Is God just?

[~Anastasia~]

We often list God's attributes. God is just. God is merciful. God is love. God is righteous. God is good. But I wonder, Is God just?

Please don't misunderstand. I'm not wanting to malign God's character - God forbid!!!

So … is God just? And what do we mean by that? Is God just by human standards, or does He have some other value of Justice?

The question is asked "Will not the God of the whole earth do good?" And of course He will always do what is right, and He is perfectly good. But is right and good necessarily "justice"?

For example, is it "just" to offer the same pay to someone who only works a short time compared to someone who toils all day? Is it "just" to forgive our sins at all? For that matter, do we actually WANT God to be "just"? Because if we are honest, I don't think any of us wants to receive what we "deserve" from Him.

What do you think?

 

[Shane R]

You have touched on two classic philosophical questions especially important to Protestant reflections on theology.

 

[~Anastasia~]

You have touched on two classic philosophical questions especially important to Protestant reflections on theology.

That is actually what started me thinking about it in the first place.

I've had several conversations about Penal Substitution Atonement lately, and that whole theory hinges on the "just-ness" of God making it impossible for God to simply show His love through mercy and forgiveness without "balancing" things out somehow.

I began thinking how absurd it is to consider such an idea "just" in the first place - if you had two children and one was always good and the other always bad, could you call yourself "just" for whipping the good one because the bad one couldn't bear it for some reason? And we have even more extreme "good" and "bad" and "whipping" in the Gospel account, so how can we call that "justice"?

Then I began to think of other ways in which God works or is said to work via the Parables especially, and I started to really consider it absurd that our invented idea of "justice" as we apply to God ought to constrain God's ability to forgive in our minds.

My thoughts went over other things as well, but that was the foundation of it. So it DOES apply strongly to Protestant theology.

I'm curious what the other one of the "two" was ... Perhaps I am not dividing it out. Unless it is the imposition of our thoughts as a "rule" upon God, or a way to "measure" Him.

(And I've heard from others valid responses of both "yes" and "no" to the original question, depending upon how they take it.)

 

[rnmomof7]

I began thinking how absurd it is to consider such an idea "just" in the first place - if you had two children and one was always good and the other always bad, could you call yourself "just" for whipping the good one because the bad one couldn't bear it for some reason? And we have even more extreme "good" and "bad" and "whipping" in the Gospel account, so how can we call that "justice"?


Was it just that He was the "good kid" that took the punishment that he did not deserve... I think thats mercy

 

[graceandpeace]

We often list God's attributes. God is just. God is merciful. God is love. God is righteous. God is good. But I wonder, Is God just?

Please don't misunderstand. I'm not wanting to malign God's character - God forbid!!!

So … is God just? And what do we mean by that? Is God just by human standards, or does He have some other value of Justice?

The question is asked "Will not the God of the whole earth do good?" And of course He will always do what is right, and He is perfectly good. But is right and good necessarily "justice"?

For example, is it "just" to offer the same pay to someone who only works a short time compared to someone who toils all day? Is it "just" to forgive our sins at all? For that matter, do we actually WANT God to be "just"? Because if we are honest, I don't think any of us wants to receive what we "deserve" from Him.

What do you think?

I saw some of the discussion in TAW about the Prodigal Son. I heard an interpretation that intrigued me that I wanted to share.

Jesus is the New Elder Son. In the parable, in that culture, it would've been expected for the elder son to go out & bring the Prodigal home. But instead, he goes about his business. It would've also been expected of him to join the celebration of the Prodigal's return, but he refuses & humiliates the father. Jesus in contrast fulfills the proper Elder Son role because He does seek us out, & our return to God is celebrated. (I'm sure there was more to it than that, can't remember now).

I don't know if this is a correct interpretation, but I heard it once & it interested me for this thread.

Anyway, I've always thought of God as being one who does the right & "just" thing, but I wonder if Love, by nature, does not always result in what is right. "Just" would be the Prodigal at the very least repaying his Father, but Love is what moves the Father, not justice. The only way around this & similar conundrums is to argue we just "don't understand" God's idea of justice. Maybe that's true on some level, but if we are ever to "act justly" ourselves (Micah 6:8), then surely we must have some sense of God's ideas here. Maybe Love is the overarching idea, & we should so be moved.

 

[ViaCrucis]

We generally often mean two things by the words just and justice. Very commonly by justice we mean someone getting what [we think] they deserve. A bad person does bad things, they should be punished; a good person does good things, they should be rewarded. The punishment of the wicked we would call punitive justice--and this is often how we think of justice.

But there is another meaning to justice--that which is right. In English we have two words--as is often the case due to the complex history of our language--which basically mean the same thing: justice and righteousness. Justice comes from Latin, righteousness from Anglo-Saxon; but both mean "the state of being right" or "that which is right".

