Justice and Forgiveness
A world of perfect justice is a world of love.
Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace
IN THE WHOLE MATTER of forgiveness, one of the most vexing problems is the relation between love (which we readily identify with forgiveness) and justice. We need to heed Hosea's great cry, "Hold fast to love and justice" (Hosea 12:6, RSV). We applaud Hosea's plea when love and justice work for our benefit. That is, we want to be loved, we want forgiveness. We also want to love (to extend forgiveness). But with a qualification: we want to love (forgive) whomever and whenever we wish. Caring for or forgiving anyone who has hurt us often holds little appeal for us. Similarly with justice, we very
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much want justice when we have been wronged. We are much less keen on justice when we are the wrongdoer.
We usually think of love (or forgiveness) and justice as being in an adversarial relationship: if you forgive, justice is ruled out; if justice is rendered, there can be no forgiveness. However, we do recognize that it is precisely because we love our children that we insist on discipline for wrongdoing, that is, on justice. Christians understand, at least dimly, that love (forgiveness) and justice are not in an adversarial relationship with God. The cross stands as a profound witness to God's love and justice. It is our Lord who takes away the sin of the world by taking the penalty of our sins (justice) on Himself. He does so out of love.
Charles Williams has a striking statement: "Sin is the name of a certain relationship between man and God. When it is fixed, if it is, into a final statement, he gives it other names; he calls it hell and damnation. But if man were to be restored, what was to happen to the sin? He had a name for that relationship too; ... he called this 'forgiveness' " (The Forgiveness of Sins, p. 33).
Our response to gross wrong commonly follows a different pattern from God's response. For instance, a young woman is seized, carried off, raped and murdered. The parents of the girl are
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devastated and deeply angry — rightfully so. If anyone suggests forgiveness, the parents' response (whether Christians or not) will often be some variation of: "Forgive? You must be crazy. I hope the man is caught and rots in jail!"
In reality, justice and forgiveness are not incompatible. If the culprit in my example is caught, he should receive a severe penalty, not because of vengeance, but because a society must safeguard its citizens, must have penalties appropriate to the crimes. While forgiveness would be very difficult in such a situation, it does not stand in contradiction to justice. The structures of society require appropriate sanctions for wrongdoing, that is, justice; broken relationships require forgiveness.
The connection between justice and forgiveness is not easy to grasp. There are abundant biblical witnesses to the justice of God, a justice that is essential because of His total holiness. At the same time, there are also overwhelming biblical witnesses to God's love, to His concern to bring about right relationships with Himself and with people. At the cross, these two dimensions meet with radical sharpness and power. To refuse God's offer of forgiveness via the cross is to refuse salvation.
Sin must be judged, not because some rule says so, but because of the character of God. There are two options: the death of Christ for us if we choose
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to accept God's provision, or ultimate separation from God in the final judgment. In the first, justice is rendered by Christ's death on the cross; in the second, the person experiences God's justice directly in the final judgment.
Our responsibility as Christians is to share the good news of what God has done for us, and to demonstrate the good news of what He continues to do in us. The concern is not for "my rights" (compare Philippians 2:8-11), but for how we can help each other grow. Our lives as well as our words are to witness to God's incalculable love. That witness becomes increasingly effective as we keep growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ (see 2 Peter 3:18). The wrongdoer does not have a right to forgiveness. Justice demands appropriate punishment, but love rules out a demand for forgiveness.
Forgiveness, by God or by people, is always from grace. Augsburger expresses this concept very effectively: "The basis for reaffirming perceptions of love for another who is seen as a wrongdoer is the profound awareness that I-you-we are of infinite worth, in spite of, apart from, with no dependence on appearance, performance, effectiveness or any other external criteria" (Caring Enough to Forgive ..., p. 38). So Christ died for us "in spite of, apart from, with no dependence
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on appearance, performance, effectiveness or any other external criteria." We are loved!
We are back again to following the Model God has given us. Like God, we are to love, to reach out to the wrongdoer while hating the wrong. At one college where I taught, there was a retired professor of psychology who could not accept the distinction that it was possible to love the wrongdoer but hate the wrong. He believed the person could not be separated from the person's acts. C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, comments that he previously had the same problem my retired friend had. Then he realized he regularly made the distinction with himself: "However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man" (Book III, chapter 7).
We need to learn to do with others what we do with ourselves. Unlearning an old, well-established habit is difficult. Again, we have our Model to help us. God hates the evil we do while continuing to love us and to help us move in a new direction as long as we live. Where would we be otherwise?
