What’s So Important About Justice?

Although our ideas of what is just will differ, in each of us there is a basic longing for justice.

What’s So Important About Justice?

Many movies have essentially the same structure. Although there might be sub-plots and twists in the tale, the main story is about a bad guy who, after performing acts of evil, finally gets his comeuppance at the hands of a good guy. The audience leaves with a joyous feeling because they have seen justice prevail. 

Back in the real world, we long for justice and feel aggrieved when we or our friends are treated unfairly. In recent times I can recall a friend informing me that they had just been racially abused and assaulted. My instant reaction was anger at the unjust treatment inflicted upon them. 

On a far greater scale, I vividly remember visiting a holocaust memorial and seeing the awful brutality shown by the Nazis to Jewish people. I did not think, “Well that’s just what we should expect. After all, the full title of Charles Darwin’s book ‘Origin of the Species’ includes the line ‘Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.’” Conversely, I was appalled and thought, as I am sure you do, “That’s not fair, those responsible must face justice.”

In this world there are many examples of injustice, ranging from the playground bullies to the drugs cheats in sports and the corrupt politicians who accept bribes. When we see or experience injustice, our natural response is not to say, “Well that’s just how evolution works. The strong must survive and the weak must be eliminated.” Rather, there is a comprehensive desire for justice. Our yearning is for the weak, the poor and all who have been treated unfairly to receive justice. We are not like the brute animals we observe in wildlife documentaries who have no sense of justice and follow “the law of the jungle”.

But have you ever considered why we long for justice? If nothing is at the foundation of human existence, where does our sense of justice come from? If we are just a bunch of chemicals that happened to have come together in a truly amazing but haphazard manner, what is the source of this universal desire for justice? If we evolved from apes and gorillas, who have no longing for other animals to be treated justly, where does this craving find its cause?

The Bible teaches that our creator God is just and that there is no injustice in Him:

 “He is the Rock, His work is perfect; for all His ways are justice, a God of truth and without injustice; righteous and upright is He” (Deuteronomy 32:4).

Just a cursory look at some of the laws God gave to Israel as recorded in the Old Testament demonstrate that God’s justice is along lines that most of us would concur with, for example:

“You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show partiality, nor take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous” (Deuteronomy 16:19).

“You shall not pervert justice due the stranger or the fatherless, nor take a widow's garment as a pledge” (Deuteronomy 24:17).

“You shall have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure, that your days may be lengthened in the land which the LORD your God is giving you” (Deuteronomy 25:15).

This alignment of our view of justice with God’s should not surprise anyone who has read the opening chapters of the Bible that show mankind was made “in the image of God”.

“Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26).

When we consider that mankind was created to display all the moral attributes that God has, we have the answer to the question “Why do we want justice?”. Our requirement for justice is a result of being made in God’s image. He has placed His moral law within the hearts and consciences of all people (Romans 2:14-15); thus, we have a natural inclination for justice. 

However, the sinful nature within us as a result of the disobedience of the first man, Adam, means that we do not display God’s image as we should. In fact, we are biased when it comes to justice. Very rarely do we see ourselves as being unfair, but we can easily see injustice elsewhere.

By God’s standards of justice, we are all guilty and deserving of punishment. The good news of Christianity is that there was, and is, a man who is perfectly just. Jesus Christ, the One who ever was and always will be God, became a man and lived on this earth. His life was fully known and well pleasing to a perfectly just God. 

When He was upon the cross, He bore in His own body the just punishment from God for sin. He did not suffer for His own sin, as He had none, but for the sin of whoever trusts in Him for salvation. 

God’s justice demands that sin be punished. It cannot be overlooked or “swept under the carpet”. However, Christ’s death completely satisfied God’s righteous demands, evidenced in God raising Him on the third day.

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit” (1 Peter 3:18).

Therefore, it is just that God declares a person righteous who is trusting in Jesus Christ for salvation. He cannot and will not demand payment for a debt that has already been paid. The wrath that was completely satisfied (propitiated) will not be rekindled. An old hymn, quoted below, encapsulates this truth as it speaks of a discharge that has been fully secured, through the payment of a price, which means it would be unjust to demand another payment:

“If Thou hast my discharge procured,
And freely in my place endured
The whole of wrath divine,
Payment God will not twice demand,
First at my bleeding Surety’s hand,
And then again at mine.”

As we consider the subject of justice and our desire for it, we must understand that God is just. On the one hand, He will not let the guilty go unpunished, but on the other hand, He will never demand a payment for sin if that payment has already been made.

All those who trust in Jesus Christ can know that His death has fully met God’s just demands for their sin, enabling Him to be

“just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26b).

Our longing for justice finds its root in the fact that we are made in the image of a God who is just.