God's justice through His peace

This post is the second in a series of three blog posts focusing on Isaiah, Chapter 9. The three are, in order: God’s grace through His peace, God’s justice through His peace, and God’s completion of His ultimate peace.

Today we examine God justice through His peace. 

“Redemptive theology teaches that mercy does not become effective toward a man until justice has done its work. The just penalty for sin was exacted when Christ our Substitute died for us on the cross.” - A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

God is justice personified

God’s grace through His peace was extended to us through the Prince of Peace, Jesus. But such grace is meaningless without God’s justice. God is justice; He is complete within Himself. If He acted from justice, that would mean, according to Tozer, He would cease to be God because justice would be above Him. God acts justly because He is justice itself. It is an inseparable part of His nature, fully, wholly, perfectly. 

When talking about the Prince of Peace, Isaiah writes in verse 7: 

Of the increase of his government and of peace

there will be no end.

On the throne of David and over his kingdom

to establish it and to uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

from this time forth and forevermore.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

The characteristics of God’s government—Christ’s reign-are peace, justice, and righteousness. Christ's reign in our hearts--who we are in Christ--includes inner peace.   

There can be no peace without justice

In the human realm (the micro level), when one has caused hurt to another--whether that be between two people, among neighbors on a block, among city dwellers or among members of a society at large-there can be no peace with justice. Our inner sense of right and wrong—which is actually God’s law written upon our hearts, whether we acknowledge the Creator or not—will not stand for it. It seems (and is) unfair; it is unjust. So these wrongs must be righted to restore order. 

Justice demands wrongs be righted

Now looking toward the divine realm (the macro level), not just hurt in a relationship but utter destruction of a relationship was caused when the temporal and the corporal (humankind) acted to usurp the Eternal and the Spirit (God), becoming a god unto itself. An act of utter hubris, this ultimate wrong (original sin) was committed against God and its effects reverberated through time and space, corrupting not just man’s relationship to God—as that would be bad enough—but also the entire creation of God, as St. Paul writes. 

In verses 8-10, Isaiah says:

The Lord sends a [a]message against Jacob,

And it falls on Israel.

And all the people know it,

That is, Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria,

Asserting in pride and in arrogance of heart:

“The bricks have fallen down,

But we will rebuild with smooth stones;

The sycamores have been cut down,

But we will replace them with cedars.”

 

Here we see that utter hubris playing out again. By toppling the bricks and cutting down the sycamores, God is warning Ephraim and Samaria to repent. But they do not. Instead, they believe they can rebuild, and rebuild even better. They believe they can defy God. 

The ultimate injustice made right

This usurpation of God’s sovereignty and its consequential destruction between and among men is the ultimate injustice, as its consequences are eternal and its effects ubiquitous. 

With the consequences so grave and its effects so vast, this ultimate injustice—sin—could not be made right by mere humans, as we are powerless. The ultimate injustice could only be ultimately righted by God Himself. So He sent the Prince of Peace, Jesus, who was both fully God and fully man, to die on the cross in our place. We are now always and forever made right and justice has been served. By Jesus, the Prince of Peace, through God’s costly grace.

“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. . . . Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Finding inner peace can only come to those who are in Christ, as the peace of Christ is made possible through justice served and costly grace.   

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Copyright 2021. Sandra A. Eggers. Sharing is encouraged; however, please give credit where credit is due. Thank you.