Hey, everybody. Good morning. My name is Justin. For those of you here at Gateway North, as well as those who are watching online from wherever you’re watching from, we’re really glad that you’re here, and I’m glad to be here with you.

I do want to be upfront with you, though: this morning, I may say some things over the next few minutes that don’t make you happy. You may be upset. You may be in disagreement. And that’s okay. Do you know that the church is meant to be a community where we work through tough issues, with God’s help and a commitment to love one another through the difficulties? That’s who the church is really meant to be. So I want to just prime you for that.

I’d also love to ask for your prayers and grace as we walk through this, because as we talk about God being a God of justice, the reason this is difficult is that we often approach the topic of justice as wounded, angry, or unforgiving people. There is no possibility of justice if you are carrying those things in your heart.

If you walked into a courtroom with a judge who is wounded, angry, or unforgiving, you shouldn’t expect justice. It’s just going to go poorly. They’re not qualified to judge justly. In the same way, if you approach God or the need for justice in our world with those kind of things in your heart, you should not expect that we’re ever going to find real justice.

So I just want to ask you to consider the possibility today that our hunger for justice is often fueled by the wrong things. If you find yourself as you’re listening at some point getting angry, frustrated, or opposed even to what I’m saying, just remember that we’re often approaching this topic with those filters in place, and it makes it difficult to hear what God says about himself and the true nature of justice.

With that in mind, we just sang all those songs to this great and mighty Jesus. I’m just going to ask him for his help. So if you can just pray with me for just a moment:

Jesus, you understand justice really well, and you know all the places where we don’t. But this is something that we’ve got to get. We need to understand this about you. We also need a fair amount of healing when it comes to this topic. So would you help us? Would you just step into our midst? Would you speak into our hearts and minds? And would you lead us into the truth? Holy Spirit, come and lead us into the truth, just like you promised. Amen.

Alright, so let me just bypass all the intermediaries and let’s just jump straight to the question that most conversations about God’s justice eventually sort of find their way to. They center on this: How can God be just when there’s so much unjust suffering in the world?

I think at the heart of it, that’s where a lot of our questions come down to. If God is so just, why do things seem so unjust? If God is really all that we’ve been saying that he is in this series—compassionate, gracious, patient—if he’s really so good, how can he let this world be so bad? Why do innocent people suffer? Why do bad things happen to good people?

Those are legitimate questions. But in my experiences as I’ve walked with people over the last few decades of following Jesus, there’s usually two primary reasons that people ask that question.

One kind of comes in what I would call cognitive dissonance. The facts of the world don’t line up with this vision of God that you’re putting out there. Really, the cognitive dissonance is more of an abstract thing—it’s more intellectual, more theological. It questions how we can reconcile the realities of human experience with the reality that we actually experience and the God that you’re telling me is in charge of all this. Are you just making all this up? Inquiring minds want to know. That’s fine. That’s a whole side of things where it’s legitimate to approach that question from the cognitive, intellectual, theological angle.

But there’s also another angle I’ve seen, and that’s personal suffering. The deeper reason that this question haunts us about God’s justice is that we, or people that we love, have suffered greatly. That’s not abstract. It is deeply personal and touches the core of our emotions. The question really is: If God is so good and just, why did he let this happen to me?

So let me just offer a preliminary response to each one as we look closer at Jesus and the scriptures and reflect on what God has revealed about himself and about justice.

First: Do the work. If you have serious intellectual or theological questions—if you’re on that cognitive dissonance side—there are literally two millennia worth of research, writings, debates, and potential answers. Here’s the thing: we live in an age that attempts to reduce highly complicated issues down to soundbites, one-liners, and 30-second Instagram Reels. If that’s your source where you’re looking for answers, you’re not going to find a satisfactory answer when it comes to justice. Smarter people than us have wrestled with this topic for a long time, so follow their trail. In fact, we’re going to put up some recommended resources. This will be included on our “Digging Deeper” resource on our website. There are literally 10 or 12 books that we’re putting out to you. Many people have found these helpful; don’t just try to figure it out on your own and don’t just settle for a quick, easy answer. Do the work.

Secondly: For those of you who are probably more on the personal suffering side, I would encourage you to seek a personal encounter with God. If what haunts you is deeply personal, then you should know right now there is nothing that I or anyone else can say that’s going to change the past. There’s nothing I or anyone else can do to undo what it cost you. And although there is no answer that can undo that wreckage, God can profoundly change your future. You need to encounter God himself on this issue. The Book of Job is a case study in how dumb answers from well-intentioned people didn’t do a thing to help. But when Job’s heart was ready—a man who had suffered greatly—God showed up in a way that helped Job move forward into a new kind of future. So I don’t know what you need to see or how you need to experience God, but if you insist on encountering him, he will honor that faith.

