Our main premise: Understand justice and contend for it.
Justice cannot exist when the heart is bitter. I know this to be a true statement not because I have been able to point it out in the Bible directly, but because I know that, in my own heart, when there is bitterness there is a lack of drive to do justly. What is even worse is when the justice itself makes the heart bitter. There are three ways that this happens:
1) Bitter Selfishness – In the past, justice, for me, has been social time. My youth group is extremely cliqueish, and it is nearly impossible to get one or two people to do something unless everyone in his clique was doing the same. Essentially, what I am saying is that mission trips and outreach opportunities tend to fall more in the category of social goings on in SEEK. It is dangerous when we forget the purpose of our mission trip or outreach opportunity for this reason: it then becomes all about the self. Then when we are called to an act of justice as an individual, we become bitter that we are left to be just on our own. We feel like we are abandoned, when in reality, Jesus is standing right beside us. I mean, really, let use our brains here, what is the very end of the Great Commission? “I am with you always, to the very end of the age”. Our finite minds keep us from this reality and make us bitter about being “abandoned” to do justly on our own.
2) Bitter Frustration – One revelation that needs to happen before one can really do justly is that the most important act of justice that can be done by a human being is prayer. The Father is the only true just being, He is the only one that can act justly, so it is our job to cry out for Him to do so (Luke 18:7-8). Many times He chooses us to be the embodiment of His justice on earth, sometimes He just wants us to leave it up to Him. There are times when all we can do is pray and there are times when all He wants us to do is pray. In the moments when He calls us not to act outside of the place of prayer, bitterness can well up if we are not careful. When our prayers are not answered right away, it is easy for us to become frustrated. We need to guard our hearts so that bitterness does not result from this.
I am going to take this one step further, so if you are lost, you might want to skip this section and move on to #3. As I said before, there are times when the Father calls us to “just pray”. There are also times when He calls us to “just pray” despite the fact that there is something else that we could do. This is a test of faith. When this happens and our prayers are not answered within our time frame, we become extremely frustrated and bitterness is susceptible to leak into our hearts. We are offended that the Father has withheld from us the solution and asked us to pray. When we are bitter about this, it shows in our prayer life. We cannot let this bitterness overtake our heart to the point where we are unable to pray in faith anymore. This is an extremely dangerous place for us to be.
3) Bitter Blasphemy – This could also be classified as “bitter selfishness”, but I a) I already used that one, and b) this one sounds cooler and fits better. It is easy for us to be offended when justice is given or not given outside of what we think is deserved. I call this point “bitter blasphemy” because the bitterness is rooted in the idea that we are omniscient when, in reality, only the Father truly is. We think that we know when justice is deserved (or not deserved), when really it is only the Father that searches and knows the hearts of men (I Chron 28:9, Psalm 7:9, Rom 8:27, Rev 2:23). It is easy to become bitter when the Father asks us to do justice to one that we believe does not deserve justice, but we cannot let a bitter heart take over lest our act of justice become an act of injustice.
Essentially, we are desperately in need to the heart of the Father. If we have His heart, we are always considering others above ourselves (Phil 2:3), thus eliminating our bitter selfishness. If we have His heart, we can know the hope to which He has called us (Eph 1:18), thus eliminating our bitter frustration. And, if we have His heart, we know that He is the righteous God that searches minds and hearts (Psalm 7:9), thus humbling our bitter blasphemy. We cannot be obligated to do justly, it needs to be a conviction and desire in our hearts to be like the Father. He is the only one that can clean our hands and purify our hearts. We need to let Him cleanse us of all bitterness before we can act in righteous justice.
Psalm 16:4 – The sorrows of those who have bartered for another god will be multiplied; I shall not pour out their drink offerings of blood, nor will I take their names upon my lips.
I have witnessed so many examples of when the pursuit of justice morphs from a righteous act into nothing less than a modern golden calf. One of two people fall into this deception. Person A is just a regular Joe that learned, in Sunday School, that he should strive to be more like Jesus. He reads that Jesus was a doer of acts of justice, so, thinking that he is able to become like Jesus with his own, carnal strength, he tries to act justly without the direction of the Father. The ironic thing about person A is that he fails to realize that the only thing Jesus ever did was listen to the Father’s direction – fail. Person B, on the other hand, is under the false notion that acting in justice is some sort of chore that will get him into heaven.
I am going to address them both in the form of a letter to each:
Dear Person A,
There is something you need to know, and if I were to never tell you, I would be doing you a huge disservice, so here goes: justice is the Lord’s. You went to Sunday School, so you should know by now that He’s got the whole freakin world in His hands (check out Ps. 24:1). Not surprisingly, that includes those that are in need of justice. Is 30:18 says that “the LORD is a God of justice.” Trying to take over God’s job is like saying that you are the creator of the universe. See my point? Because, if not, then you’ve got bigger issues to settle first before reading on.
What I am trying to get at is this: when man was created, he was just that, the creation, not the creator. Man began inferior to God because that is the definition of the relationship between a creator and his creation. Then, when man fell, he really, actually fell. What I mean is that he got even lower than he was before, just like falling as a result of gravity. Because of this, our human nature and God don’t really get along very well. Romans 8: 7-8 says it best when it says that “the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God”.
When we try to bring about justice using our carnal strength, we are competing with God, and, let’s face it, that is pointless. When we commit to doing an act of justice, it should be because He has called us to do so. If we try to do justly because we believe that we can be like Jesus without the help of Jesus, then we become our own god, and injustice is the only true result.
Love,
Olivia
Dear Person B,
“If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9). That’s pretty much the extent of my letter. Yep, talk to you later! I’m just kidding. But really – it is through a legitimate confession of the heart that we enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus is not looking for people who feel obligated to love Him, and He is especially not looking for people who feel obligated to act lovingly towards Him without any affection at all. He wants His kingdom to be overflowing with the ones that actually loved Him freely and without obligation.
Here’s a story for you: there once was a Man that devoted His everything to the girl He loved. She didn’t love Him back, but she really enjoyed the thought of being married to Him – He was rich, handsome, and could give her everything she could ever want, so she pretended to love Him. She did everything she could think of to keep herself busy, but she never thought to spend time really getting to know Him. Who knows, maybe she would have fallen in love with Him. But the two never got married. The man was devastated. How could this one that He invested so much in just walk away from Him? Well, the man ended up marrying a beautiful young bride that shared a mutual love with Him. When the woman saw the two together, her heart broke for Him because she saw Him for what he could have been to her.
The Man in this story could not have cared less about all the busy work that His first love did for Him, He just wanted to et to know her. Eventually she would have grown to love Him so much that doing busy work for Him would have become her joy, but she neglected to realize that there was only one thing He required of her.
This generation has forgotten that there is only one thing required of us to be saved – an honest heart confession. The rest will come with time, but without the first, we have nothing. If chores got us into heaven, I think this generation would be pretty screwed. Thankfully they don’t though. He just wants relationship then the work will come bubbling forth because our desires will become one with Jesus’ desires. The more we listen and get to know Him, the more justice we can do and will want to do.
Love,
Olivia
