This year Americans demanded justice. Movements were founded calling for every type of justice imaginable. Social justice, economic justice, legal justice, etc. Hardly a headline could be seen this year that didn’t make a demand for some sort of qualified concept of justice. Justice, Justice, Justice. We demand justice.
The concept of justice is simple. People receive that which they deserve based upon their conduct. We want no legal, economic, or social barriers that restrict people from being able to receive the fruit of their works and deeds. For example, if I engage in an employment contract with my employer and provide the labor I have agreed to give, justice demands that they compensate me for my labor in accordance with the wages agreed upon in our contact. My faithful conduct is rewarded, and justice is maintained.
However, there is a flip side to the concept of justice. Retributive justice means that unrighteous conduct is punished. For example, if I am speeding and putting other motorists at risk by my driving habits, it is righteous for a police officer to pull me over. Justice is served.
However, I think most of us have experienced that moment when sitting in our car by the side of the road, we hope and pray that justice will not be served. We hope that instead of getting a ticket and a hefty fine we will get off with a warning.
Justice is a great thing when one is righteous and just. The blessings of living rightly under the law are marvelous. Yet justice is not so great when one is unrighteous and unjust before the law. In that case the curse of the law is a terrible and frightening thing.
The apostle Paul describes this paradox well in his epistle to the Romans. In it, he says: “For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law; for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified.”
Our immediate reaction is to attempt to justify ourselves as righteous under the Law. We attempt to highlight our good points, while masking our sins. Yet, just like the faithful police officer with the mirrored shades isn’t buying our excuses for why we were pulled over, Paul isn’t having it either. He makes plain to us that under the scorching mirror of the law, we too are sinful and deserve God’s righteous retributive justice.
“Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.”
Busted.
Could it be that despite our loud cries for justice, we have a much deeper need for something else? What we really seek is mercy, or put another way, we seek grace.
Grace is a loaded word, so allow me to define it. Grace is the unearned and unmerited favor and blessing of God. Grace is the bestowal of mercy on the undeserving. It is the declaration that we are set aside as holy by the Father, where we have not proven ourselves as holy by our conduct.
Instead of marching for justice, perhaps it is grace that we should be seeking.
In Advent, we are reminded that we don’t have to seek after grace. In Advent we are reminded that Grace came to seek us out. We are reminded that Grace came to us in the person of Jesus Christ.
The apostle John drives this point home so elegantly in the prologue of his gospel.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
“The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth…For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”
John tells us that the pre-incarnate Christ, who has always existed, and was always with the Father, was also the means by which all things were created. It was through the living Word of Christ, through God’s grace, that the universe, the stars, the moon, the sun, and the planets were spoken into existence. It was through the living Word of Christ, through God’s grace that all the animals of the field, the birds of the air, and the fishes in the sea were given life. It was through the living breath of Christ that man was fashioned out of clay and breath was breathed into his nostrils to give him life.
It was the living Word of Christ by which God declared the man and woman he had created as “good” and made in His image. It was the communion with Christ that nourished them in the garden of Eden, and gave them purpose to exercise dominion over the earth.
And then, it seems that darkness entered into the creation. Adam and Eve rebelled against God breaking communion with Him, and soiling all of creation with the stain of sin.
God had implicitly written the requirements of his just law on all men’s hearts, and explicitly revealed his law for how we should live and order our lives through Moses. However, sin would seemingly continue to shroud man in the darkness resulting from sin and the just curse of the law due to us for our unrighteousness.
Yet, the darkness could not overcome the source of the light.
For according to John, the true light, which gives light to everyone was coming into the world. The living Word who by speech created the light, the universe, and all that is in it, was coming into His own creation.
The living Word who created all things would be conceived by the Holy Spirit through the virgin Mary, and he would take on the very flesh that he had come to redeem. This living Word, the Son of God, would be born as a helpless infant, and would grow to manhood. He would be made like His brothers in every respect.
He came to His own creation not to bring the justice that the Law demands, and we deserve, but that He might restore us to the grace that we had with Him at the founding of the world.
Jesus Christ would go on to take our place at the cross on Calvary. He would undergo the righteous justice that we deserve, that those who believe in Him might receive the unearned and unmerited forgiveness of sins and be restored to a position of grace and favor before the Father. The victory over the power of sin and death would be declared to us through the Resurrection. Through the resurrection we would have the certain assurance that the darkness has not overcome.
And now, the Church, the body of Christ would spread the light of the gospel to all nations, that they might receive the grace given to them through when the Living Word came to us in the flesh. This Living Word still comes to us in the flesh every time we partake of his flesh and blood in the Lord’s Supper. Through his Church Christ continues to come to us in the flesh always.
This Advent, may you take joy, comfort, and hope in knowing that Grace came to us in the man Jesus Christ. Let us not clamor for justice, let us instead live in the grace given to us through communion with Christ.
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