What does the Bible say about justice?

• Leviticus 19:9-10, when you harvest, leave the edges for those in need
• Deuteronomy 24:17, do not deprive others of justice
• Psalm 37:28, the Lord loves justice
• Psalm 147:6, the Lord lifts up those who need help and casts the wicked down
• Isaiah 10:1-2, calling out those who rob others of their rights
• Isaiah 58:6-7, loose the bonds of injustice
• Isaiah 61:1-2, anointed to carry out justice
• Amos 5:24, "Let justice roll down like waters. . ."
• Micah 6:8, "What does the Lord require of you?"
• Matthew 5:6-10, the beatitudes
• Luke 1:51-53, God filled the hungry with good things
• Luke 4:18-19, anointed to bring good news to the poor
• Luke 14:11-14, when you give a party, invite those in need
• Romans 3:31-32, justice from God is brought through faith in Jesus Christ

Sermon ideas about justice

Writers onjustice, including Nicholas Wolterstorff, often distinguish distributive justice from rectifying or retributive justice. In distributive justice people receive the goods to which they have a right. In rectifying justice, people who have been deprived of distributive justice regain it, or something like it. In the case of criminal justice, for instance, the perpetrator often cannot make the victim and society entirely whole (the murder or assault undone), but "pays a debt" to the victim and society by loss of his own freedom. The victim and society regain "something like" the distributive justice they had lost.

God is injured by human injustice. If Iviolate my neighbor's rights, I injure not only my neighbor, but also God, who made, loves, and has imprinted his image on my neighbor. Unjust practices are wounds of God as well as of my neighbor.

Oppressors are allergice to the language of justice. They may greatly restrict, deny, or even remove the rights of the oppressed, while also publicizing their occasional charity to the oppressed.

Redemption from injustice

Some Christians think that in the New Testament love replaces justice, but a survey of the NT, and especially of the gospels, shows that it does not. Especially in Luke, the prophecies of Jesus' coming (e.g., by Mary and Zechariah) and Jesus' own self-identification in Luke 4 when he inaugurates his ministry — these prophecies and this self-identification fall squarely in the justice tradition of the prophets. Jesus brings the kingdom of God (the just kingdom) much nearer. Jesus is the Savior — the One who redeems people from injustice, including their own.

Righteousness vs. justice

One of Wolterstorff's main insights is that readers of the New Testament have often been blocked from seeing how much of it is about justice because, for some reason, the relevant Greek word (dikaiosune͞) often gets translated "righteousness" when "justice" is just as likely a choice. Righteousness is a personal virtue. Justice is a state of affairs. And people are, perhaps, more likely to be persecuted for seeking justice than for being righteous (see Matthew5:10).

In Jesus' self-identification and in the prophets, there are particular kinds of people who are especially likely to need justice. Wolterstorff calls them "the quartet of the vulnerable," (Justice, p. 75)namely, widows, orphans, resident aliens, and the poor. They are "the bottom ones, the low ones, the lowly ones" and therefore vulnerable to being stepped on, or "downtrodden" in older versions of the Bible. Justice for them consists of their being "lifted up" as in Psalm 147:6 (Justice, p. 76). The quartet of the vulnerable are in particular need of justice because they don't have powerful advocates and defenders — which is why God has to become their advocate and defender.

Today's preacher of justice walks in a minefield. He or she who dares to speak of justice may be thought "political" or biased or "a bleeding-heart liberal." The preacher's recourse is to stand with the Word of God and say, "You are quarrelling not with me, but with God's Word." And God's Word is so often a call to justice because, of course, justice is a central ingredient in shalom and in its New Testament equivalent — the coming of the kingdom of God in its fullness

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Introduction quotes fromSee Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs, Princeton University, 2008, p. 10.