Justice

Sermon Transcript

I enjoy talking with people who are not believers in Jesus about what they believe. I’ve done that a lot in my life, but a few of the conversations have stuck with me. One such conversation was with a man who said he thought that if everyone lived according to the ten commandments, the world would probably be a better place. When it comes to the latter commandments especially, most would agree: Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness against your neighbor, do not covet. God doesn’t want us to do these things, and many of you probably already realize that. But today we’re continuing our series through the book of Proverbs, which adds a perspective to this question of, “What does God want us to do?” It certainly is about that question, but the perspective it adds is, “What will end well for us, and what will end poorly, if we do it?” That’s a bit of what this unbeliever was getting at: He wasn’t saying the ten commandments were right, but he was recognizing that they kind of work. Many today would say something similar about justice. Who wouldn’t agree that the world would be a better place if it was a more just place? And yet, what is justice? And if it’s so obvious, why can’t we seem to agree on it or attain it? And if we’re honest, why do we often find in our hearts desires for things like theft and dishonesty that we kinda know won’t make the world a better place? These are the kinds of questions we want to consider today as we look at what the proverbs say about justice. As we do, we’ll see that the wise life is a just life, and to understand that, we’ll look at six aspects of justice in proverbs: Spirituality, honesty, property, impartiality, attentiveness, and faith.

 

Spirituality

 

Proverbs 12:5 says, “The thoughts of the righteous are just; the counsels of the wicked are deceitful.” This verse shows us that justice is not merely a matter of external actions; for the righteous, their very thoughts are just. Older theologians talked about the “spirituality of the law”, and what they meant by that was that the law of God makes a claim not only on our actions, but also on the thoughts and desires of our hearts. Here we can see, then, that as the law is spiritual, so justice is spiritual—the truly righteous person will not only do justice; the truly righteous person will think justice and desire justice.

 

Proverbs 21:15 goes further to say that “When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous, but terror to evildoers.” This is one evidence that justice is down in your heart: You don’t resist it or try to find loopholes to escape it; you rejoice in it! Or consider Proverbs 29:27 – “An unjust man is an abomination to the righteous, but one whose way is straight is an abomination to the wicked.” Is an unjust person an abomination to you? God made us not only to do what is good; God made us to love what is good, because God made us to love himself who is good, and who is perfectly just. To say, “Ok fine I’ll do what God says I have to do” while inwardly you’re thinking about how you wish you could do otherwise, you’re lamenting the victory of justice in the world, and you’re envying the unjust man rather than seeing him as abomination, you’re demonstrating that you still don’t love God as you ought to.

 

It’s important to realize, though, that many today, when they talk about justice, are not talking about a feature of human hearts. They’re talking about a feature of a system that produces injustice, even if no one in the system has an unjust heart. And that’s not entirely illegitimate; we can easily imagine systems most would consider unjust: Imagine a society that gave you a tax credit for every dollar you stole from someone else, but taxed you extra on every dollar you donated to a charitable cause. That’s an unjust system; it rewards what is evil and punishes what is good. The Bible would clearly condemn that as an unjust system, but the difference between a biblical concept of justice that roots it in the hearts of humans and the modern concept that leaves it in the system is the Bible won’t let you stop there. The Bible forces you to ask, “How’d that law get passed?” and “Who is still wanting to keep it in force?” and will trace that systemic injustice back to its root in the unjust hearts of unjust people.

 

You see, the allure of putting the injustice entirely on the system is that then we can fix and fight the injustice out there without ever having to confront and repent of the injustice in here. We confess the sins of our society or of some other people group, but never our own individual sins. One key feature of justice in the Proverbs is its spirituality: It’s a matter of the heart before it’s a matter of action or systems, and that means we are all susceptible to it, whatever our place in society. Let’s begin filling in that concept of justice then by looking at some of its other features, starting with honesty.

 

Honesty

 

I already alluded to Proverbs 12:17 – “Whoever speaks the truth gives honest evidence, but a false witness utters deceit.” Many of the proverbs about justice are simply about speaking the truth, especially when called to testify in court. In the ancient world without video doorbells and DNA, cases often had to be decided on the evidence of two or three witnesses, and so the veracity of eyewitness testimony was incredibly important to the cause of justice. And still today, though we have more ways of verifying eyewitness testimony, it’s a significant factor in legal decisions. If you are ever called to give legal testimony, justice requires that you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as the oath American courts have traditionally administered rightly requires.

