Think tank: "just"

One of the most symmetrical of cultivated flowers, the iris seemed
 to me to best represent the balancing scales of justice.

Part of a series on Philippians 4:8.
“Lady Justice” is among classical statues greeting visitors to the Supreme Court building in Washington D.C. She is blindfolded (for blind justice), and holds balanced scales (for fair judgment of good and evil) and a sword (for punishment for evil). She symbolizes the hope of law: that decisions will be balanced and fair, and that wrongdoing will be punished. In other words, that there will be justice.  When Paul wrote to urge believers to think about things that are “just” (Philippians 4:8),  he used a Greek word meaning “righteous toward God and man,” “right by divine or human standards,” and “not dualistic.”

So how do we “think on” things that are “just”?  My first thought is to dwell on God, whose justice is linked with undeserved mercy:

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all righteousness. (1 John 1:9)
What a verse for someone who thinks he or she has “sinned too much”!  One evening I got a phone call from a distraught young woman who had been in our home Bible study group. I rushed to her apartment and found her emotionally out of control after her boyfriend talked her into having sex with him.  Gone was her dream of saving herself for her groom on her wedding night. She was ready to confess and accept God’s forgiveness, but didn’t think she deserved it. Then I shared with her Psalm 103:12, which says God removes that confessed sin as far away as the east is from the west. East and west never end; they just keep encircling the earth. Because she feared God might punish her for this sin for as long as she lived, she found this a freeing hope. She broke up with that man, moved away, grew in her faith, and eventually married a Christian man.

 God is just!  He is also our Justifier through the death of Jesus for our sins. That bedrock of faith, long ignored,  gripped the heart of Martin Luther who helped return the church to Biblical truth in a movement that became known as The Reformation.  Luther’s rally cry--“The just shall live by his faith”—came right out of scripture:  Habakkuk 2:4, Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, and Hebrews 10:38. That truth exposed the lies of working for or paying for salvation, which the church had added on to fatten the clerical purse.

A just God is also one who opposes that which is not just. An extreme illustration of that is believed to be at the bottom of the Dead Sea. In the time of the Abraham, a terribly wicked and sexually immoral city, Sodom, existed in that area. God wanted to obliterate it. Enter Abraham, who asked God to spare Sodom for the sake of his nephew Lot and family, who lived there. Appealing to God’s mercy, Abraham said, “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). Finally, God agreed spare Sodom if ten righteous people lived there. Not even ten righteous were found, so God in His blazing holiness extracted justice and punishment in a cataclysmic event. Only Lot and his two daughters survived as they fled; Lot’s wife perished as she looked back in a momentary yearning for the old life. A just God will not wink at sin.  He will “do right” and judge it.

Meditating on “just” is a reminder that God’s holy standards never change. At the end of time, He will fully judge good and evil in absolute fairness.  As I watch the world’s moral decline, the prospect of holy justice gives me hope…and a reason to keep telling about Jesus.

Next: “pure”