If there is no law, there is no justice. If there is no justice, there is unrestrained evil. Ultimately, the choice is God’s justice or no justice.
Imagine living in a place ruled by a weak government led by corrupt officials bribed by competing drug warlords. The cruelty and greed of the warlords is beyond comprehension. No one is safe, not children, not women, not the old, not the weak. Children are kidnapped for ransom or sold into trafficking. Women are raped in public. Men who resist paying extortion to maintain their farms or businesses disappear. Money, power, and violence reign.
Then a beautiful thing happens. Somehow a man becomes president who has the strength, courage, and virtue to oppose the warlords, corrupt judges, legislators, and policemen. He announces, “From this day forward, our nation will be ruled by law and by justice. No one will be above the law, not me, not the warlords or their soldiers, not the judges of our courts nor the police in the streets. Law and justice will rule, not bribery, not money, not power.”
Remarkably, in the months and years that follow, he keeps his promise. He removes every judge from office and appoints new judges sworn to refuse bribes—judges of integrity and courage who love and uphold the law.
The president likewise replaces every person in the police force, top to bottom, with policemen of integrity and courage who love and uphold the law and hate bribes.
Likewise with the legislature.
And over a period of just a few years, the nation is transformed into a place of justice, peace, and human flourishing.
Without God’s justice, evil is unrestrained
If you lived as one of the common people in this land, how would you feel about the law? How would you feel about justice? Only if you have lived in a place like I have described could you fully appreciate the precious value of law and justice. This story illustrates the value of what is called the rule of law.
One of the pillars of the gospel is the importance of law and justice.
What the gospel reveals about God is his love of law and justice.
He says, “I the LORD love justice; I hate robbery and wrong; I will faithfully give them their recompense” (Isaiah 61:8 ESV).
Isaiah 33:22 says, “The LORD is our judge; the LORD is our lawgiver; the LORD is our king; he will save us.”
The ultimate law-giver and judge
He is the law giver and justice enforcer.
James 4:12 says, “There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy.”
Both God’s law-giving and justice-enforcing are perfectly good, for he alone is perfectly good. He has the wisdom and goodness to frame perfect laws. He has the power and righteousness to enforce them. He has the commitment to justice to see that all wrongs are made right, that all transgressions of the law are called into account, that in the end justice is perfectly done.
These actions are the essentials for having a society where a good person can live forever in perfect peace, prosperity, and happiness. Law and justice uphold perfect, sustainable order and paradise, a world where humans can flourish.
How Jesus satisfied God’s justice
God’s design for the gospel stands on the truths of law and justice. The reason Jesus Christ had to die on the cross was to satisfy the requirements of God’s law and justice. God would not set aside his law and justice in order to save sinners. Even his infinite mercy would not allow him to do so. Law and justice are too important for that.
Jesus emphasized that the purpose of his human life was to fulfill God’s holy law:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished” (Matthew 5:17–18).
Jesus fulfilled the law by being accountable to it: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law” (Galatians 4:4). And Jesus kept the law perfectly: “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:22).
For our part, without Jesus we are completely unable to measure up to the requirements of God’s holy law:
“Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:19–20).
The message of the gospel is that Jesus has taken the penalty that God’s holy law demands of transgressors:
“10 ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.’… 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Galatians 3:10, 13).
The centrality of law in a world of justice
The Bible reveals in many ways God’s love of creating and giving what should be life-producing laws.
On Mount Sinai, after God had saved his people from Egypt, he began to form them into a nation. He gave Moses two tablets of stone engraved with Ten Commandments intended to maintain a just and good nation.
In the Tabernacle and eventually in the permanent Temple, in the most sacred 400 square feet on earth—the Holy of Holies—sat the holiest object in the Temple, the Ark of the Covenant, and what was contained in that Ark? The two stone tablets on which were engraved these foundational Ten Commandments. The unmistakable message is the centrality of God’s Law.
Based on them, God gave hundreds of other specific commands that fleshed the laws out in the many situations that life presents.
Looking back from the New Covenant perspective, the apostle Paul wrote, “The law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Romans 7:12).
Our way and God’s way
Our way: Shackled with our fallen sinful nature, no one can perfectly obey God’s law. In fact, we don’t want to. Humanity resents, resists, and ignores God’s law.
Western culture has almost completely forgotten and rejected the idea that there is a divine law to which every person is accountable. In place of God and his justice, people have substituted ideas such as naturalism (there is no God, just matter), “spirituality,” and “mindfulness,” or a deistic God who is uninvolved or indifferent to things on earth, or a non-judgmental God of love who simply wants to make people happy.
One of the most offensive ideas to people today is that anyone—including God—judges anyone. People don’t like feeling guilt and reject anything or anyone who makes them feel guilty.
God’s way: “Say among the nations, ‘The LORD reigns! Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity’” (Psalm 96:10).
“He has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).
God sent his Son to become a man, who obeyed the law perfectly and then died on the cross to take our penalty for transgressing God’s law.
Life principle: Through faith in Jesus, our transgressions of God’s law are forgiven, and God credits the perfect law-keeping of Jesus to us. “Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for ‘The righteous shall live by faith’” (Galatians 3:11).
Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)