What does it mean that God is just?
God's justice is not one mood among many. It belongs to what He is, and it shapes everything from His judgment of the world to His forgiveness of a person who confesses sin. Two questions run underneath it: can God be trusted to do right, and can a guilty person survive a God who always does right?
Consistency With Himself
Human justice is measured by what we owe to other people. God owes nothing to anyone, so His justice is measured against His own nature.
J. N. DarbyOur subject is righteousness, and especially the righteousness of God… what is righteousness? It is, I believe, the maintenance in my conduct, in my whole way of life, of what I ought to be — that is, what I owe — towards others, the consistency of one's ways with the duties founded on relative positions. That is being personally righteous. Judgment maintains the same by the authority of another; but this, too, is righteousness. But God owes nothing to others. It is His consistency with Himself.
No Compromise With Evil
Because He always acts in line with His own nature, He cannot shrug at wrongdoing. Even reason and history testify to it.
C E StuartHe is righteous, so He cannot think lightly of sin. He can make no compromise with wickedness. Punishment therefore must overtake those who remain finally unrepentant. Reason teaches this. Government and order, it is plain, would collapse if wickedness was never dealt with… His righteousness has been, and will again be, shown in punishing sinners. But the Gospel of God sets forth His righteousness in quite another way — in justifying ungodly people.
Justice Is Good News For Creation
People often object to God punishing anything. One writer answers by asking what a universe without justice would actually feel like.
J T MawsonCould any creature have security and peace if it were not so? There are those who object to God's right to carry out justice; would they care to live in a land where crime was strong and law weak? No, they are ready enough to support the law of the land in which they live, and to justify its penalties for their own protection, but deny God the right to govern and to judge in His universe.
The Same Justice, Two Directions
The striking claim of the New Testament is that God's justice does not only condemn. It is one quality working in opposite-looking ways.
William KellyHe is righteous when He deals with unrepentant unbelievers; He is equally righteous when He justifies the soul that repents and believes in Christ. It is the righteousness of God in both cases. So there is the strongest confirmation of the truth, although the application is different.
The Cross Answers The Riddle
How mercy can act without breaking justice is the problem no philosophy solves. Scripture answers it in one sentence and one event.
J Wilson SmithHow can mercy find room to act without infringing the rules of justice? What unbeliever can answer such a question? Or what system of philosophy can explain its riddle? But God has explained the whole thing in one single sentence — "so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26). And the cross of Christ stands before the world as the divine answer; for there justice, finding perfect satisfaction in the death of the Son of God, permits mercy to extend all the riches of her heart towards the guilty.
Forgiveness Owed To Christ
That is why the promise of forgiveness rests on God being just, not on Him being lenient. The question is who His justice is being exercised toward.
E. C. HadleyNotice the verse says that God "is faithful and just to forgive." Faithful and just towards whom? Towards Christ! Christ bore our sins in His own body on the cross (1 Peter 2:24). When you confess your sins to God, believing that Christ bore them on the cross, God would be unfaithful and unjust towards Christ if He did not forgive you.
Rest Where You Cannot See
Much of what God does is beyond our understanding. His justice gives the mind a place to stand anyway.
A J Pollock"Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?" (Genesis 18:25) — these brave words of Abraham have found a grateful echo in tens of thousands of troubled, bewildered hearts. In that we can rest, though we may not understand.
Summary
- Just means consistent. God's justice is not a rule above Him; it is His perfect agreement with His own nature, so He can never act out of character.
- Just means sin judged. Consistency with Himself rules out any compromise with evil — and a universe where wrongdoing never met justice would be no safe place to live.
- Just means Christ suffered. At the cross justice received full satisfaction in the death of God's Son, so mercy could be poured out without being cheapened.
- Just means you are justified. The same righteousness that condemns the unrepentant declares the believer righteous — God is "just and the justifier."
- Just means you can rest. Forgiveness for the one who confesses is owed to Christ's finished work, and where His ways are past understanding, the Judge of all the earth will still do right.