Justice key to Right Relationships

Ron Simkins – March 5, 2024 2 Comments

In this second installment from Ron Simkins, he delves into the biblical meaning of justice and how we can rightly carry out justice as part of how to live in right relationships, as God desires for us.–Melissa Logsdon, NCF Associate Pastor

In my previous article, I suggested that the Hebrew word (and its New Testament translation into Greek) usually translated “righteousness” and sometimes “justification” might be best rendered by “right relationships” and “making relationships right.” (I credited especially Rabbi Nahum Ward-Lev, Professor John Goldingay, and N. T. Wright for some of those insights.) What a wonderful goal God has for us—“right relationships” at the corporate/systemic level and at the individual/personal level!

In this article, let’s look at “justice”, a word that appears often in the Bible linked with “righteousness” as an important part of “right relationships.” Unlike “righteousness” which is a word that has fallen into disrepute, “justice” is a word that is in vogue these days. It is used by people on the far left of the political spectrum and by people on the far right of the political spectrum. For example, the word “justice” often appears along with “defund the police,” and it also often appears along with a defense of “mass incarceration” as the supposedly legitimate outcome of the “justice” system. Consequently, although in a different manner, we often seem to be as far from understanding the biblical word “justice” as we are the biblical word “righteousness.”

Various forms of the Hebrew shaphat/mishpat are the source of most of the biblical translations of the English “justice.” (An exception being the recent tendency to translate “righteousness/tsadiq” as “justice.”) Shaphat/mishpat were often translated into New Testament Greek with various forms of the word krisis/krino.

John Goldingay suggests that biblically the word “justice” means using whatever power we have—position, talents, abilities, gifts, status, resources, social connections, etc.—to work toward the “right relationships/righteousness” that God wants for us. As I noted last time, these important relationship words don’t seem to have a very good “one word” English equivalent. 

My sister recently gave me a copy of a delightful translation of the Bible that translates the Hebrew shafat/mishpat as “right ruling” when it is used of what kings did or did not do well. Of course, the importance of doing justice is not limited to kings, but that translation seems to catch the meaning appropriately—using whatever power one has to work toward the “right relationships” God wants both systemically and interpersonally.

Forms of shaphat/mishpat and krisis/krino also lead to the English translation “judgment” in quite a few contexts. Unlike “justice” which is in vogue these days, “judgment” has become a negative word for many. Just as “righteousness” has often been exercised as “self-righteousness,” “judgment” often becomes “judgmental.” Of course, being “judgmental” and “condemnatory” is very destructive of right-relationships. Jesus acknowledged both the negative use of judging and the positive use in two passages from the Gospel of John. In John 3:14-18, Jesus says that he wants nothing to do with “judging” (krino, often translated “condemning”) the world; his goal is to saves us from ourselves, not to condemn us. Throughout the “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 5-7, Jesus warns against the kind of judging one another that is condemning. In Romans 2:1-16, Paul makes the same point about our tendency toward religious self-righteousness that leads us to “condemn/judge” others rather than leaving them to God’s merciful judgment.

Yet in John 5:22-30, Jesus claims that God will not judge us humans, but will give Jesus the authority to do so since he shares humanity with us. As the writer of Hebrews says several times, this shared humanity lets Jesus be a very understanding judge who will bring God’s final gift of justice for humans of the past and of the present (Acts 17:30-31 makes the same claim).

Having been warned not to judge by condemning, we still cannot work toward “justice” without making “judgments/decisions” about what are the “right relationships God wants” interpersonally and corporately. In the Bible, “judgment” is not primarily a negative word, it is deciding how to use one’s power to move things toward “more rightly ordered relationships.”  “God’s judgment” only seems negative to those who do not want more equitable and rightly ordered relationships. Or, to those who want to usurp God’s prerogative and think that our necessary temporary judgments are the same as God’s eternal judgments.

There is so much to say about “justice/judgment,” but here are a few final thoughts for today, and then a few scriptural examples out of the many possible ones.

