How to be Just

I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. (John 5:30)

This word just is one of those terms that can have a rather nebulous meaning and is sometimes too much affected by our distorted views of religion. We often use it to mean that someone is fair, equitable, even-handed and that is actually the original definition for the term. But when it is used in conjunction with a 'justice' system it is usually contaminated with perverted desires for vengeance and demands for 'justice' to include a heavy-handed punishment of those we believe to be more evil than us.

In this verse Jesus is stating unequivocally that His kind of judgment is always fair and right. But He does not use force to impose His arbitrary determinations. We must remember that Jesus Himself is the designer of all intelligence to start with and knows what it is that will satisfy our deepest longings for justice and fairness. God not only designed justice and implanted the desire for justice into every intelligent being in the universe but He also abides by His own principles, for the principles and laws that He has laid out are simply expressions of the reality of who He is, a description of His character.

Another verse keeps coming to my attention as I read this.

He did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:26 NIV)

What was the 'it' that was done to demonstrate His justice so as to be just?

It was sending Jesus to this earth to live as a human being reflecting the perfect love of the Father. And in doing that, in bringing this example of perfection into close proximity to the awfulness of evil, God exposed the terrible nature of sin by allowing it to have all of its malignity, hatred and violence concentrated on His Son in order that all might see the real truth about God's justice by contrast. Remember, Jesus was crucified as the culmination the determinations of at least two different systems of earthly justice, one of which originated with the system that God had set up.

The more I look at these two verses the more it appears to me that they could nearly be considered twins. As I have come to see the death of Jesus very differently than the typical approach, it becomes much easier to pick up clues in all of these verses emphasizing that Jesus came to reveal the heart of the Father and His righteousness, not to run interference for sinners so as to protect them from an angry God waiting to inflict horrible punishments on all who step out of line.

But what I am also starting to see more clearly is the core of the gospel in these two verses as well. Jesus demonstrated in His own life how we are to align ourselves with His arrangement of the salvation that God has put into place to salvage all who are willing to cooperate with His plan and to restore us to intimate fellowship with Him. Jesus lived a life of total faith in His Father and of complete submission to His will. This is exactly what we are invited to do to be restored into His image.

Jesus never tapped into any advantages He had over other human beings but actually had to resist all those advantages as being His greatest source of temptations. Being perfect in character from the very beginning, right from conception, Jesus was constantly tempted to do what felt natural to Him and to depend on His own natural tendencies to be righteous without total dependence on an outside source of strength or wisdom. Likewise with us, a strong person is far more tempted to trust in their own strength than a person who clearly understands their weaknesses and inability to perform. Thus, Jesus had far more potent temptations because His natural tendencies and abilities and innate perfection was actually a constant source of liability for Him.

I spent many years of my life believing that I was supposed to develop a 'perfect' life (that meant never doing or even thinking anything that was 'wrong') and that to do so I was supposed to get as much 'help' from God as possible to pull off that achievement. I, like some others around me, tended to fill my prayers with 'help' requests hoping that somehow if I begged enough and pleaded long enough that somehow God would change my desires and remove my sinful tendencies and stop me from compulsively sinning. I now see that this belief system is humanism at its best and is usually the foundation for pretty much every religion in the world today. There are many variations of this theme, but the bottom line is that humans are expected to somehow align themselves sufficiently with the principles of 'right' that God will deem them acceptable and they can earn an entrance into Paradise.

In this confused scenario, grace is the power that we are expected to get from God to assist us in living a perfect life. I spent many years of my life pleading and negotiating and living in fear of God while trying very, very hard to eliminate every little sin I could find in my life. I worked incessantly to live as close as I could to all the rules and guidelines and laws that were placed around me. But in all of these intense religious activities I never found that deep peace, that rest, that joy that I now realize is so necessary and is at the very center of God's desire for all of His children. As hard as I tried I could never feel like I had finally been able to copy the life of Jesus who was supposed to be my perfect example of obedience.

Now I realize that the example of Jesus was not so much a perfect demonstration of what love really looks like in the outward treatment of others; the real example that I need to pay attention to is what is referenced in these twin verses. That is faith. But faith is not something I have to work up, an intense belief that God is going to do something for me devoid of all doubt. I lived the greater part of my life trying to work up faith by attempting to exclude any doubts from my imagination just as I was also trying to achieve righteousness by eliminating sin instead of spending my effort engaging in activities designed to know the heart of the Father. I actually had little desire to know the Father because I was too afraid of Him to even want to know Him very well.

