Justice Where You Are

 When I first landed in Africa, the thought came to mind: 

“You are not here to save them from their poverty.”

 

That thought lifted a weight, I had not realized was sitting there, off my shoulders.

 

It was my first time to Africa, of course, I wanted to save the world. 

 

Then I came to a major intersection in our country’s capital city. It is filled with cars, trucks, tuk-tuks, and too many bodas to count. The people are taking up every space not filled with cars, trucks, tuk-tuks, and bodas. These people at the intersection are working the streets selling their fruits, vegetables, and other wares. Some legally, others forced. Some are just beggars. I didn’t know what to do with them all. I couldn’t make sense of it. 

 

The unapparent immediate righting of injustice will never cease to not make sense to us. 

Where is God’s compassion? Where is His anger? Where is He? 

 

In his book, Gentle and Lowly, Dane Ortlund shows us through B.B. Warfield’s writings* that God’s compassion and anger work together. Warfield wrote, 

 

“A compassion-less Christ, never would have gotten 

            angry at all the injustices around Him.”  

 

It is because of His compassion that He is angry at injustice. 

It is why He has called you to serve where you are.

 

God’s anger isn’t like our anger. His anger is sinless. God’s compassion isn’t like our compassion. His compassion is deeper than we can imagine. He’s not letting injustice go. But maybe just like He waited 100 years to send the flood while Noah built the ark, He is giving oppressors time to repent too. 

 

Everything in me screams writing that sentence. I want immediate, swift action taken against all oppressors. I want it now-now.  Graciously, God’s ways and thoughts of dealing with sin and injustice are higher than my ways and thoughts of dealing with it.

 

Of course, there is justice on earth now. There are people, like you, and organizations - like yours, working every day to right the injustice around you. 

 

In the last chapter of Colossians, Paul sends his greetings to certain people. In verse 17, he says, 

 

          “And tell Archippus to pay attention to the ministry

 you have received from the Lord, so you can accomplish it.”

 

Now I don’t know what Archi was doing or not doing. His name shows up again in the book of Philemon and he is named as a fellow solider in Christ. But evidently, he needed a little encouaraging that he had a ministry and he needed to focus on it. What he was doing was important! Even if no one saw it.

 

I think that reminder is timely for us, we must focus on the ministry God has given us where we are. We can bring justice for the people we are serving on a daily basis.  Jim Elliot agreed with Paul by saying, “Wherever you are, be all there”. Where you are now-now is your place to bring justice to your people. 

 

How do we do that? 

 

I have learned recently from Kristi McLelland’s study, Jesus and Women, that Biblical justice is restoring the shamed to their place of honor. 

 

Biblical justice in the honor/shame culture is a “generous lifting up”. Jesus brings justice by reaching down to the shamed and restoring them to a place of honor. One example Ms. McLelland uses to teach this is the story of the bleeding woman. You know it well - a woman considered unclean and pushed away from her community. Here she comes crawling on the ground towards her last Hope for healing. She reaches out and her faith is made sight, the healing comes. Then Jesus calls out and maybe even quite literally, bends down to her, looks her straight in the eyes, and lifts her up in front of those who pushed her down to the bottom of society. 

 

That’s how we do justice every day. We bend down to those whom society has pushed to the bottom, look them in the eyes, and bring them back in their place of value. 

 

Maybe some of our ministries are similar, but the people around you are different than the ministry down the way.  Like the intersection in our capital city, there are so many people, we can’t bring justice alone. We must work together. We must work in our God-given ministries to accomplish justice where we are.  

 

Who do you know in your line of sight that needs Biblical justice? 

Who needs a generous lifting up?

 

How can you show justice in little ways each day, right where you are? 

Where is your focus? Who is your focus?

*B.B. Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ (Oxford, UK: Benediction Classics, 2015) 141.