That being said, if God claims to be a God of justice, what does that mean and how can we really trust him? How can we really trust that?

I want to center our discussion on a single passage of Scripture: Romans chapter 3. As we do so, it’s helpful to be really clear on some terms. In just a moment, I’m going to read a passage from Romans, and you might glaze over because you’re going to hear the word “righteousness” a bunch, and we don’t use that word a lot. Here’s what I want you to understand about that word: The word being translated in English as “righteousness” is the Greek word dikaiosyne. It means righteousness or justice; it’s often translated either way. What it means in the original Greek is less about what you tend to think of as legal justice, and it’s more along the lines of what makes someone a truly good person. That’s righteousness: what makes someone a really good person. So when you see “righteousness,” or “just,” or “justice,” think dikaiosyne—what makes somebody a really good person.

Romans chapter 3 says this starting in verse 21:

“But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:21-26)

Let’s just walk through that for a moment, because that’s a lot.

When we approach justice, we have to start with what we typically mean: we often mean that we want things to be made right. When a bad person does bad things, they receive punishment to make it right. That is called retributive justice: you must pay for what you’ve done. That’s where most of us start and how we operate.

So let’s try retributive justice on the human situation. Let’s start with all the truly good people—bring in everyone who has done purely good and never engaged in any form of evil. There’s no one. That means everyone is tainted with bad. And if we demand retributive justice, everyone who has ever lived needs punishment for their wrongs. If you demand retributive justice, you are demanding punishment for yourself. Romans says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” If retributive justice is what we want, it’s going to be unpleasant for everyone.

The arc of the Bible story reveals that God would like to move beyond retributive justice as a way of dealing with evil. However, if you insist on dealing with God, others, and life in those terms, he will allow it. As we discussed on week four of this series, there is a day of judgment coming that the scriptures speak of, and if you have demanded retributive justice as your rule of life, you will find it—but it may not be all that you hoped that it would be.

What we’re seeing in this passage in Romans is that God is revealing his kind of righteousness—his dikaiosyne—in a different way. It’s something that looks more like rehabilitation or restoration. God’s kind of justice isn’t just focused on meting out punishment for all guilty parties; it’s about overwhelming evil with good. He desires to rescue people from the evil within them and then, through them, heal what they have brought into the world.

Romans 3 is telling us that God went for the jugular with sin, not just by addressing the symptoms of human evil through retributive punishment for everybody’s sins. Through Jesus, he entered into death himself and destroyed the power of sin. God’s righteousness—his dikaiosyne—was revealed in his refusal to simply give you what you deserve. He sacrificed himself to atone, or unify us with God, and in so doing liberate us from sin and death. He is just (dikaios) and justifier (dikaioo). He is not only the good and right person, but his kind of righteousness is revealed by his choice to transform our evil into righteousness, rather than punish everybody for their mistakes.

How did all this happen? That is the gospel. If you think of sin—all of our mistakes, wrongdoing, and the death that it brings about—as a deadly infection, then Jesus’ work of atonement is like a transfusion of God’s eternal kind of life that overwhelms the infection, coming at the cost of Jesus’ life. Christ is then both God’s mercy (the free gift of new life) and justice (reckoning fully with sin) working together at the same time. It’s all a manifestation of God’s righteousness.

God is, in effect, saying, “Hello, my name is Dikaiosyne, and if you want to know how, let’s meet near the cross and the empty tomb of Jesus.”

God doesn’t dodge evil; he has met it head-on. The unjust suffering in the world is a symptom of the rebellion, sin, and death at work in the human race, which each of us has perpetuated and added to. But his kind of dikaiosyne means he chooses to deal with the root causes. He wants to transform human nature, preserving human agency, rather than simply punishing all of our wrongs or abandoning us entirely to the wages of sin and death.

Jesus shows us what the justice of God really looks like, and it began with a personal investment of loving mercy to make things right. He doesn’t desire retribution; he aims for repentance. Remember 2 Peter 3:9: “Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” God’s kind of righteousness means that he offers reconciliation and atonement through Christ to anyone who will receive him.

Now, here’s the rub. Because God has given people the opportunity for repentance and transformation, he has chosen simultaneously not to fix every wrong choice. They go together. Hence, we’ve got a really big problem with injustice on this earth.

We often pray that God would make justice roll down like waters (Amos 5:24). But what we often mean is that we want God to be like Batman—a good guy who terrorizes the criminals and makes them pay. But the hard truth is that we are the accomplices to the wrong that has ruined our world. There is a lot you will not see made right here and now in the way you would like. Dikaiosyne only prevails where God is King, and everything is not yet under his rule. Management experts say, “Our system is perfectly designed to get the results we’re getting.” The lack of God’s kingdom is the root of injustice.

