Justice?

If there was the same justice for all - across the board, I'd on the fast track to hell.

God is a just God, but somehow, unjustly, He saved me.

Our text this morning was Luke 18; the parable of the Pharasee and the tax collector. Read the parable and then click read what came before (you'll have to go to chapter 17) and look at who Jesus was talking to. He was with His disciples. The section that the parable was in begins, "He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt..."

If salvation was about "justice", those who were "good" would be the ones saved. Instead, the ones who know that they are "bad" - those who rely on Christ (and Christ alone) who are saved by grace, through faith.

Jesus used this parable to tell his followers (the ones who were trusting in themselves and their own good works) that it wasn't about justice, it was about mercy.

If it had been about justice, the Pharisee had it all together.  He tithed, he fasted, he did all the right things.   He belonged to the right church, he did the "paperwork", performed the right rites.  And he thanked God that he wasn't like that man over there...the one who didn't have it all together.
But it's not about justice, it's about mercy.  The tax collector knew that he didn't have it all together.   He knows it's about mercy.

In the broadest sense, there has been justice, Blood has been shed.  Christ's blood.

But in the narrow sense - the "me" sense - I have not paid my debt; it was paid for me.

It's not about what we do, it's about who Christ is.

It's not about what we have done, it's about what Christ has done.

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2 thoughts on “Justice?

  1. Challies has a post on total depravity and something interesting...that by all of us be totally depraved (dead in our sins) we are all in need of the same amount of grace.

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