB, [ii] and 8 times in the NKJV.[iii] For those translations, “justic...

I’m starting a new blog series on Justice in the New Testament because I want to get beyond the surface “Is justice in the Bible?” conversations. It seems like because justice is being re-discovered in American Evangelical churches, the only teaching we get is the “Justice 101: Don’t freak out, yes social justice is a Christian thing, too” sermons. When we are only asking whether justice is even in there, we miss out on so much. Specifically, I think Evangelicals are confused about how socia...

 

 

When I first started studying what the Bible said about justice topics, I thought I knew exactly how to find them: search for the word “justice.” But there’s a problem with looking for justice in the New Testament. If you type “justice” into a Bible word search engine, it doesn’t appear much. “Justice” appears only 11 times in the ESV translation,[i] 9 times in the NASB, [ii] and 8 times in the NKJV.[iii]

It’s hard to see that the New Testament values justice when it seems almost silent on...

Part of the challenge of learning about biblical justice is that our Western-ish views of justice are so different from Hebraic views from the time the Bible was originally written in. When an American Christian hears about justice, the images that we think of probably things like police officers, punishment, and courtrooms (and maybe a great TV drama about all those things). Unfortunately, that can make us reject doing justice now because we think of it through our Western-ish lenses. If Go...

I saw him standing on the corner of the narrow downtown San Diego streets from the passenger seat of my friend's enormous white pickup truck. Something about his tired-looking face stood out to me. Immediately, I felt like I needed to go offer him socks and a sandwich. A few Saturdays each month, my friend and I would bring food and socks and hand them out as we hung out with some homeless people known to live in the area.

But the man didn't really look homeless, so I almost talked myself out of it.  Wouldn't he be offended if a random stranger offered him a homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwich and generic white socks?  

 I assumed he would be gone by the time we got to that street corner. First we had to park and haul bags of food down a five-floor parking garage, Perfect excuse to not do something potentially embarrassing and offensive.

But when my friend and I walked out of that garage ten minutes later, I saw the man was still standing in the exact same spot. There wasn't a way out- I knew we needed to go talk to him. My friend and I crossed the street and walked straight up to him. 

"Excuse me. This is random, but do you want socks or a sandwich or a bottle of water?" I asked. His eyes widened and his face looked limp. For a few seconds, he didn't say anything. It was just enough time for me to convince myself that I had just offended a random stranger in the middle of a busy street with the audience of judge-y strangers. I almost started to apologize when his face finally showed what emotion he was feeling- shock. 

"What?" He spit out suddenly. "Did you just offer me socks? Are you serious? I just told God that I need socks and that I wasn't leaving this street corner until I got new socks."

My friend and I stood there, sharing his shock. We laughed because we didn't know what to say. This was the first time I'd ever heard anyone say that they prayed for socks. Wow, within minutes, God had answered his request. 

He was clearly deeply moved and didn't say much after that. My friend and I chatted with him for a quick minute, and he let us pray for him. He left that street corner with the exact thing he asked God for.

Later, it hit me what the encounter demonstrated. The profound, immense, deep, passionate care that God had for that man was practically expressed through a single pair of Costco men's socks.

All of the "socks and sandwiches" stuff started when I was a college student and read in Isaiah 58 that God wanted me to share my food with the hungry, which I decided to take literally. I cut down on my food budget and whenever I saved an extra $15, enough for the ingredients for 40 sandwiches, I would make up a bunch of peanut butter and jelly, and take them to parts of downtown where the homeless often stayed. Later, I brought socks along after many started telling me that's what they appreciated the most. 

It would have been easier with my hectic student schedule to give my money away to a hunger-related cause. But when I prayed about what to do with the money, I felt like I needed to do something that would give personal connection to the hungry that I was sharing "my food" with. 

There was so much that I learned through the years I did this. But this one has stuck deeply with me. Something as small as socks can supernaturally communicate the immense care and concern that God has for each of us individually. 

Simple gestures tangibly express God's love. While they are so easy to overlook because they seem mundane and unimportant, if we let ourselves be motivated by love, those gestures can have a deep impact. Whenever we share our lives, our food, and ourselves, no matter how small it may seem, we get to participate in demonstrating to the world what a generous and caring Father that God is.