 

And if you have evidence to bring forward that would be relevant to the judgment of the criminally accused, justice requires that you offer it truly. If the accused is not guilty, your testimony could go so far as to save their life: “A faithful witness saves lives” Proverbs 14:25 says. On the other hand, if the accused is guilty, to say nothing is to become complicit in their crime: “The partner of a thief hates his own life; he hears the curse, but discloses nothing” Proverbs 29:24 says.

 

I’m sure that all seems fairly obvious to you, and probably if we took everyone in the room and added up the number of times we’d been compelled to testify in a court case, the number would be pretty low. But remember the spirituality of justice—let’s not neglect the courtroom, but let’s go deeper than it. Consider how you speak about others to others. It’s not inherently wrong to do so; if I find out you told someone else that I like to play tennis, I wouldn’t feel like you’d betrayed my trust. But how easy is it for us to talk about others in ways that damage their reputation? What’s happening there? You are bearing witness, in a sense, and presenting evidence to the person with whom you’re speaking that will then affect that person’s judgment of whoever you are speaking about. You put them on trial in the court of public opinion, and they aren’t even there to speak in their own defense.

 

And often, what you say about them simply isn’t true. It typically has some tangential connection to the truth, but it’s not the whole truth and nothing but the truth; it’s a fact plus your cynical interpretation of the fact, without the additional facts that could actually provide a more charitable interpretation of the person. Maybe the person hurt you and now you’re trying to rally others to your side. Maybe the person accused you of wrong and now you’re trying to feel validated by others. Maybe you’re just jealous of the person, and speaking poorly of them to others helps you feel better about yourself. Whatever the reason, you have committed an injustice against that person by bearing false witness against them in the court of public opinion. Even if what you said were entirely true, it’s only your perspective. Proverbs 18:17 says, “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.”

 

That is crucial to keep in mind if you ever find yourself on the receiving end of a bad report about someone else. An occasional experience of mine as a pastor over the last 9 years has been someone coming to our church from another church and telling me how awful their last church and pastor was. Now I have to admit that I’m a sinner too, so there’s part of me that likes those stories because the people telling them are usually saying, “But we’re so glad to have found this church and you!” and, of course, that makes me feel better than others. So early on I was quick to validate that: “Oh that sounds awful; there are a lot of bad pastors out there,” but over time the Lord showed me through this verse that was a foolish response on my part. I had heard one person state their case, no one else had come and examined them, and by simply believing it and joining in on the condemnation of this former pastor, I’d actually been complicit in committing injustice against him. Now I’m not accusing those people of lying—for all I know, they were telling the truth, but that’s just the point: I don’t know. So while I want to sympathize with the person who is hurting and take what they are saying seriously, it’s unjust of me to jump to a verdict without sufficient evidence. And I get that to the person that can feel unloving: “What are you saying I’m lying?” “No; I’m just saying that you are only one person, and the person you are accusing is also a human being with a right to speak for themselves before I settle on a conclusion about them.” To demand that people not do that is to demand that they reject what God says about justice.

 

Sometimes it may be wise for you to seek counsel about how best to love someone else; we saw a couple weeks ago how necessary wise counsel is for wise decision making. To do that, though, you typically need to talk about the person, and sometimes share things about them that have the potential to make them look bad. How can you do that in a way that is just? Whole articles have been written on that and I’m still learning how best to do it, but to give a few brief guidelines I have learned: First, exercise restraint in how much you reveal—decisions about whether to reveal the person’s identity or what details of the situation to share should be guided by the aim of getting help to love that person, which includes promoting their good name. Second, try to keep clear in your communication the distinction between the facts of the situation (“She texted me these words”) and the interpretations and inferences you’re drawing from those facts (“which made me think ____, but I recognize that’s just my interpretation”), and remain sincerely open to the possibility that your inferences and interpretations are wrong, or at least unwarranted. Third, only talk to people you trust have the wisdom to keep things like Proverbs 18:17 in mind and who will therefore not be likely to draw conclusions about the person simply from what you say about them or spread the report further. Fourth, talk to as few people as possible to get the help you need. Keep the circle small. Fifth, try to remind the people with whom you’re speaking of things like Proverbs 18:17 – “Now bear in mind you’re only hearing my side” and try to give evidences of grace in the other person’s life: “And look, I know this person sincerely loves Christ. They’re in the middle of their sanctification, but so am I, and it is often I that am lagging behind them in that department. In fact, here are some ways I know I’ve sinned in this situation and that I’ve seen Christ in them.”

