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On January 10 we began a sermon series on biblical justice. In that sermon I offered seven reasons why we should talk about justice:

1. The culture is talking about justice. Talking about justice equips us to engage a culture that is desperately obsessed with justice.

2. The Bible talks about justice. A cultural obsession with a topic is not reason enough to talk about it as a church. But the fact that the Bible talks about justice hundreds of times throughout its pages should be reason enough for us to examine what Scripture says on the topic. Our job is understand true justice, and to do so we need to understand what God’s Word (Zechariah 7:9).

3. God is the standard of justice. The Bible is clear that justice isn’t something God merely cares about. He is its standard. He is the God of justice (Deuteronomy 32:4; Psalm 9:7, 89:14; Isaiah 5:16, 30:18, 61:8; Zeph. 3:5).

4. We should reflect God’s justice. Scripture is also clear that God’s people are called to reflect God’s justice. We are commanded to conform to God’s moral standards in the way we interact with fellow image-bearers of God (Deuteronomy 16:20; Proverbs 21:3; Isaiah 1:17; Jeremiah 22:3; Amos 5:24; Micah 6:8).

5. We can reflect God’s justice. Sometimes Christians exhibit a profound apathy to the commands in Scripture. “Nobody’s perfect.” “I’m not Jesus!” “I can never measure up to God’s expectations.” This sort of thinking betrays a severe misunderstanding of the sanctification process. No, Christians will never perfectly obey in this life. But we can truly obey. No, we will never be perfectly just, but we can be truly just. Scripture is filled with examples of men who were truly (albeit imperfectly) just in their interactions with fellow image-bearers (2 Samuel 8:15; 1 Kings 3:28, 10:9; 1 Chronicles 18:14; 2 Chronicles 9:8; Job 29:14; Micah 3:8; Matthew 1:19; Hebrews 11:33). If we never talk about justice, we’ll have a hard time following in the just footsteps of these flawed but helpful examples.

6. Failure will hurt the most vulnerable. When the Bible talks about justice, it regularly mentions three specific groups of people: widows, orphans, and immigrants (Deuteronomy 10:17-18, 24:17; Jeremiah 7:5-7, 22:3; Zechariah 7:9-10). These groups represented the most vulnerable people in that day. Justice is meant to have an eye towards the most vulnerable people in society. And if we don’t talk about justice it will be society’s most vulnerable who will hurt the most.

7. Understanding justice helps us understand the gospel. Let’s be clear: doing justice is not the gospel. The gospel is not about what we do, but about what Jesus has done. That said, rightly understanding justice will help us to better understand the gospel. God in the gospel does not give mercy to the saint and justice to the sinner. He gives justice to all. It is just for God to punish the sinner who is not in Christ. And it is just for God to show mercy to the saint who is in Christ, since God has already punished his/her sins by punishing Christ in their place (cf., Romans 3:21-26).

For these reasons and more, we need to talk about justice.