At times, because we live in a very imperfect world, it may be the case that our only choice is between evils. Then we have to choose the lesser
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of the evils. We confess the problem to God and go on from there. The Christian is never called on (biblically) to say that wrong is right. We must recognize that the determination of wrong is sometimes very difficult, and Christians will not always agree whether particular acts are wrong. The Christian way of life is not a commitment to finding and judging evil. It is, rather, a commitment to walk in love. "The entire law is summed up in a single command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself ' " (Galatians 5:14). Augsburger has a powerful statement: "Wrongdoing is not a valid reason for my refusing to value and love another" (... to Not Forgive, p. 60).
We need to distinguish between our living in society and our personal relationships with people of the society. In society, we need a judicial system to safeguard the well-being of the community. Wrongdoers in the society must be judged and appropriate sanctions applied (not every wrongdoer should go to jail!). What the society does is different from what we do in personal relationships.
I like Gregory Jones' Embodying Forgiveness very much, but I think he does not adequately clarify the difference between society's sanctions and personal relationships. He raises the question, for instance, "Are there not some people whom it is better to hate and to desire vengeance against, particularly in the absence of repentance? ... Or, put
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more in social and political terms, isn't 'retributive punishment' appropriate as a society's way of expressing its revulsion against particular offenses? If not, how are such themes as punishment and accountability related to forgiveness ... ?" (p. 242). "Retributive punishment" is appropriate for a society; forgiveness is not the task of a society. A society is authorized to administer punishment (for example, see Romans 13:1-7). Forgiveness depends on the attitudes of the wronged person and of the wrongdoer.
In personal relationships, punishment is not the primary concern. Often, punishment is not a fitting concern at all. The primary concern in broken relationships is the possibility of restoring the closeness of the relationship. That restoration requires repentance on the part of the wrongdoer and a spirit of forgiveness on the part of the wronged person. Administering punishment to the wrongdoer does not exclude a spirit of forgiveness on the part of the wronged person.
It is society, not the wronged person, that must administer justice. Whether the relationship is healed or not, in no case am I authorized to become, in Carnell's fine phrase, a self-appointed "administrator of justice" (Christian Commitment, pp. 103 and others) or to hate the wrongdoer. It is appropriate to hate the wrong. God
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is our Model. He hates the wrongs we do, but continues to love us and seeks to restore the broken relationship. For us, it is much easier to make that statement than it is to practice the truth of the statement!
The case of children is a bit different. Parents have the responsibility of teaching their children what is right and of disciplining them appropriately when they do wrong (justice). In the home, children are to learn love and justice and the nature of forgiveness, a "lesson" that is not the primary responsibility of society at large.
The punishment assessed by society pays the claims of justice at the societal level when our legal system is at its best. Part of the ongoing anger of a victim and his or her family is because the system is often not at its best. However, the incompleteness of human justice does not render forgiveness impossible. Justice will always be rendered either by Christ's death on the cross or by the guilty person's ultimate punishment on the other side of death.
While justice is an aspect of God's nature, judgment is not the thing God delights in. Isaiah speaks eloquently: "The LORD will rise up ... to do his work, his strange work, and perform his task, his alien task" (Isaiah 28:21). His "strange," or "alien," work is judgment. Judgment is not God's first choice. While He must judge because evil is incompatible
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with His holiness, it does not bring Him joy. We can see a parallel with parents of young children. It is sometimes necessary to discipline children. It is not the thing that gives parents pleasure, but it is necessary in the whole process of the child's development.
In 1 John 4:7-16, we have the statement twice repeated that "God is love." In the same passage, the same context, John tells us that God gave His Son "to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins". The atoning sacrifice (justice) springs from love. The New Testament tells us that our forgiveness by God is only because justice has been rendered. Christ took the penalty for our sins at the cross. God so structured the universe that sin must come under judgment. His character is such that He cannot disregard sin.
Christ's death on the cross is a once-and-for-all event that makes possible God's forgiveness of us. "Over our heads and without our consent something has been done by God in Christ by which our status has been changed from slavery to sonship" (H.F. Lovell Cocks, By Faith Alone, p. 139). There is no counterpart to that act in our experience. That is to say, we do not have to undergo some similar experience to Christ's before we can forgive another for wronging us.