 

Beyond how you talk about others to others, consider even how you think about others. I’m amazed how easy it is for someone to do something I don’t like and then I start creating this whole narrative about them in my mind—“See I knew they were this or that” or “They always do this or that.” What am I doing when I do that? I’m bearing false witness against them in my mind. My thoughts are unjust. When you find yourself doing that in your mind, seriously ask yourself whether you have sufficient evidence to be drawing these conclusions. Remind yourself that the one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him, and right now you’re the only one stating a case. And try to expand the evidence. Intentionally think about the evidences of God’s grace you’ve seen in that person’s life to help you form a more accurate picture of the person in your mind, and intentionally think about the many ways you fall short of the glory of God to form a more accurate picture of yourself. Justice means honesty in how we speak about others, whether in the courtroom, the court of public opinion, or the courtroom of our minds.

 

And it means honesty in our business dealings. “A false balance is an abomination to the LORD, but a just weight is his delight” (Prov 11:1). In the ancient world in the marketplace one of the ways you could exchange goods and currency is by weighing them. So you’d go to pay a certain amount of some precious metal, and the merchant would put it on a balance and on the other side he’d use one of his weights, the weight of which was already known, to assess it. But, of course, he could also use a weight that was labeled as weighing less than it actually weighed, and so when it outweighed what you paid he’d say, “Hey; you’re not giving me enough” and thus extort more from you. He didn’t say a dishonest word per se, but he used a dishonest weight.

 

That’s not how we do business today, but you can imagine various situations in which you face the temptation to conceal the truth for your financial benefit, sometimes even at the behest of others. I remember the time a brother here made too sharp of a turn and scraped some street sign or bollard with the side of his car. When he took it the shop, the mechanic said, “So it was parked and someone swiped it, right?” What’s he care, after all, if the insurance company pays him or if the brother from our church paid him? And initially, this brother from our church said, “yeah,” but later that day under the Spirit’s conviction called back, told the truth, and called his insurance company to tell the truth. You’re going to sell your house; do you disclose the water damage or just paint over it? You’re hopping on that streaming service using someone else’s account even though the contract clearly states only members of the same household can use it. You know you could claim disability, when in reality you are physically able to work, you know you weren’t actually working but could report those hours, and so on.

 

These may seem small to you, but again: the very thoughts of the righteous are just. Why wouldn’t you want to do justice? And the thing to realize in each of these cases is that you are doing an injustice to someone. That’s a little easier to say when it’s a merchant defrauding an individual buyer in the marketplace, but make no mistake about it: You are defrauding the insurance company, the service provider, the buyer of your home, your employer—in every instance of injustice, someone is defrauded, and more importantly, a false balance is abomination to the LORD. Even though the LORD is neither the buyer or the seller, when God sees one human defraud another, he is so just that he personally hates it. The wise life is a just life, and a just life is marked by honesty. A just life is also marked by a respect for property.

 

Property

 

Proverbs 23:10-11 says, “Do not move an ancient landmark or enter the fields of the fatherless, for their redeemer is strong; he will plead their cause against you.” When God redeemed his people from slavery in Egypt and brought them into the land of Canaan, he gave particular allotments of land to the various tribes, and those allotments of land would then be marked with some landmark. The fatherless, however, would be particularly susceptible to having their landmark questioned or moved since their tribal lineage would be less identifiable, so in this Proverb the Israelites were commanded not to move an ancient landmark or enter the fields of the fatherless.

