Broken Signposts: How Christianity Makes Sense of the WorldSample

Broken Signposts: Justice

Justice is a universal human longing that runs deep. The instinct for justice cries out: That is wrong, and something needs to be done to put it right! Justice is a signpost that points to what is essential to human life. Yet, from squabbling siblings and estranged family members to ethnic injustice and political strife around the globe, we know that justice is a broken signpost that is at the core of so many of our problems. 

John’s gospel bears witness to a very good God who made a very good world, and who cares deeply about justice. The conviction of the Christian faith is that the One true God revealed in and through Jesus has come to sort things out in our present world, and has promised to come again to make all things right in the end. However, the point is not to wait patiently until we escape from the world and the brutalities, inequities, or corruption caused by those who oppress and dominate others. Instead, the God of justice calls his followers as ‘the justice bringers’ right now.

In John 12:31-33, we read that Jesus will take on the prince of this world and the powers of anti-creation behind evil and death—taking upon himself the judgment of God against evil. By his death, Jesus defeats the dark powers and the sign that he has done so comes when he inaugurates the new creation, and his body is raised from the dead. Yet, though God’s putting-things-right plan for the world was launched when Jesus was lifted up, the work of justice continues with the sending of the Spirit upon Jesus’ followers (16:8-11). It is the idea of participation in God’s ongoing work that characterizes the Christian idea of justice: we are part of bringing it about in the world. 

What we find throughout John’s gospel is the ‘putting right’ of humans—sorting out the mess that humans are in—and the invitation to join the ongoing project. Jesus’ agenda for ‘resurrection justice’ sets the vision for his followers to prove that the world is in the wrong. We are sent into the world as justice bringers, to confront the power brokers of injustice in our world, local communities, churches, neighborhoods and families with God’s new kind of justice that triumphs over old ways through Jesus’ self-giving love. 

Jesus calls us to be bringers of God’s justice by following him: ‘As the father sent me,’ he said after the resurrection, ‘so I am sending you’ (John 20:21). For some of us, this may require our humble recognition and confession of the role we have played through our actions, or inaction, which has roadblocked the pathway to equity for other people. 

By the Spirit, those who follow Jesus are commissioned and equipped to be people who promote God’s new creation, as justice people and hope-giving people in places where injustice still reigns.

Questions to consider: 

Reflect on the role of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Jesus’ followers to bear witness to a new sort of justice in God’s world. How does God’s way of doing justice in the world and his determination to put things right differ from the way things are normally done in the world?

Living it out: 

Consider where and how the Spirit might be leading you to take a practical step of being a ‘justice bringer’ in places where you see justice as a broken signpost in your family or community.