So we have the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard in which all the workers, no matter when they began their work, are paid exactly the same amount. We might say this is not just, because the workers were not given what they "deserve"; but on the other hand the owner of the vineyard has very much acted justly toward them, he kept his word and gave them exactly what he said he would.

In Romans St. Paul writes "For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, 'The righteous shall live by faith.'" The word translated as "righteous"/"righteousness" and just the same be translated as "just"/"justice". The Apostle here says that God's justice is revealed in the Gospel. What does the Apostle mean? Is this that justice by which God punishes sinners according to what they deserve? Actually it is on the contrary, this is the justice by which God makes sinners just, sets them right before God, through faith. God makes things right.

In fact very often in Scripture we find that God's justice is in the act of making things right, He is the God of restoration, healing, and promises. God's justice for the hungry is that they be fed, God's justice for the poor is that they be taken care of.

When the biblical patriarch Joseph is treated with all kinds of evil by his jealous brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused and imprisoned, God takes all that evil and makes it right--He elevates Joseph to one of the highest stations in Egypt, and uses Joseph to deliver his family from famine in Canaan to the bounty of Egypt. Instead of punishing the wickedness of his brothers, they are reconciled, and the family of Jacob is restored. This is justice.

Our hope in Christ is that God is, by Christ, restoring and reconciling the world; and that in the end God will make all things new, restore all things, bring justice to our unjust world: God will make things right.

God's way of dealing with us sinners in Jesus is to reconcile and restore us, to set us right. That is God's justice toward us in Christ, the justice of God revealed in the Gospel. To mend what is broken, to heal what is hurting, to restore what is lost.

So if the question is if God is just, I would say absolutely. In fact that is our hope, that God is indeed just and merciful to us in Jesus, restoring and reconciling us to Himself in the hope of the good and just world that He shall make; to a life everlasting in the age to come.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[FireDragon76]

Right... the Hebrew concept of God being just was not necessarily that God had to punish people, but that God would settle accounts and create harmony, as judges in the ancient near east often did. Hence all the Psalms about the rivers and hills clapping their hands because God is coming to judge the earth, "and the peoples with equity". The prophetic vision of The Day of the Lord was a world where the widow and the orphan would not be oppressed merely because they were poor or fatherless.

 

[Cappadocious]

Well said.

 

[znr]

God does give a good butt kicking when necessary. It probably doesn't feel "just".

 

[hedrick]

In the first of the I, Robot books, a robotic detective learns a new meaning for justice. It was not, as he originally thought, that everyone who violates the law gets punished, but that people who did wrong are converted to do right. This is consistent with post 7.

 

[FireDragon76]

I wonder if our interpretation of Scripture's idea of justice has anything to do with the fact that the US has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world, and that there is so little compassion for those in prison as human beings, or so little questioning of the justice of such a system.

 

[FireDragon76]

In the first of the I, Robot books, a robotic detective learns a new meaning for justice. It was not, as he originally thought, that everyone who violates the law gets punished, but that people who did wrong are converted to do right. This is consistent with post 7.

I think Luther understood that righteousness was God's faithfulness (his first insight came from reading the Psalms "...deliver me in your righteousness, O Lord"), but he was still working within a Roman Catholic worldview that focused on merit in justification.

The East has never been as interested in justification, maybe because they are less individualistic. And they don't tend to emphasize God as just to the same degree.

 

[MoreCoffee]

.

 

[Meowzltov]

but that people who did wrong are converted to do right.

Yes, God is the Father who wants to train up his children.

 

[SkyWriting]

God does give a good butt kicking when necessary. It probably doesn't feel "just".

And He lets others off the hook?

 

[znr]

And He lets others off the hook?

...what are you talking about?

 

[SkyWriting]

...what are you talking about?

I mean some people seem to get punished for their sins
and others never seem to suffer one bit.

And even if they do, we see drug dealers buying cars we could never
own or drive, and we don't see that they ever get in trouble.

 

[Meowzltov]

I mean some people seem to get punished for their sins
and others never seem to suffer one bit.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1431698694306-1'); });
And even if they do, we see drug dealers buying cars we could never
own or drive, and we don't see that they ever get in trouble.

Ecclesiastes talks about the wicked prospering. I always seem to get caught, though.

 

[~Anastasia~]

Does it even matter whether one prospers in this life or not? The wicked are murdering their own eternal souls.

If this life is as a breath that passes away, what we reap in eternity is of far more consequence.

 

[SkyWriting]

Ecclesiastes talks about the wicked prospering. I always seem to get caught, though.

It's a tough world. If you sell Bibles for a living, what is your return policy? 7 days.....300 days?
How much do you markup a Bible? 10% - 50%?