 

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ inaugurated a new covenant in which there are no longer allotments of land specified by God to certain peoples, but the New Testament clearly preserves the legitimacy of private property in the repeated command not to steal (Eph 4:28). While the earth and everything in it ultimately belongs to the Lord (Psalm 24:1), he has providentially given some things to you and other things to me, including land in the case of those who own land, and part of how I live a just life is by respecting that and not taking without permission that which God has given to you. Unless you’re drawn to communism which I do think is a foolish form of government in part because it abolishes private property, this is probably fairly intuitive to you too.

 

But consider your heart—your thoughts and desires. In this area of Philly at least, it’s easy to walk down a block and see a wide variety of houses. If you’re a renter or you simply own one of the houses that’s on the less valuable end of the spectrum, how’s it affect you to walk past the biggest, nicest house on the block? Can you look at that and say in your heart, “Ok Lord; for today that’s what you’ve ordained to give them, and I have what you’ve ordained to give me today,” or does some part of you resent the simple fact that they have it and you don’t? You see what you’re doing in your heart? You’re removing the ancient landmark. And I get that our hearts can come up with all kinds of ways to justify that, but justice entails a heart-level respect for the property of others, whether their land or their possessions. And justice entails impartiality.

 

Impartiality

 

One way we can see God’s call for impartial justice is in his prohibition of bribes. Proverbs 17:23 says “The wicked accepts a bribe in secret to pervert the ways of justice.” Most people who take bribes don’t advertise it; they take them in secret, and what does that do? It perverts the ways of justice. In the most obvious cases, a judge or a juror secretly takes a bribe, and now what are they doing? They’re no longer weighing the merits of the case and aiming to say what is true about the accused; they’re weighing the money and aiming to say what procures it. And the fact that God condemns that shows us that God really cares that a just verdict be rendered, one that is not partial to the person who can bribe more.

 

Rather, what God wants in cases of judgment is for the righteous to be declared righteous, and for the wicked to be declared wicked. Proverbs 17:15 says, “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD.” Now why would anyone do that? Why would a judge or a jury consider the case of a wicked person and justify them, or consider the case of a righteous person and condemn them? The answer is obviously not justice—the answer is partiality. For some reason, the judge or jury is either partial toward the wicked person, partial against the righteous person, or both.

 

Of course that can happen when conflicts of interest are at play, but Proverbs suggests another less detectable reason to which we already alluded, Proverbs 21:15 – “When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous, but terror to evildoers.” If the judge or juror is an evildoer themselves; if in their heart they actually like what the wicked person has done, what are they going to want to do? Declare them righteous. If a senator or congressperson is wicked, what are they going to want to do? Pass laws that call what is wicked good and what is good wicked. If a citizen is wicked, what will they want to do? Elect those kinds of politicians, and so on. So Proverbs 18:5 simply says, “It is not good to be partial to the wicked or to deprive the righteous of justice.”

 

We might also be partial to the wicked due to unrestrained compassion, and so make excuses for them when the facts of the case before us still point to the guilt of the accused. Compassion is a glorious attribute of God and a duty for each of us toward those who are suffering, but in God to be just and compassionate are not two different things, such that one must be pitted against the other. When it is someone’s office to execute justice, compassion cannot excuse them from that duty. Today God has given that kind of office to governments. Romans 13:4 says the governing authority “is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” Their job is to carry out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer, not to privately decide to spare the wrongdoer out of compassion, and I think we all intuitively sense this necessity. I always remember back to when Ahmaud Arbery was unjustly shot and killed in Georgia and his murderers were convicted and sentenced—nobody said, “Where’s the compassion for these murderers? Maybe they grew up in racist families and didn’t know any better.” Far from that, many rejoiced that justice was finally being carried out, because that’s the government’s job.

 

And it really isn’t any other human’s job. It’s not your job as a private citizen to execute justice on the wrongdoer, though you should give an impartial testimony, seek to make an impartial judgment if serving on a jury, and seek to legislate impartial laws to the degree you have a say in that. And though elders, husbands, churches, employers, and parents have authority over other humans, it’s not their job to execute justice. That said, if you really take impartiality down into your heart, it will incline you to exercise your authority impartially in these various spheres. Though it’s not your job to execute justice, you will want to execute your office justly, meaning you too should not be partial to the wicked. A parent should not withhold the rod from a child’s wickedness because the child is cute. A church should not refuse to excommunicate a member engaged in serious, observable, unrepentant sin because they are a big giver or because we like the person. An employer should not promote a lazy employee because they like to play racquetball together, and so on. We are not autonomous. We are images of God, every one of us, and if we happen to hold one of these offices, we have a more specific charge from God in it. Even though he’s not on trial, to justify the wicked or to condemn the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD. Impartiality is another aspect of justice. Let’s look next at attentiveness.

