Justice
JUSTICE
The Wisdom of the Just
Psalm 72:2; Isaiah 1:27; Amos 5:24
We saw that the deepest need was to set judgment, or social justice, into human affairs. This passage concerning John the Baptist emphasizes the same: “He will . . . turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared” (Luke 1:17). . . .
Note that phrase,—“the wisdom of the just.” It is a truism to say that what the poor and the dispossessed need is not charity but justice, but it needs to be said again and again. We have seen the unwisdom of injustice. We have built a society in which those in control have intercepted the gains brought by science and technology and have kept them from passing on to the people. . . .
A basic, thoroughgoing justice for everybody would be social wisdom. If we will not listen to this word from the sacred Book, then we must listen to it spoken by the fiery tongues of a world in flames. For God speaks! And the wisdom of the just is God’s message.
Victorious Living
(Week 26, Thursday)
Judgment unto Victory
Habakkuk 2:4-14; Matthew 15:13; Luke 10:18; Colossians 2:15
I do not say that it will cost nothing to be just. You will have to have the selfish self knocked out before you can become fundamentally just and willing to give everybody an equal opportunity. It will mean a real renunciation—a community of sharing.
Victorious Living
(Week 26, Friday)
Magnificent Obsession
Matthew 14:44-46; Acts 5:19-20; 1 Timothy 4:15
I am obsessed with the idea that poverty could end for all, for we have both the knowledge and the instruments of science to do it. We have everything to do it, everything except the collective will. The kingdom of God would mean that the collective will would be turned toward abolishing that poverty.
Victorious Living
(Week 38, Tuesday)
Working with and for Others
1 Corinthians 3:3-9; Colossians 4:11; 3 John 5-8
Just generosity produces stability. Injustice and inequality produce instability, for they are working against the kingdom; hence they break down.
Abundant Living
(Week 29, Saturday)
Matthew 1:18-20; Luke 1:5-7, 13-17
“The Redemptionists” [was a group movement] made up of those who were “looking for the redemption of Israel” (Luke 2:38). . . .
We can trace the Redemptionists in the opening chapters of Luke’s gospel by the family likeness of ideas running through them all. The group may have included Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, Simeon, Anna, the shepherds (see Luke 1–2). They were intensely nationalistic, and yet they were agents of a new order based on equality of opportunity to everybody. The word just runs like a refrain through the account of all of them. They stood for a justice that made for equality for everybody. Zechariah and Elizabeth were “both just” (Luke 1:6 Moffatt). The angels spoke to Zechariah of the “wisdom of the just” (v. 17)—a phrase that should burn itself into modern civilization; to be just is to be wise, to be unjust is to be unwise. Joseph was “a just man,” but with a new kind of justice: “her husband was a just man and unwilling to disgrace her” (Matt 1:19 Moffatt). Here was a justice that was mercy, that was redemptive, and not punitive. The angels said to the shepherds, “Peace on earth, good will to men” (Luke 1:14 KJV), good will to men; not to some, but to all, apart from race and birth and color.
Abundant Living
(Week 38, Monday)
A Ladder for Mastery over Money
Psalm 62:10; Proverbs 23:4; Jeremiah 9:23-24; Mark 4:18-19; Luke 12:16-21; 1 Timothy 6:6-12, 17-19
The poor need not charity, but justice. When you give charity, you are the bountiful patron; the poor are the recipients. When you give justice, your relationships change; you become equals. It is easy to be charitable; it is difficult to be just.
Abundant Living
(Week 43, Friday)
A Ladder for Mastery over Money
Malachi 3:7-10; Mark 10:17-27; Acts 20:35; 1 Corinthians 16:2; 2 Corinthians 9:1-15
When the level of your needs has been reached, then all you earn belongs to the needs of others, not as charity, but as right and justice.
Abundant Living
(Week 43, Saturday)
Good Friday Meditation
John 15:13; 19:16-18; Romans 5:6-11
There is a justice higher than legal justice—justice in which it is right for the strong, at cost to itself, to save the weak; it is right for the holy to save the unholy. This is the law of higher justice.
Abundant Living
Psalm 139:7-12
Life will come to us as justice and injustice, pleasure and pain, compliment and criticism. We must be ready to take hold of it as it comes and make something else out of it. In that way you face life with no subterfuges, no dodging out of difficulties, no rationalization; you face life honestly and simply and masterfully.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 29, Thursday)
The Kingdom Is God’s Total Answer
Mathew 6:33; Acts 16:25:34
[Another life conviction is] the way to meet unmerited suffering and injustice is not to bear them, but to use them. When I saw that possibility years ago through this verse, “That will turn out an opportunity for you to bear witness” (Luke 21:13 Moffatt)—the unjust bringing you before judges and governors to be tried—an entirely new world opened before me. I had been trying to explain suffering, and now I saw that we are not to explain it, but to use it. Everything that happens to you—good, bad, or indifferent—can contribute to you if you know how to use it. Everything furthers those who follow Christ, provided they know how to set their sails. All winds blow you to your goal. It is the set of the soul that does it. When you know this secret, you are afraid of nothing, because you can use everything. That makes you march up to every human happening, with the possibility tucked away in your mind of plucking a blessing out of the heart of everything.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 51, Thursday)