Is the reason for that fact part of the grandeur of
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what Christ did for us? Catch your breath! Can we not say, must we not say, that His death not only paid the penalty required by God's justice, but that it also paid the penalty required by our justice when we have been wronged? We don't get what we deserve; Christ got what we deserved at the cross. That is grace! When we express the spirit of forgiveness toward one who has wronged us, that attitude is possible because the "sentence" for that wrongdoing has already been served. So we, too, are free to express grace!
If Christ pays, not only the cost of our forgiveness by God, but also the cost of our forgiveness of others, justice is not set aside; it is provided by another. Because we are not responsible for its administration, we are free to work on the relationship, and we can be generous in spirit with the wrongdoer. Sometimes truth is hard to grasp, but that does not weaken its quality as truth! And sometimes the truth is even more difficult to explain. In this area we are fumbling with profound but also glorious mystery! Authentic forgiveness really is possible!
Our society holds up impartiality as the standard for justice. In many situations, that is appropriate. For instance, it is intolerable for an official in a sports contest to make calls that favor one side in the game. That mistakes are sometimes made by
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such officials is recognized, but the official cannot deliberately make decisions that help one contestant or one team. Our treatment of minorities in our country doesn't suggest a very deep commitment to impartiality!
Miroslav Volf, in his profound book Exclusion and Embrace, takes us farther: "The knowledge of justice depends on the will to embrace ... Embrace is part and parcel of the very definition of justice" (p. 220, his emphasis). He sharpens the issue even more: "There is a profound 'injustice' about the God of the biblical tradition. It is called grace" (p. 221, his emphasis). Or again, "If you want justice without injustice, you must want love. A world of perfect justice is a world of love" (p. 223).
Any human society has to have some kind of judicial system. That is, each society has to have some consequences for wrongs that are destructive to the society. Because we are prone to take advantage of one another, every society establishes standards for its citizens. The particular forms and penalties vary from society to society. Such judicial systems are prima facie evidence of the reality of sin among people everywhere. In the administration of justice there is no room for vindictiveness. Revenge is not the same as justice. Revenge is a retreat to "an eye for an eye" in a personal sense with, of course, some
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interest! There is no objectivity in revenge — only the desire to make the other person suffer.
In addition, all human beings become involved in relationships — family, friendship, business, sports, etc. It is impossible to establish laws to govern all aspects of relationships. That is one reason why love is so crucial. "For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself ' " (Galatians 5:14). If we act with one another in love, we will not deliberately hurt one another. And when we do hurt one another, love reaches out to restore the broken fellowship. Relationships are always at risk; the hurts we do to one another can fracture and destroy those relationships.
Our Lord makes our responsibility with others very specific: "If [another] sins against you [in this case you are the innocent party], go and tell him his fault [you take the initiative], between you and him alone" (Matthew 18:15). Similarly, if you are the wrongdoer, notice Christ's words also: "So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that [another] has something against you [the other person believes you wronged him / her], leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to [the other], and then come and offer your gift" (Matthew 5:23-24). These two passages show what is implicit in love, namely, that
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love requires a reaching out to the other whether you are the wronged person or the wrongdoer. Love, in God or people, is not satisfied with separation nor with a truce.
In personal relationships, the question is not whether a person has a right to forgiveness but rather whether any person can be demeaned or treated wrongly. Christianity answers the latter question with an emphatic NO. The holiness of God cannot condone any wrong, whether action, attitude, word or thought, that we do to another. The glory of the Christian message is that God Himself in Jesus Christ has graciously taken the penalty for our wrongbeing and our wrongdoing. "For our sake [God] made [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21, RSV).
The biblical understanding of the nature of human beings is that we bear the image of God. Because love and justice are part of God's person, they are also part of our being. The capability of love is a part of our nature as humans. Indeed, neither God nor we are free not to love. The normal human being cannot not love, though we are altogether too selective in our application of love!
This inherent ability and motivation to love struggles with self-centeredness. Without Christ,
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the self-centeredness more often wins. So the common attitude in a conflict is, "If you will be good (or fair, or ...) to me, I will be so to you." But we almost invariably start with the other person, "If you ..." We rarely say, "Whatever your attitude toward me, I care for you and want our relationship to be healthy." When we become Christians, we have a new dynamic, the presence of the Holy Spirit. As we are responsive to Him, love begins to win in the struggle with self-centeredness. The struggle does not end: We begin to understand, at least faintly, that the dignity of the person, the other as well as myself, demands the expression of love.
