Justice

During these summer mornings we are taking a look at a number of important topical issues from a biblical perspective. Today the topic is justice, as you will see from my sermon outline on the back of the service sheet. I am going to make particular reference to Romans 13. The issue of justice is so all-pervasive that it is easy to forget how crucial it is. Like the air that we breath, we tend not to give it a second thought. Until, that is, justice is no longer there. Then we certainly notice its absence. We very quickly react to any injustice done to us, and we want redress. I heard British firemen working in Kosovo bemoaning the lack of forgiveness that was causing them so much work. But it is a good deal easier to recommend forgiveness to others than it is to practice it when we are the victims of injustice. But the issue of justice is much wider than this. In Old Testament terminology, justice is very closely linked with righteousness. Righteousness, put simply, is what exists when everything is right - everything is as it should be. Everything is right between God and humanity. Everything is right between all people. Everything is right between people and the material world. That is righteousness. And that is not the way things are. In large ways and small, things are not the way they should be. And that is where justice comes in. Justice is that which needs to be done in any given situation to restore righteousness. When things are not as they should be, what needs to be done to make everything right again? That is justice. So the whole field of the right government of human affairs is an aspect of justice. One example. Miss Pamela Loughlan was paralysed for life in a road accident. The other day the Court of Appeal ruled that she had the legal right to stay in her nursing home, which had been threatened with closure, rather than move to means-tested social services accommodation. The columnist Melanie Phillips commented on the case. I quote:

The royal commission set up to sort all this out recommended months ago that the NHS should pay for nursing care. Yet the government still has not responded. Justice alone surely requires that the NHS should pay the long-term nursing care costs of those who paid taxes all their lives on the understanding that it would do so. However, this system needs to be designed from scratch for the future, as does the rest of the welfare state. For it is no longer working.

In other words, she says, things are not as they should be. They need to be put right. Justice needs to be done in relation to the narrow issue of who pays for nursing care. But justice also needs to done in relation to the wider question of how the welfare state is managed. And at who's door does she place the responsibility for what she regards as this lack of justice? The government hasn't done what it should, she says. The government should be held responsible. But is she right? Never mind for now the particular case in question - what about the broad principle? What is the role of government in the establishment of justice? Is government responsible for ensuring that things are as they should be? And if it is, what is our responsibility in relation to government? In answer to those questions, I want to make three basic points that derive from the teaching of the bible, not least in Romans 13. You can see those three points on the outline. The first of them is simply this: GOVERNMENT SERVES GOD Take a look at Romans 13:1-2 :

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

Then three times Paul describes government as the servant of God. In verse 4 he says that the one in authority "is God's servant to do you good..." And again, "He is God's servant, and agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrong-doer." And then in verse 6: "This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants ..." What is our reaction, I wonder, when that delightful brown envelope arrives on the doormat some time after the beginning of April with another tax return to complete? Do we think to ourselves, "Ahh, another message from God via his servant!" Maybe our attitude to government needs some revision. Maybe it is not entirely righteous, and justice needs to be done to put it right. So what are the implications of this teaching about goverment? For a start, government is God's creation. Adam and Eve were told to "fill the earth and subdue it", and government is one of the means established by God for humanity to order its own life and to exercise our God-given dominion over the world. In other words, it is one means for doing justice - for getting things right. As well as being made by God, government is God's agent. It serves his purposes of ordering our life together, for our welfare. So, verse 4 again: "[the one in authority] is God's servant, to do you good." To put it another way, God rules humanity through secular authorities. He does not only rule through them. Above all, he rules through the Scriptures. So the Reformer Martin Luther, for instance, often spoke of God as ruling by Word and sword, the sword being the symbol of secular power and authority. Paul speaks in that way in verse 4, where he describes governments as those who carry the sword. I quote: For [the one in authority] is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. God rules our earthly existence by the agency of governments and the power that they wield. They keep the peace. They organise our common life. They provide for the needs of our earthly existence. As far as is within their power, they make sure that everything is as it should be, and when it isn't they are agents of justice to put things right. However, their power only extends to what you might call our external lives. They cannot touch what goes on inside us. They cannot deal with our eternal destiny. They cannot put us right with God. Our souls are governed not by parliaments, but by the Word of God, which is the Holy Spirit's sword. It is the Word of God alone that can make us righteous before God. Only the Word can change us from within. But God's Word itself, in the form of Paul's letter to the Romans, makes it clear, as we have seen, that God also exercises his rule through governing authorities, which are his servants. There are clear consequences of that for us. We should submit to the authority of governments. They have legitimate authority that should be accepted. They should not be rebelled against. Verse 2:

... he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgement on themselves.

