The Good News of His Justice.
God is justice. It is core to His character. We must understand that His justice surpasses and is different that human thoughts of justice,and it is superior. His justice is inextricable from His righteousness. His justice is never subjective and is always doing what is right. It is also the structure by which compassion, mercy, goodness, and other attributes flow and Justice itself flows out of the structure of His love, mercy, goodness, etc.

Throughout Scripture, He calls us to bring justice in every area of life, to all people. He isn’t partial. In Deuteromony, He tells Israel to give justice for the foreigner and the orphan, but He tells them to not be biased both towards these people nor against them. However, He makes it clear that His desire is for His people to help bring justice to those who are oppressed, to those who are helpless and whose vulnerability is being exploited. The plight of those who are being exploited and enslaved is His concern, and He expects it to be the concern of His people. Even more so, He tells us to be mindful of the ways we participate in oppression, both actively and passively, and to choose repentance and justice (see Amos)

“He has shown you, o man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with you God?” Micah 6:8

God’s justice is, essentially, making thing right, through Christ and His merciful sacrifice and resurrection.  Andrew Hill of The Mission Church in Vacaville defined it as  “rendering to each what is due them, to be made right by His truth and righteousness, to restore dignity, and and bring things in line with Kingdom rule.”
The reality of God’s justice now is in light of Jesus’ sacrifice. Justice has two parts: retributive and distributive. Retributive is the proper response to wrong doing; an eye for an eye. Distributive is the proper distribution of good things.

God declared that Jesus will not falter until He establishes justice on the earth (Isaiah 42:1-4). Because of who God is, Being righteousness, He must administer the proper response to injustice, to all wrong doing. In His perfect justice, Jesus was sent to receive the judgment that was due for man’s wrongdoing. Through the perfect blood of the Son, God’s need for retributive justice was satisfied once and for all.

The work that He commissioned us to fulfill and complete was to administer distributive justice. To bring things in line with kingdom rule and restore dignity. To partner with Him in making things right. To bring things and people in line with who and what God called them and made them to be. Not to bring judgement, but life. What is due to people is good, not because of their goodness, but His goodness.

This does recognize that governmental authority is still needed to administer their justice and we are called to submit to that authority and be at peace with authority. But our mission is not to carry out their justice, but to support their work as it pertains to God’s justice.

We have the incredible privilege of partnering with Him is seeing this justice established here in our community and in our world!