Justice is a word we hear almost constantly, whether we are reading the news, watching a movie, listening to a podcast or even a sermon, or chatting with our friends. Some Christians are so afraid of being labeled racist that they have sought to align themselves with the “woke” Christians. Others are so afraid of being labeled “woke” that they have vehemently denounced “social justice.” As Christians, the question is not whether we are “for or against justice.” Rather, the question should be what do we mean when we say justice? Are we obsessed with justice or just an idea of justice?
A Bible verse that is commonly invoked in this conversation on justice is Micah 6:8.
Some Christians clutch the phrase “do justly” and proceed to use it as the proof text for their idea of justice. However, God’s Word is not a book of quotable sayings or witty proverbs. The Bible is one coherent, grand, sweeping narrative—God’s narrative. That is why taking one verse, without considering the context or delving into a word study, is theologically and logically unsound. The Bible tells us how we are to treat the Bible in 2 Timothy 2:15, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” Did you notice the words “study” and “workman”? This implies that much more is required of us than taking one phrase from one verse in order to justify an idea that we feel must be right. We need to know what the Bible says and what it means by what it says (“rightly dividing the word of truth”). That confidence will only come through hard work—through studying the context and meaning of the words.
So, what is the context of Micah 6:8? The context is a nation decaying from the sin of idolatry. Before God asks the question, “What doth the LORD require of thee?” (Micah 6:8), He asks, “What is the transgression of Jacob?” (Micah 1:5) God begins by condemning Israel for their “high places” and “graven images.” (vv. 5-7) Because they had failed to give Jehovah His rightful place as God in their lives, they had also failed to treat each other righteously. In chapter 2, God condemns them because “they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.” (Micah 2:2) Idolatry, which is displacing God as Authority in our lives, leads to violence, oppression, and evil. In Micah 5:12-15, God warns, “And I will cut off witchcrafts out of thine hand; and thou shalt have no more soothsayers: Thy graven images also will I cut off, and thy standing images out of the midst of thee; and thou shalt no more worship the work of thine hands. And I will pluck up thy groves out of the midst of thee: so will I destroy thy cities. And I will execute vengeance in anger and fury upon the heathen, such as they have not heard.” Failing to glorify God as God is the epitome of injustice. This is what leads the Lord to say by the prophet in Micah 6:8, “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of thee.”
Now that we know the context, what do the words actually mean? God answers His own rhetorical question, “and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” The word “do” is translated from the Hebrew word asah which means to “do, fashion, accomplish, make, work, or produce.” How are we to work, accomplish, make, or produce? We are to do so “justly.” This adverb comes from the Hebrew word mishpat which can be translated “judgement, justice, ordinance, decision, right,” and other times can be translated “proper, fitting, measure.” In other words, we are called to work in a way that produces righteousness and to do things in a way that is right, proper, and fitting.
With this understanding of the context combined with the meaning of the words “do justly,” we can know, not just feel, the absolute definition of justice. There is a difference between being obsessed with “justice,” or rather our idea of justice, and actually “doing justly,” as Micah 6:8 admonishes. As Christians, we should all be able to agree that justice is not just an idea; it’s not defined by a culture or a movement; justice has an absolute definition. That absolute definition has already been decided by the Righteous Judge of the Universe. Justice is the opposite of idolatry; it is glorifying God as Authority and living in a way that is right, proper, and fitting for a child of God. So, what does that look like practically? Well, we see three practical pillars of justice throughout Scripture.
The first practical pillar of “doing justly” is showing impartiality. The words that are translated “do justly” in Micah 6:8 are also found in Leviticus 19:15, “Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.” The same word shows up within the same context of a legal court in Deuteronomy 1:17, “Ye shall not respect persons in judgement; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man; for the judgment is God’s.” We see this again in Deuteronomy 16:19, “Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous.” While our current culture is obsessed with an idea of justice that includes equity—tipping the scales in favor of one group and against another in order to achieve a particular outcome—this is not how God defines justice. In Malachi 2, God was exasperated with His people because they had been treating each other with partiality. Through the prophet, God says of their so-called leaders, “But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the LORD of hosts. Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law.” (Malachi 2:8-9) The reason that God took issue with them was that they were being partial in their application of the law. In retort, the prophet says, “Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?” It doesn’t matter which way we want to tip the scales—partiality is a wrested, perverted (Deuteronomy 32), corrupt and treacherous (Malachi 2:8-10) idea of justice; but partiality is never justice. Conversely, impartiality, treating everyone equally no matter their history, gender, skin color, or experience, is a pillar of “doing justly.”