And verse 5:

... it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.

Which is to say that when we recognise that government is God-given, our submission will not simply be a self-centred concern to avoid sanctions, but a genuine recognition of the blessings that we receive from God's hand through it. So, to return, for instance to that ominous brown envelope marked 'Inland Revenue': if we have a right understanding of the role played by government in doing justice for the common good, our basic attitude to the Inland Revenue will not be one of resentment. It will be one of gratitude to God. Temptation to evade paying tax will be seen for what it is: temptation to rebel against the rule of God, otherwise known as sin. Verse 7:

Give everyone what you owe him: if you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honour, then honour.

As well as accepting the executive authority of governments to govern, we should also obey the laws that they enact. But there is an unspoken question that all this inevitably raises. Is God teaching us through his Word that this obedience to secular authority should be absolute and without exception? The answer to that has to be a clear 'No!' The submission and obedience required of us is not absolute. It is conditional. There are exceptions. Before we breath a sigh of relief, though, and think that we can despise all governments and as far as serves our own interests ignore all that they say, remember the context within which the apostle Paul is writing this. The government under which Paul lived and wrote was the Roman Empire: the empire which brutally executed his Lord and Master Jesus; the empire which in the end put Paul himself to death. So it is not just governments that suit us to which we owe obedience. What, then, is the condition of our obedience to be? It is this: if our obedience to secular authority would require us to disobey the Word of God, then we should obey the Word of God rather than the authorities. Such disobedience is not rebellion. It is submission to the higher authority of God. So for instance, when the apostles Peter and John are required by their own Jewish authorities to stop telling people about the risen Jesus and persuading them to become Christians, Peter replies to them:

"Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.

But aren't the authorities God's servants? How does that square up? The fact of the matter is that servants do not always do what their master requires of them. When governments act contrary to God's Word, it does not mean that they are no longer God's servants. It means that they are disobedient servants. And when they rebel against God, there is no neutral ground. They begin to serve Satan instead. They become agents of injustice rather than justice. That is what is happening, for example, when they begin to persecute the church. So in Revelation 13 godless, Satan inspired powers are described as the beast which "...opened his mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling-place and those who live in heaven." So the time may come when in the name of justice and in godly ways the state must be disobeyed. That kind of disobedience will not be and must not be an act of rebellion, but an act of submission to God which seeks to put things right again. Last week President Chirac opened a memorial museum at Oradour, a village in central France. In June 1944, four days after D-Day, Nazi troops killed 642 of the villages residents by separating the men from the women and children, shooting the men, locking the rest in the local church and setting it on fire. Governments can perpetrate terrible injustice which reverberate down the generations. Doing the justice necessary to right the wrongs can be a very long process. The other day I saw in the papers a large Legal Notice By Order of the Court. It was headed:

To victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs who may have claims against Swiss Banks or other Swiss entities relating to the Holocaust:...

It goes on to explain how they can seek redress. President Chirac described this is a century of atrocities. He said that the still empty village of Oradour was ...

a reminder that barbarity belongs to all countries and to all periods of history and that tolerance and the elementary respect of life and dignity are a fight that is never won.

He may or may not know it, but there speaks a servant of God. Government serves God in doing justice, even though at times it is a rebellious servant. Which brings me to my second main point: STATE LAW SHOULD BE GROUNDED IN GOD'S LAW If Government is God's servant, then it should of course exercise its authority in accordance with God's will. Verse 3 of Romans 13:

For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong.

Rulers should be ruling according to what is right. How do we know what is right? God has given us his law in the Scriptures. Earlier we heard again the Ten Commandments. They are the fundamental principles underlying the Covenant Law of God's people. Throughout the Bible those principles are applied to all kinds of situations, particularly in the life of Israel, God's Old Covenant people. Those biblical applications cannot be carried across directly into the life of our nations today. But Israel remains a model. The task for us is to grasp the principles of God's law, and reapply them in our own situation. That is not always straightforward, though sometimes it is.

We can never earn eternal salvation by obedience to God's law. We fall short and only God can save us. We can do nothing. But that does not mean that the law is useless and to be ignored. God's law has three main purposes.