 

Attentiveness

 

Attentiveness was my best shot at one word to describe a special concern for the poor and marginalized, because they are most susceptible to becoming the victims of injustice. Proverbs 13:23 says, “The fallow ground of the poor would yield much food, but it is swept away through injustice.” Now why is it that the poor’s fallow ground is swept away through injustice? Why not sweep away someone else’s food through injustice? Because someone else might have hired servants watching their field. In modern terms, someone else might have a security system and be able to afford a fancy lawyer. But if you rob the poor, what can they do to you?

 

So Proverbs 22:16 warns us, “Whoever oppresses the poor to increase his own wealth, or gives to the rich, will only come to poverty.” That word “oppression” is another one like justice that gets thrown around a lot today and detached from its biblical context and meaning. Telling someone they’re doing something wrong might hurt their feelings, but it’s not oppression. Oppression is when someone in authority uses their authority to sin against someone under their authority. The most common example of it I can find in the Bible is when an employer hires someone for a certain wage and then refuses to pay it to them. Another example is when they make excessive demands of their employees, like the Egyptian pharaoh when he required the Israelites to make bricks without straw (Exodus 1). Today we might think of an employer who refuses to pay their employees a fair wage because they know the employee needs the work—he’s oppressing the poor to increase his own wealth. Or we might think of employers who functionally demand every waking hour of their employees’ time to the neglect of the employee’s service to God, their family, and basically anyone other than the company. Again, the poor are especially susceptible to this kind of treatment because they are so needy.

 

So Proverbs 21:13 tells us that “Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.” What is the cry of the poor? In the Bible it’s not the poor crying out saying, “Make me rich!” It’s the poor crying out saying, “Give me justice!” Don’t let my field get swept away. Don’t let my boss say he’ll pay me and then not do it. Don’t let him work me to the bone for a less than livable wage. If I’m accused, don’t let me go to prison or worse because the people who sued me could afford a more highly skilled attorney. If I’m robbed, don’t refuse to go after the criminal because crime is already high in my neighborhood and I don’t contribute as much to the tax base as residents of the wealthier neighborhoods. It’s not an injustice to the poor to simply possess more money than they do; that’s Marx, not Proverbs. But it is an injustice to close your ear to the cry of the poor, and these sorts of injustices are what keep poor people poor and suffering. And I’m telling you, you will learn that if you are willing to be attentive to them, to open your ear to their cry. If you do that, yes you will meet some poor people who are unwilling to work and who make bad financial decisions, but you will also meet some poor people who get into unjust contracts with a landlord because it’s the only room they can afford, whose transportation gets stolen because they live in a tough neighborhood where that sort of thing commonly happens, who then can’t go to work anymore because they can’t get there, who are hospitalized but then don’t get paid for the time they missed, and so on. A just person is attentive to these cries and seeks to respond to them through the channels available to them, from laws to their own private actions.

 

Now again, does all this seem obvious to you? Most of you probably came into church today already knowing that lying, stealing, partiality, and oppression were wrong, but did you know they were also foolish? Remember law primarily asks, “What’s right?” while wisdom primarily asks, “What works?” Think about the last proverb we just looked at: It doesn’t say, “You shall not close your ears to the cry of the poor.” That’s the language of law. Instead, it said, “Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.” That’s the language of wisdom. Wisdom says: Here’s where that path leads. If you take the path of oppression, here’s where it leads: Judgment. Many of the proverbs we looked at today say that. Remember this one? “Do not move an ancient landmark or enter the fields of the fatherless, for their Redeemer is strong; he will plead their cause against you.” Who’s the redeemer? How can Proverbs be so sure that whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered? Because there is a real God, and he is just. So the final aspect of a just life that we see in Proverbs is faith.