Do a quick check. If you got the news that God’s justice was coming, how would you feel? Confused? Scared? Nothing? The emotional response we see in the Bible makes a clear picture: God's justice and righteousness are so awesome that it makes everyone and everything everywhere ecstatic. This is an important lesson for us. Being shaped by God's own heart for justice and righteousness, and getting a biblical understanding for that they are, means that our reaction to justice and righteousness should include excitement, happiness, and delight.  

Justice is exciting! Creation’s response

Let's look at a passage that talks about God coming to judge and rule over the earth:

Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns!
    Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved;
    he will judge [saphat] the peoples with equity. (Psalms 96:10 ESV)

The passage then goes on to tell us how exactly creation responds to this news. Pay careful attention to the “for” toward the end to say why creation is so happy:

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;
    let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
Let the field exult, and everything in it!
Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy
before the Lord, for he comes,
    for he comes to judge [saphat] the earth.
He will judge [saphat] the world in righteousness [sedeq],
    and the peoples in his faithfulness. (Psalm 96:11-13 ESV)

The heavens are GLAD, the earth REJOICES, the sea ROARS, the fields EXULTS, forest trees SING FOR JOY. Why? For God is coming to judge the earth.

Now, creation is not being sadistic, and rejoicing that God is going to come and destroy everything. God’s righteous justice is life-giving, and it makes His whole creation happy when it comes.

Justice is happy! People’s response

So creation is happy when God comes to judge, but what about people? Let's look at another Psalm to see how people react to God’s mishpat:

Zion hears and is glad, and the daughters of Judah rejoice, because of your judgments [mishpat], O Lord. (Psalm 97:8 ESV, see also Psalm 48:11)

God’s mishpat is something that makes Zion GLAD and the Daughters of Judah REJOICE. . Another Psalm uses similar language:

As your name, O God,
    so your praise reaches to the ends of the earth.
Your right hand is filled with righteousness [sedeq].
   Let Mount Zion be glad!
Let the daughters of Judah rejoice
    because of your judgments [mishpat]! (Psalm 48:10-11 ESV)

“Right hand” is a symbol of power and authority, and it is filled with righteousness. That makes Mount Zion, a symbol for the citizens of Jerusalem, GLAD. Daughters of Judah, a symbol for the people in the cities of Judah, REJOICE because of God’s mishpat.

When God's justice happens, it brings joy:

When justice [mishpat] is done, it is a joy to the righteous [saddiyq] Proverbs 21:15a

God’s justice and righteousness elicits a similar emotional response in people: joy and happiness.  What’s something right now that you can naturally get happy and overjoyed about? Good news about a family member? A promotion at work? A new ice cream shop opening on your street?  Does it take work for you to feel happy about those things? Probably not. Imagine naturally feeling that way over God’s righteousness and justice. 

Justice is delightful! God’s response

We already heard that justice is something that God loves, His own emotions toward justice and righteousness are positive:

“[B]ut let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me,that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice [misphat] and righteousness [sedeqah] on earth, for in these I delight,”declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 9:23-24 ESV)

God delights in justice. Delights. To know and understand God is to know that He does justice and righteousness. Equally important, God tells us what motivates Him to do what He does: “…in these things I delight.” This is huge. Delight is God’s why behind the justice, righteousness, and steadfast love He practices. It’s not out of frustration or obligation, but delight. God's justice and righteousness are delightful. 

How-to guide of reacting to justice

God's justice and righteousness are delightful. They should bring us joy and happiness when we see them done on the earth. 

This is a good litmus test to tell whether or not you understand God’s justice. Our modern Western concepts of justice create feelings of fear and shame. Who gets happy when you hear that the government is about to bring a judgment against you? If you can rejoice, sing for joy, roar, be glad, and exult when you hear about God’s righteous justice, then it’s a good sign that your heart has been shaped by God's love for justice and righteousness and that you have the biblical understanding of them.

 

[1] Bratcher, Robert G., and William David Reyburn. A handbook on Psalms. New York: United Bible Societies, 1993.