One of them is to show us how deep the sinfulness runs within us, and how worthy we are of condemnation. That sight will cause us to despair of self-reliance and resort to the only Saviour, Jesus. But along with that purpose of God's law there are two others. For one thing, it sets before us the ideal and the goal of perfection and righteousness. In that way it inspires and directs the behaviour and attitudes of those who are wanting to be obedient, as a result of the work of God's Spirit within them. For another thing, God's law serves to order society for its welfare or, put another way, it restrains the evil that would otherwise be rampant among us. You've only got to look at the terrible cycle of violent vengeance and counter-vengeance unfolding in Kosovo, to see the results of anarchy, and the need for law and order to be imposed. So what the state requires should be in line with what is 'right' according to the Word of God. Of course, where the Word of God is not known, that is not possible. But even then, there is ultimately no excuse, because as Paul says earlier in Romans, in 3:15, "the requirements of the law are written on [the Gentiles'] hearts..." Laws should be framed according to what is known to be right. In our own nation, there can certainly be no excuse. We have had the Bible for centuries. If we think we can throw out the Bible and rely instead on our innate sense of fair play, we are disastrously deluding ourselves. Our moral sense, our sense of justice, will become increasingly corrupt. If our laws are contrary to the Word of God, it is the result of disobedience and rejection of God's Law, not ignorance. The way to justice is through the application of God's law in our own situation. Two weeks ago David was speaking in this series about the Media. Let me mention one example that he touched on. Last week the MP Edward Leigh raised the issue of Christian Broadcasting in a Private Members Bill in the House of Commons. He said that under the 1990 Broadcasting Act...

...one can get a national radio licence to promote atheism but one is prevented from promoting Christianity. The law is so draconian that if a local vicar were asked to join the board of a television franchisee, that company would immediately lose its franchise ... Whereas politicians or anyone can go on television or the radio to raise funds for charity or to recruit, religious broadcasters are not allowed to do so.

The verdict of one political commentator was this:

Mr Leigh's speech raised surprising inequalities. Can you imagine the protests if any other minority group was denied access to the air waves?

There is no discussion of the electronic broadcast media in the Bible. But the principle is clear. Discriminating against the broadcasting of the gospel of Christ can hardly be defended as in line with God's will and Word. It is absolutely right that Christians should be campaigning for an unjust law to be changed, as United Christian Broadcasters and the Christian Institute and others are doing. So, where have we got to? First, government is the agent of God. Its authority derives from him. It does not cease to be God's servant, even if it abuses that authority and rebels against its divine master. Secondly, the laws that a state enacts and which create the framework within which government works should be grounded in God's law, which he has given us in the pages of the Bible. Then the third and final main point is this: THE STATE SHOULD ENFORCE THE LAW JUSTLY Government should promote what is right and punish wrong doing. Romans 13:3-4:

For rulers hold no terror for those for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

The punishment that governing authorities inflict is an aspect of the outworking of the wrath of God on sinners. It is partial. It anticipates the full outpouring of God's utterly just wrath at the Day of Judgement. It is inevitably provisional and imprecise. No governing authorities, however godly in intention, will ever get it 100% right. But as far as possible it should be in accordance with the principles that are to be found in God's law. So what are those principles in relation to punishment? We can do no more than touch on an immensely important topic here, which has wide implications for the way that we operate as a nation. If you wish to consider these matters in more detail, let me commend to you a very helpful book by Chris Wright, called 'Living as the People of God: The Relevance of Old Testament Ethics'. He says that the study of the penal provisions especially in Deuteronomy point to what he calls the 'clear and positive principles on which Israelite punishments operated' - which should underly our own policies. He sums up the ingredients of punishment in this way:

Retribution. The offender was to suffer his just legal deserts which should be appropriate to the offence. That is the significance and justification of [the principle: 'eye for eye, tooth for tooth']. It was a very limiting law, preventing excessive or vengeful punishment. Purging. Guilt had to be 'wiped away' from God's sight. Deterrence. 'All Israel shall hear and fear.' i.e. be afraid to do the same. Restoration. The offender remained a brother and was not to be degraded. Compensation. Restitution was made to the injured party - not to the state as a fine.

Punishment must be appropriate to and proportionate with the crime. It is that principle of retribution which anchors all the others. It is the fair and consistent application of that principle (rather than one or two punitive high profile cases) which serves to purge and deter. So, in conclusion, justice requires just and God-honouring executive government. It requires just laws. But it also requires that those laws are justly applied and enforced. All of that means that if we are seeking to live in submission to God's will and Word, three things should be true of us. First, we will obey the law. Secondly, we will disobey the law of the land only when required to do so by obedience to the law of God. And thirdly, we will pray for and work for justice. That will mean praying for and working for, either directly or by supporting others, godly executive government, godly legislation, and a godly judiciary. We need to ask ourselves whether we are doing those three things. How can you get involved in doing justice, to the glory of Christ our just King who will one day judge us all?