Similarly, neither God nor we are free to set aside justice. The normal human being cannot escape a sense of indignation when the dignity of his or her person is not respected. Of course, the degree of indignation varies with the degree of affront. We want justice when we are wronged, but not when we do the wrong! We are sensitive to wrongs to our own person, but are much less sensitive to the wrongs which we do to others! When we are wronged, we often quietly shift from forgiveness of the one who hurt us to fairness. "It is only fair" that the person who wronged me should somehow pay or suffer for that wrong. However, we don't want fairness from God; from Him we want grace!
When my family moved to the South where, as I said before,
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I taught for some years in a black college, we quickly became aware of the huge differences between attitudes toward blacks and whites. How can one justify separate drinking fountains for whites and "coloreds"? Or separate rest rooms for white women and white men, but only one rest room for "coloreds," both men and women? Or the Christian white woman who had a black lady who worked for her three or four days a week. At lunch time, the white would fix lunch for the black, but the black could not eat off the white person's ordinary china. Instead, the white woman had some dime-store heavy white china for the black. But on a regular basis, the black lady saw the white put her own plate on the floor for her dog to lick. The black lady could not eat off the regular dishes, but the dog could lick the plate! Neither love nor justice can defend such practices.
It is little wonder that the blacks finally rose up in rebellion at a system that condoned such treatment. And we all saw the television news pictures of nonviolent marchers met with dogs and water cannons. The black rebellion brought about significant legal changes with regard to the races; attitudinal changes take place much more slowly! American Indians, Hispanics and Asians have had all too similar experiences in our country.
As Christians, we begin to realize, dimly at first, that justice is a
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two-way street, not only for us, but also for others. Again, the dignity of the person, both myself and the other, demands justice. Rather than seeing love and justice in an adversarial relation, it is these two facets of our inherent being as humans which stand at the foundation of all society. God is sensitive to the wrongs against Him, the wrongs against all human beings everywhere and the wrongs against His world. Seeing God as our Model has far-reaching implications!
I spent the 1960s and 1970s as a college professor. Students at the time were generally very restive with college rules and desired more freedom. Yet, if someone "ripped off a particular student's sound system, the cry was for justice, for application of the rules! That is not uncommon. We demand justice for wrongs done to us, but we are rather quiet about justice when we do the wrong. Indeed, when we do the wrong, we attempt to "justify" our action! When we are wronged, we often seek to "get even," and that response speaks to our deep concern for justice. Both love and justice demand that the dignity of the person be respected, whether our dignity or that of others.
Our problem is that we see love and justice through the prism of our own self-centeredness. Thus, we focus on the benefits of love and justice for ourselves. We slip over the "otherness" of love
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and justice because we miss the fact that both love and justice are essentially other-directed. The result is growing self-centeredness and a loss of closeness in our relationships. When love is dominant in a relationship, wrongs that occur are more easily reconciled because of the openness to each other and the caring that exists. It is also true that love makes us more vulnerable to hurt!
God expresses justice as well as love and calls for us to show justice as well as love. Both the quality of God's justice and the demand for us to be just is portrayed over and over in the prophets. What we see often in Scripture is that love and justice work together. As an example, "to loose the chains of injustice" (Isaiah 58:6) is not only a requirement of justice but also one of love. Self-centeredness works against both love and justice. God longs to be the center of our being; in other words, we need to be God-centered.
We live in a world with an excess of bitterness and hate and injustice. God's people urgently need to hold fast to love and justice. To do so requires the exercise of forgiveness. Once again, forgiveness does not mean the setting aside of justice. It does mean we are not free to become resentful and bitter, or to become our own "administrator of justice."
Christ's death on the cross provides a crucial contrast. On the one
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hand, in the hatred of the religious leaders and in the expediency of Rome, love and justice wither and die. On the other hand, the cross is the supreme monument to God's love and justice. God's love and justice do not wither or die! Because of Christ, Christians "can stand in [God's] presence without any sense of guilt, condemnation, or inferiority" (Kenyon, In His Presence, pp. 216 and others). What a wonder!
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Questions for Discussion
1. In situations where you have been wronged, how did you handle the forgiveness / justice relationship?
2. Do you find my differentiation between the "structures of society" and "broken relationships" (p. 89) helpful?
3. I have stated that Christ's death "not only paid the penalty required by God's justice, but that it also paid the penalty required by our justice when we have been wronged" (p. 96). Does that observation open some new possibilities regarding forgiveness in your thinking?
4. How do you react to the quotation from Kenyon that Christians "can stand in [God's] presence without any sense of guilt, condemnation, or inferiority" (p. 104)?