1. “Justice/Judgment” is complicated even for God in that there is no way to bring systemic judgment on the sins, violence, and idolatry of a culture without innocent individuals suffering because they are part of that culture/nation/Empire. We see this most clearly in the children who suffer in the downfall of a culture, but judgments within history are not God’s final judgments. We should neither think they are, nor act like they are.

2. In almost every nation/Empire/tribe in human history, it has been the poor and disempowered who have been least likely to experience justice in that society. Even when there is a slight movement in that direction—example during reconstruction in the USA after the Civil War—it is usually a very brief time before the “in club” has worked out how to take it away—example Jim Crow Laws in less than a decade after slavery was declared illegal in the USA. This thwarting of justice for minorities is still at work in this country more than a century later. An ancient example would be when Israel/Judah fell to Assyria/Babylon much as the Canaanites had earlier fallen to Israel; a “judgment” the prophet Jeremiah claimed was “just.”  Nevertheless, many individually innocent people suffered greatly including Jeremiah himself.

3. One of the many reasons I trust that there will be a future resurrection and judgment day is that there is no other way that there could ever be justice for the myriads of decent people who have suffered brutality throughout their lives and died without ever experiencing much love, joy, or honor. As Vern Fein powerfully noted in a recent poem, people who died without ever catching anyone’s caring eye. God can only be a just and good God if there is a future justice for these people.

4. We should never assume that we can easily determine “justice” in all circumstances. It can be very complicated, and we need to pray for the gift of God’s Spirit and God’s wisdom as well as a huge dose of humility to even approximate good decisions in many situations. 

5. We must make judgments about situations in order to use whatever gifts we have to work toward justice that brings about right relationships. However, this will often be met with strong resistance from people whose privileges are threatened, and may prove quite costly to those who work toward “right relationships.” Working for public justice almost always brings about an intense, often violent, backlash.

A few examples of the use of “justice/judgment” in the New Testament were given above; so here are a few examples from the Hebrew Bible.

–1 Kings 3:16-28 – Solomon’s first “judgment” expressing wisdom was “judging” between the claims of two women. His “judgment” supports a “right relationship” between mother and child.

–Deuteronomy 16:18-20 (various translations translate these words differently; so I will show the Hebrew words behind them. “¹⁸Appoint judges (misphat) and officials for each of your tribes in every town the LORD your God is giving you, and they shall judge (misphat) the people fairly. ¹⁹Do not pervert justice (mishpat)or show partiality. Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous. ²⁰Follow right relationships (tsadiq)and right relationships (tsadiq) alone, so that you may live and possess the land the LORD your God is giving you.” (Note how judges and judgments are to be made in the pursuit of supporting “right relationships” (righteousness).

–Exodus 23:6 – The first commandment in the Torah using mishpat–“Do not deny justice (mishpat) to your poor people in their lawsuits.

–Judges – the book called “Judges” is about God raising up people to use their gifts to bring about a better social order for Israel. A very messy lot, they are nonetheless called “saviors” whom God raised up to bring some level of new “peace” to the oppressed society.

–Psalm 72:1 and Jeremiah 22:14-17 – God’s goal for a king’s reign—using the power to bring justice—especially for the poor and disempowered.

–Psalm 140:12 – God’s goal for how a society should treat the poor

–Proverbs 17:23 – “bribes” are a major cause of social “injustices”

–Ecclesiastes 3:16-17 – even the somewhat cynical author of Ecclesiastes sees that there has to be a future time in which God “judges” and makes sure “justice” is done for those who never received it during their very transitory lifetimes.

Let’s pray for more of God’s spirit, more wisdom, and more courage to use whatever abilities, gifts, positions, privileges, and powers we have to humbly, but courageously, push toward more “right relationships” at the corporate and the individual level.

“Right relationship” words we will visit in future blogs as time permits include “covenant-love,” “listening,” “forgiving,” and “peace/shalom.” -Ron Simkins, NCF Pastor Emeritus