I grew up hearing some version of: "READ YOUR BIBLE IT'S YOUR CHRISTIAN DUTY" all the time. But I had no idea how to do this "reading" that I was constantly commanded to do. The Bible not like other books, where you could open it up at the beginning and just read it through to end. I tried that once and stopped after Exodus.  

Sometime I wish that Bible came in handbook form, where I could just open to a section about a part of life that I need to understand and where I could find a clear, line-by-line explanation. Instead of that, when you open the Bible, you find a very diverse range of writing styles, voices, moods, stories. To understand those, you have to know a bit about the language and world it was written in. The one law code in there, the Mosaic Law, was made complete by Jesus so you can't just read and do it now (otherwise none of use could have round haircuts, eat bacon, or cook goat by boiling a kid goat in its mother's milk). How do you connect one part to the others? What was the world like when it was written? What parts am I supposed to take literally? 

I found that taking the time to study the Bible helped me to read the Bible. Now when I open the Bible to different sections, I know more about how to connect it to other sections, what the culture was like, why the language uses metaphors like it does. 

 I grew up going to church on Sundays and went to a Christian school, so I've had a good amount of Bible teaching. But even after all those years, there was a lot that I didn't know and needed to learn. It's only been in adulthood that I've really learned to actually study the Bible. It's a process you have to take ownership over. Your pastor shouldn't be in charge of studying the Bible for you. 

This is just a simple challenge: Find a way to integrate Bible study into your normal life rhythm of your life. Here are some helpful resources I've found:

iTunes U app: I'm *obsessed*. You can get free classes from some of best seminary professors. And you can listen during your commutes and evening jogs. These classes were an easy way to learn about challenging subjects like the context of the Greco-Roman World and understanding the Mosaic law. Fuller Theological Seminary, Dallas Theological Seminary, and others have classes up that you can download.Free online resources: Lots of websites have free materials on them. Biblehub.com has commentaries that you can search by Bible verse. BlueLetterBible.com/app is great free resource that I use to look up Greek/Hebrew words in a verse. It has a concordance, commentaries, and other good resources.Logos Bible Research software/app: This is a pricier, nerdier option, but it you get what you pay for. You can purchase different packages, and it gives you access to lots of commentaries, books, dictionaries, encyclopedias. The search functions make it very easy to use and makes studying go faster. The smartphone app has some good, free resources on it.Podcasts: Lots of churches and pastors put out podcasts now, giving you new teaching on a weekly basis. My current favorites are Timothy Keller (practical, interesting, very well researched) NT Wright (provocative, different, makes you think), and RT Kendall (Spirit filled former paster at Westminster chapel with great insight on Scripture- his sermon on forgiveness is life-changing).Bible study materials: Most Christian bookstores have Bible study sections. I like ones that go into cultural context and the original Hebrew/Greek of a verse. Beth Moore has some good ones.Books: Kind of a duh resource- but there is a reason why books remain so popular. Some recent favorites are:Paul's Metaphors: Their Context and Character by David Williams: An easy read and lot of good information. Paul's letters use a lot of illustrations and metaphors from his time, and the book outlines many of them. After I read this book, it made his epistles so much more clear. Money, Possessions, and Eternity by Randy Alcorn: My favorite book on the topic of money in the Bible. It's balanced, comprehensive and practical.Studies in the Sermon on the Mount by Martyn Lloyd-Jones: A classic resource on the Sermon on the Mount. It's long, but well-organized so it's a good book to read for a while, put down, and come back to as you get time. Do We Need the New Testament?: Letting the Old Testament Speak for Itself by John Goldingay: This man is my favorite voice on the Old Testament. This book is a short introductions for Christians that struggle to understand and value the Old Testament. He's also written some wonderful textbooks and commentaries. A lot of his seminary lectures at Fuller through the iTunesU.The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann: Anything by Brueggemann is worth reading. His perspective and language are totally unique. I've read parts of his textbooks, and even those are wonderful.Challenge part 2: Read something from the perspective that you haven't heard from before. People with very different opinions spend their whole lives devoted to studying the same book, I've found that even in theological traditions that I don't 100% agree with, they have interesting insight that helps me understand God more. I'm assuming that y'all are mature enough to know that you can 'eat the meat and spit out the bones.' Try another perspective you've never heard from before, like Catholic, conservative Baptist, Spirit-filled, Latin American liberation theologians, etc. 