Many quarters of the church are still praying for God to rend the heavens and clean things up through sheer brute force. But God’s plan isn’t “shock and awe”. Instead, we have this strange kind of justice enacted through radically sacrificial love—a justice that restores by drawing out the evil from our hearts and filling us with a new kind of goodness.

While we wait and ask, “Where’s the justice? Why do so many suffer unjustly?” God looks at us from the cross and answers: “I am working on it. Where are you?”

True justice and righteousness on earth wait for the people of God to live from the kingdom of God in their everyday lives. We are the agents of dikaiosyne as we allow his kingdom to come through us, which means there will be no justice for all of us until the righteous heart of God beats in each of us.

I know many of you have questions in the back of your mind: “That’s all well and good, Pastor, but I live in the real world. I have a spouse who lied and cheated on me. I have friends who betrayed me and walked away. I have business partners who have stolen from me. I have parents who have abused me. I have a legal system that has failed me and my family. I have racist and classist inequalities that block me because of the color of my skin. I have an economic system that constantly has its foot on my neck. What does Romans 3 or this entire message have to say about the injustices that I deal with?”

Those are valid questions that draw us back to the real world. But the reason we gather here on Sundays is to learn to be Jesus’ disciples in the real world. So how did Jesus approach the injustices inflicted on him in the real world?

First, we see that Jesus forgives. Romans 3 tells us that he didn’t track down everyone who had sinned against him demanding full payment. In his forbearance, he left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He chose to forgive rather than punish. In the last moments of his life, he literally prayed for the forgiveness of the soldiers who were torturing and killing him.

The first step toward true justice for us is to surrender the woundedness, anger, unforgiveness, and hatred in our own hearts. Justice will never be enough as long as that toxic cloud of unforgiveness is choking your soul.

I don’t know what was done to you, but human beings can do horrific things to one another, and sometimes this world can be brutally unfair. But Jesus’ life shows us that even those experiences can be enfolded into the kingdom of God. What happened to you in the past doesn’t have to define and rule your future, but it begins by forgiving. As 1 Peter 2:21-23 says:

“To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’ When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.”

Second, Jesus doesn’t distance. He didn’t stay distant. We were the ones who transgressed against him, yet he made the move toward us. He didn’t wash his hands of us or condemn us; he came closer in proximity rather than pushing us away.

That does not mean you need to buddy up with everyone who has done you wrong. In many cases, the wise thing to do is to keep someone from perpetuating repeated harm or abuse. But it does mean we don’t dehumanize or demonize other people. We can push to see them as human beings—flawed and broken, just as we are. We can refuse to let pain drive our hearts away from their humanity, opening the door for God’s kingdom to transform our relationship with them.

In 2006, in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, Charles Roberts entered a one-room Amish schoolhouse, took ten young schoolgirls hostage, and killed five before taking his own life. The world watched in horror, while the Amish families opened the door for the kingdom of God to break in. On the day of the shooting, an Amish grandfather urged relatives, “We must not think evil of this man.” Hours after the attack, members of the Amish community visited Roberts’ widow and parents, hugging his father to comfort him. At the funeral, 30 Amish community members shielded the grieving family from news cameras, and they later directed a portion of global charitable funds to Roberts’ widow and three children.

At their core, their responses flowed out of their understanding of the heart of God. God didn’t deal with injustice by cutting us out of his life; in Jesus, he drew near, put his arms around us, and loved us where we were—and he invites his followers to do the same.

Lastly, Jesus prioritizes restoration. He prefers repentance to retribution. In John 8, when Jesus defends a woman caught in adultery, he doesn’t avoid the truth of her wrongdoing, but by advocating for her, he opens the door for restoration. Her repentance didn’t fix everything she wrecked, but the rule of God emerged in her heart, and the dikaiosyne of God broke into our world.

Justice exercised in love doesn’t offer simplistic formulas. You will have to act and exercise wisdom. Dikaiosyne doesn’t mean you can’t seek legal justice or an end to oppressive systems. But Jesus calls you to examine your heart, look to him, and consider the action you might need to take rather than just reacting to the wrong. It requires moving closer in proximity, understanding, seeking repentance over retribution, and prioritizing restoration whenever possible. It doesn’t always work as hoped, but this is how we follow Jesus to bring true justice to our world, life by life.

Today, I don’t want to just pray in your place. This topic hits so core to who we are that I want to create space for you to pray.

Next week, we’re starting a brand-new series called The Kingdom. In a season when politics are ready to divide us and headlines are overwhelming, we’re going back to Jesus’ central message about the kingdom of God. But stepping into the Kingdom begins with us reckoning with it in our own hearts.

Our prayer team is going to be upfront. If you need help, have deep hurts, or want an encounter with God, don’t just rush off. Take this space to pray and encounter Him.