A Biblical View of Law and Justice (Christian Perspectives) [Paperback]

Chapter Two: Law, Creation & the Fall: God's actions in creation saw him endow human beings with his good gifts: of life, dignity, liberty and the ability to engage in meaningful work and to enjoy meaningful relationships. The perfect world which he had created, in which human beings were to enjoy perfect communion with God and with one another was, however, marred and defaced by the human choice to reject God's authority. This original sin has entailed the Fall of all of creation and has led to the distortion both of the reflection of God presented by creation and the disruption of the ability of human beings to perceive that reflection. From the moment of the Fall, the penalty of death has been pronounced by God against sin.

However, God did not abandon his world to the ravages of sin. On the contrary, he has ordained human government as an instrument of his grace to restrain it, and he is personally active within it curbing the effects of sin until the time of judgement.

Chapter Three: The Mosaic Law: Through the Torah, God gave to his holy people a 'law' which would help them to reflect his character. This law placed a strong emphasis on social justice, on ensuring that no-one was excluded from the community. It also placed a strong emphasis on holiness. Within Israel, justice/ righteousness was conceived of as a matter of public importance as well as personal morality. It was understood as a lifestyle to be internalised, rather than a mere framework of rules imposed from the outside. Through the practice of righteousness (tsedeqah) by the people and the administration of justice (mishpat) by the judges, a state of shalom could be preserved.

Chapter Four: Kingship: God's people failed, however, to live up to these ideals. A lack of both effective authority and communal standards of morality led to the chaos, anarchy and bloodshed of the time of the judges. The people's response was to demand a king. This amounted again to a rejection of God's kingship. However, God graciously wove the human institution of kingship into his covenant purposes. Israelite kingship was characterised by its separation from the priesthood, by its circumscribed nature, and by the king's obligation to do justice on behalf of his people. This was not merely a passive preservation of the status quo ante, but an active obligation to deliver from oppression.

Chapter Five: The Prophetic Call to Justice: Israelite kingship failed too to live up to the standards of justice God had revealed. The prophets called the kings back, again and again, to do justice. The prophets also revealed that God's purposes for justice were not limited to his people but extended to the whole world. Despite the warnings of the prophets, the kings, the leaders and the people failed to do justice and to live righteously, and for these sins they were taken into exile.

Chapter Six: Christ and Caesar: In the time of exile, Daniel had a vision of the true nature of power. He saw human empires as bestial in nature and looked forward to the day when a truly humane king, a Son of Man, would arise and take the throne. Jesus came to earth as the Christ – the King.

Jesus' kingship is paradoxical in nature: he embodied and demonstrated God's saving justice, he displayed servant leadership and executed deliverance, but he eschewed political power. The kingship of Jesus means the dethroning of all human pretensions to absolute power or absolute authority.

Chapter Seven: Law and the Spirits: The Holy Spirit is the fulfilment of the promises of a new covenant. The Holy Spirit's power is necessary for the fulfilment of God's law. Paul concluded that law alone, even God-given law, is insufficient to make human beings moral. There are also spiritual realities behind the power structures in our fallen world which can be forces for evil.

Chapter Eight: Submission to the Authorities: Human structures of government have a distinct but limited role to play in God's purposes in our world. This recognition avoids the errors at either end of the spectrum, from the view which treats the State as irredeemably pagan, and therefore outside the perfection of Christ; to the view which treats the State as God's regent.

Human law has a proper, but limited, role in God's purposes for humanity. It is not to seek to create heaven on earth, however, but rather to promote those Christian values, derived from God's revelation of himself, which can be demonstrated to have social utility. Key among those values are the protection of human life, the respect of human dignity and human liberty, and the creation of space in which people are free to labour and love in meaningful ways.

Chapter Nine: The Last Judgement: Ultimately, the Bible's answer to the injustice of human laws and legal systems to be found at the cross. At the cross, the one who should have been acknowledged as the Ruler of the world and its just judge was executed. God himself knows all about the depths of human injustice: he has experienced the worst of it for himself.

The Second Coming is the affirmation that life is not fundamentally unjust, that it does have meaning and that there will be a day of reckoning. On the Day of Judgement, perfect justice will be administered on the basis not just of what we have done, but on the basis of who we are. In the meantime, human justice is, and can only ever be expected to be, provisional.

The pursuit of God's justice in human life is an important and arguably in biblical terms one of the most important expressions of a life lived in accordance with God's justice. There is therefore a clear mandate for Christian involvement in human legal and administrative institutions seeking to influence them towards a greater demonstration of the gracious servant-rule of the Son of Man.