Caught in this counterfeit system of thinking, I was trying to bring myself to a level of artificial righteousness that was invented by religion instead of coming to know in my heart the righteousness of God. Along that line, I pretty much had little clue as to what the word righteousness even meant. I assumed that it meant the achievement of the final elimination of all sin from my life, meaning that I no longer hurt anyone or disobeyed any rules and would finally be able to copy the life of Jesus completely externally. But the harder I tried to do all of that, even with intense, repeated pleadings with God to give me more help and power, the more frustrated I became and the stronger temptations seemed to grow. I found myself becoming more and more vulnerable to lust, to fear, to all sorts of things that began to dominate my life instead of achieving a life of victory. I began to realize that there was something fundamentally wrong with my whole idea of how to do religion altogether.

Then I began to learn that faith is not something I have to work up, an forced trust purified of all doubts that I finally would be able to escape or suppress. Righteousness and faith are not the absence of sin and doubt as I had assumed all of my life. Faith is something that will occur spontaneously as I come to discover at the heart level the incredible beauty and attractiveness of God's character as displayed in the life and teachings of Jesus. I do not have to work up faith, for that kind of faith is a counterfeit of the real thing. I have to direct my focus on coming to know the real truth about God, especially the Father; and the natural result of coming to know someone who is worthy of trust is that I will spontaneously begin to trust them.

Then I discovered that as I begin to trust the One who is totally trustworthy, my focus on His amazing perfection and attractions have the effect of reproducing themselves in my own life. As I let go of my resistance to His work and the promptings of His Spirit in my heart, my life becomes more and more a reflection of the life of Jesus and I can actually begin to experience feelings of joy, of real peace, of hope and of genuine love. This is God's kind of religion, a spirituality based in the heart primarily and involving my spirit synchronizing with His Spirit.

This is the kind of life that Jesus lived while He was here on this earth as my perfect example. He did not come to show me how to buck up and live right and show me how a perfect human is supposed to act so I could see what was expected of me. He came to demonstrate how I may live in an attitude of total dependence on a power and a Person outside of my own power and desires just as He lived in continuous trust and communication with His Father. The real issue centers in a relationship and the righteousness produced is always a byproduct of that relationship, not the other way around as I had always been taught.

This brings the circle back around to closure. Being just and being righteous are the same thing. When Jesus said that His judgment was just, He was saying that everything He perceived in others and His evaluations of them were completely fair and correct because of His total dependence and intimate relationship on His Father as an outside, objective Source of revelation in His life.

This demonstration of faith in His Father, of total deference to God and a complete surrender of His own will and desires is the example that is referred to in this verse from Romans as faith in Jesus. Jesus showed what faith looks like in this verse from John and Paul speaks of the same thing in our relationship with Jesus. As I learn what this means and how to live in constant submission to the perfect Source of all wisdom and love, I too will find myself justified and made righteous and will live out that righteousness more and more completely. My life will be filled with real fairness and equity and I will be justified.

But this condition of being just is not something I have to work hard to achieve but is a condition that can only come about as I focus all of my attention and affections on the only Source of justice. And as I learn to refrain from trying to justify myself, I will leave place for God to be my justifier which is far more effective than all of my attempts at self-justification.

Jesus stated unequivocally here that the reason His judgments and perceptions were just and fair was because He did not seek His own will but always deferred to the will of His Father, the one He totally relied on to justify Him. Likewise, Paul stated that as we come to appreciate that real truth about God in the demonstration through His Son of His perfect love and goodness as seen in the treatment of Jesus at Calvary, our lives can become similar demonstrations of righteousness. Just as Jesus trusted His Father totally to justify Him while refraining from trying to justify Himself, so too we can be justified as we follow His example by complete deference to God who is waiting to justify all who will believe in His fairness and righteousness.

I cannot force myself to trust in God or believe in His righteousness. I can only come to such a belief by exposing myself more closely to His heart and experiencing His righteous treatment of me and learning of Him from His Word and responding to the presence of His Spirit. I have to choose to spend time with Him on a regular basis as Jesus spent time with His Father each day. I must make choices that will deepen my relationship with Him and let Him love me and transform me. As I do these things and come to know His justice and be drawn into His beauty and perfection, I will naturally reflect His character. Then the righteousness seen in my life will simply be a reflection of the righteousness that originates in His life. Then I will be fair and just in all of my dealings with others no matter how unfair or unjust others may deal with me.

Jesus shows me that if I will seek His will instead of my will that my judgment will be just, just like He was just because He always sought His Father's will instead of His will. True justice and fairness comes when those who are given the role of judging or making determinations about others seek the will of the Father and get His perspective on every situation and person instead of depending on their own limited and biased perspective. True justice demands objectivity and that means deferring our will and judgment to the only One who knows how to judge righteously.