A second practical pillar of “doing justly” is respecting the truth. The words justice and truth are found together in Deuteronomy 32:4, “He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgement [justice]: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.” We find the word mishpat coupled with truth again in Isaiah 59:14-15, “And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey: and the LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment.” The word translated justice in this verse is closely related to mishpat because it means “righteousness in government.” In this context, equity means something very different from our current culture’s meaning; it means “straight in front” and is also translated “uprightness,” “right things,” and “right.” In other words, the words judgement, justice, and equity in this passage mean essentially the same thing—doing things the right way, “doing justly.” So, why was the prophet lamenting that there was no equity or justice? Justice was illusive because truth had fallen. At this point in their history, the children of Israel had chosen to disregard and disrespect the truth in favor of their own ideas, experiences, and sins. The chapter begins, “None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.” (Isaiah 59:4) The prophet identifies their disrespect for truth as the reason for no justice in verses 9-10, “Therefore is judgement far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes.” The reason they were groping in darkness rather than walking in light, the reason they were drowning in anguish rather than living with answers was that they had chosen their own truth rather than respecting God’s truth. They had told themselves the same stories, the same lies over and over again until they had believed them.
The same is true in our culture today. The reason that we are groping in darkness and drowning in anguish—the reason justice seems so illusive—is that we have disrespected absolute truth for so long and we don’t know what it is. We have relied on relative “truth”—what is true to you—for so long that facts no longer matter to us. We can’t find the answers because we won’t accept the facts—we aren’t interested in the facts. Yet if we truly had compassion, if we truly wanted answers and solutions, wouldn’t we want to know the facts that strike at the root of society’s problems? Wouldn’t we want to treat the sickness of sin rather than frantically pointing at the symptoms of disfunction, disparities, and despair? Telling ourselves stories, swallowing lies, and wallowing in counter-narratives will help no one because that is not justice. There are honestly too many passages to mention here that include the words justice and truth together. One simply cannot exist without the other. If we are going to “do justly,” we must respect truth.
Yet a third pillar of “doing justly” is individual accountability. We must hold others accountable, as individuals, and we must hold ourselves accountable, as individuals. The word mishpat appears in Zechariah 7:9-10 which says, “Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, Execute true judgement, and shew mercy and compassions every man to his brother: And oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart.” In this passage, true justice, or “doing justly” looks like showing mercy and compassion to others. Notice that God is not just speaking to the nation in this verse, he is speaking to “every man”—individuals. Doing justly looks like keeping short accounts with our brothers and sisters in the human race. This idea of individual accountability is also seen in Ezekiel 18. This passage unfolds the scenario of three generations, each of whom made different choices and reaped the consequences of those choices. Of the man who “hath executed true judgment between man and man, Hath walked in my statutes, and hath kept my judgments, to deal truly;” God says, “he is just, he shall surely live.” (v. 8-9) However, the Lord continues, “If he beget a son that is a robber, a shedder of blood, and that doeth the like to any of these things . . . Hath oppressed the poor and needy . . . he shall not live.” (vv. 10, 12, 13) Then the Lord takes the scenario a step further, saying, “Now, lo, if he beget a son, that seeth all his father’s sins which he hath done, and considereth, and doeth not such like . . . Neither hath oppressed any . . . hath taken off his hand from the poor, that hath not received usury nor increase, hath executed my judgments, hath walked in my statutes; he shall not die for the iniquity of the father, he shall surely live . . . Yet say ye, Why? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.” (vv. 14, 16, 17, 19, 20) The people that God was addressing here did not find God’s definition of justice to match their idea of justice. They wanted to hold people accountable for the sins of others; they considered their neighbors to be guilty by association. To this God responds, “Yet saith the house of Israel, The way of the Lord is not equal. O house of Israel, are not my ways equal? are not your ways unequal? Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord GOD. Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be you ruin.” (Ezekiel 18:29-30) When God and I disagree on the practical application of “doing justly,” God is not the One who is wrong! From this passage, we see that while God will punish wickedness, He is also a God of forgiveness and grace for those who take note of the wickedness of their ancestors and avoid it. As Christians, we are called to be like our Heavenly Father in the way we view and treat others. We should be careful not to hold others accountable for the sins of their fathers and judge their motives or moral capacity based solely on the group to which they belong. We are to treat others and judge others as God does—as individuals.
All three of these pillars of “doing justly” are seen clearly when God commands His people to glorify Him in Exodus 23. He tells them to seek truth over false narratives in verses 1 and 7: “Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. . . Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked.” He commands them to treat all people with impartiality in verses 3, 6, and 8: “Neither shalt thou countenance a poor man in his cause. . . Thou shalt not wrest the judgement of thy poor in his cause. . . And thou shalt take no gift: for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous.” In verse 9, God commands them to treat everyone as an individual equally worthy of love and respect: “Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” As is the case in Micah, the key to experiencing justice in the context of Exodus 23 is glorifying Jehovah as God. In verses 24-25, God admonishes them, “Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them . . . And ye shall serve the LORD your God.” Glorifying God as the Authority in our lives is always the precursor to knowing and experiencing justice in our lives.
When we dig into the context, connotation, and depth of meaning represented by the words we read in Micha 6:8, we learn so much more about justice than what we learn from the culture. Our culture may hand us talking points, hashtags, and grievances, but the Bible gives us so much more than that. The Bible calls us to not just obsess over an idea of justice but to truly do justice. We can know what is justice and what is not when we compare everything we hear, see, think, and feel to the words of God, the Righteous Judge of the Universe.