 

Faith

 

We looked at this verse a couple weeks ago, but we have to look at it again here, Proverbs 29:26 –  “Many seek the face of a ruler, but it is from the LORD that a man gets justice”. There are many implications of this verse; I’ll just mention two today. First, it means that we must chasten our expectations for justice on this earth. That’s the most obvious thing the proverb is trying to show us by way of wisdom. If you give your life to trying to right every wrong you experience or observe on earth and just keep going and going and never stopping down to the minutest offenses, that’s a foolish way to spend your life. At some point you have to be able to say, “You know what, I think this was wrong, I think the people who were supposed to deal with it got it wrong, but it’s just not the wisest use of my time and energy to keep hounding the ruler to change it.” Trying to get perfect justice on earth typically creates other injustices in the process: You go after every possible wrongdoer and in the process end up wrongly accusing and convicting some who were genuinely innocent, for example. You have to be able to say, “It is from the LORD that I will one day get justice.” That’s one implication.

 

But on the flipside, it should infuse a certain sobriety into you as you think about living a life of justice. Justice is not a mere social construct; it is an attribute of God himself, and in the end, because he loves justice, he will do justice, including to those who lived unjust lives. We’ve already seen today how he hates injustice, and you must believe by faith that’s true because often in this world injustice will seem to work to your advantage. It is those who have no fear of God who feel the freest to commit injustice if they believe they can get away with it. According to what their eyes see, justice appears to just be a matter of human convention, so why not transgress it if it it’s to your advantage and you can get away with it? An atheist may say, “I don’t need to believe in God to live a just life; I just need to not be a terrible person,” but who’s defining what’s a terrible person and what isn’t? Do you really feel bound to tell the truth to the insurance company, the streaming service provider, the IRS? You say, “Well those are no big deal,” but do you see what you’re doing? You’re exercising partiality. You’re saying, “Because they’re big and rich and impersonal I don’t owe them justice,” and of course, if there is no God, that’s true. But if there is no God, then why talk of justice at all? Where do you get off telling anyone else they’re being unjust or unfair? Why don’t you just say, “I wish you wouldn’t do that”?

 

You and I don’t say that because you and I know there is a real justice, and we know there is a real justice because acknowledge him or not, there is a real God who is just. That’s good news for the world, but it’s bad news for us, at least initially. Maybe you’ve never moved an ancient landmark, but can you say your thoughts and desires are entirely just? Would you really claim that before the God who sees your heart, and knows all your thoughts? If he is just, what hope is there for us? The hope for us is that in God’s wisdom, he devised a way to satisfy the demands of his justice while still showing compassion to us. He didn’t choose one over the other; he fulfilled them both in Jesus Christ.

 

Why did Jesus have to die anyway? God’s compassionate; why couldn’t he just forgive us? Why did Jesus have to die? Here’s the answer Romans 3:25-26 gives us: “This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” God is so perfectly just that he cannot simply overlook our sins in the name of compassion. To condemn the righteous and to justify the wicked are both an abomination to him! But he is so perfectly loving that he did not want to condemn us, though we are wicked. So God the Father sent God the Son to become a human, and though he was not wicked, on the cross Jesus willingly accepted the deposit of our sins into his account, so that in him God did condemn our wickedness, and there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And because he obeyed all the way to the cross, God justified him, declared him righteous, and gave him the reward of eternal life, so that now all who turn from their sins and receive and rest upon him alone for salvation are declared righteous, receive the reward of eternal life, and receive the Spirit of God to live in them now, to make them inwardly just people.

 

Through faith in him, you can stop trying to cover up your unjust thoughts and desires with an outward appearance of justice or blaming a system. You can confess them because now you know even they can’t condemn you. You can tell the truth, even when it reflects poorly on you, because the worst truth about you, your guilt, has already been dealt with. You can respect the property of others, because a new heaven and new earth is now your inheritance! You can reject bribes and judge with impartiality, because what can man give you or take from you that you really need if you already have Christ? You can pay special attention to the poor, because you know how spiritually bankrupt you were, and Jesus didn’t close his ear to you. The wise life is the just life, and Jesus Christ is not only our wisdom from God—he is the one in whom the justice of God was satisfied. As we get to know him, we can not only no longer fear and resist the justice of God; we can grow to love it, because we love him.