 A helpful illustration of just how different our Western views of justice are from Biblical justice can be seen in the two of the cultural's symbols: scales versus rivers. 

In the Western world, justice is often symbolized by “Lady Justice,” a blindfolded woman holding a sword and scales. That symbol is from the Roman goddess, Justitia (or Greek goddess Themis) showing that justice is impartial, standard, and orderly. The balances weigh the two sides of a case and determines which is right. The powers that reason and justice has are contained in the sword.  Getting justice is a strict and mechanical process, involving zero passion and emotion.

Now, this image isn’t wrong, but we have to remember that our justice comes from God, not "Lady Justice." Contrast that blindfolded, scale-analyzing ideas of justice with an image used by the prophet Amos:

"But let justice roll down like waters And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24 ESV)

Amos gives this message as a response to the cruel injustices Israel was allowing to invade every level of their nation: trampling the poor, crushing the needy (2:7), sexually abusing servant girls (2:7), women manipulating their husbands to hurt the poor (4:1)  businesses twisting God’s laws for their selfish profit (8:4-7) Yet, at the same time, the nation thought they were fine because they were still doing all the good "religious" activities they thought God liked (4:4-5, 5:21-23).

In response to this horrific scene, Amos declares that trying to make up for injustice with becoming extra religious is wrong, and not what God actually wanted (5:14-15, 21-23). The nation desperately needed to turn back to God, and receive transformation and healing for their nation from Him. Amos prays that rivers directly from God would come and restore justice and righteousness. That's not a balanced, mechanical, impersonal, unemotional process. Rabbi Abraham Joseph Hescel describes Amos’ river this way:

“A surging movement, a life-bringing substance, a dominant power. A mighty stream, expressive of the vehemence of a never-ending, surging, fighting movement- as if obstacles had to be washed away for justice to be done. Justice is more than an ideal or a norm: justice is charged with the omnipotence of God. What ought to, shall be!  … Balancing is possible when the scales are unimpaired, and the judge’s eyes sound. When the eyes are dim and the scales unsure, what is required is a power that will strike and change, heal and restore, like a mighty stream bringing life to a parched land... Righteousness is a vast and mighty stream because God is its unfailing source.” (Abraham Joseph Heschel, "The Prophets")

God’s justice and righteousness are a powerful, never-ending river, a force that moves obstacles to its goal of healing and restoration out of its way. It’s the answer for when our human ways of justice are not capable of fixing sin, evil, and injustice. What happens if injustice is so great that no act of legal justice can correct it? Or legal justice can’t restore the deep damage done? Or when injustice has invaded every part of a nation so no legal system is capable of fixing everything? 

Lady Justice gives us Westerners an incomplete image of Biblical justice. A justice that creates laws and enforces them in a calm, impersonal, orderly way is one expression of justice. At times, it’s needed.

But it’s not the only way of justice, and doesn’t get to the heart of God’s own justice, the righting of wrongs, restoring the world back into God’s original intent for how life should be experienced.  From the beginning, God’s justice has been transformational[1]—restoring the world back to right again—and covenantal—restoring our relationships with Him and others. [2]  Legal can punish the wrong, but it can’t always make it right again. The pain in the victims or destruction in the world because of the impact of sin, that can’t be fixed by legal justice. We need the blind scales of justice. And we also need the rivers of God's justice and righteousness, the power to heal and transform the world, taking out every obstacle blocking its way. 

 

[1] Brueggemann, Walter et al. To Act Justly, Love Tenderly, Walk Humbly. An Agenda for Ministers. (New Jersery: Paulist Press, 1986), 6.

[2] Gibbs, J.G. “Just” Pages 1167-1168 in vol. 2 of The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Bromley, Geoffrey W., ed. 4 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987).  Rf. Runesson, Anders. “Judgment” pp 457-466 in Vol. 3 of 5. The New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible: I-Ma. Sakenfeld, Katharine Doob, ed. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2008).