Everyday JusticeSample

All things new

Martin Luther King famously said that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’. In the story of salvation, played out on the stage of human history, God’s justice has the final word.

Too often, though, it doesn’t feel like that. Too often it feels like our small attempts at seeking justice in everyday life flounder. Too often we find ourselves joining in with the chorus of lament echoing from under the altar in Revelation 6:10, crying ‘how long, Sovereign Lord’. The tension of a reign inaugurated but not yet fully realised can be aching.

But this is a hope not grounded in human ability. God’s desire is to dwell with His people, to wipe every tear of injustice from their eyes, and to do away with pain and death.

And so complete justice will one day come to pass, as the book of Revelation tells us. For there will be a time where each act of injustice is judged, each sin answered for, each wrong made right. With justice, the only one who is faithful and true will wage war on all that sabotages shalom in God’s good world.

This coming reality gives us cause to live peaceably in the present, even in our broken world. Peace that doesn’t come from giving up on the potential of things getting better, or from everything being perfect now, but because one day it will be.

This coming reality gives motivation to our actions in the present, as we join in God’s work in our day-to-day. But it also liberates us from an unhealthy weight of responsibility, as if it all depends on us and our activism.

We don’t have to be the answer to the world’s problems. Salvation and power belong to God, and He is the judge. He will achieve the ‘healing of the nations’ (Revelation 22:2), and what we now glimpse in part we’ll see in full.

So, as a fitting response, we might worship, praising God that His perfect justice will be worked out in the places we find ourselves, and spotting signs of where His Spirit is already at work accomplishing this. This is less of a call to a particular action, and perhaps that’s the point.

The good news of the gospel is that God reigns, Jesus is Lord, and He will make all things new.

Action

Where have you seen God’s justice at work this week?

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This devotional journey was originally published as part of our Word for the Week blog series.

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