Proverbs 16:11 ESV
A just balance and scales are the Lord’s; all the weights in the bag are his work.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+16%3A11&version=ESV]
We suffer under a delusion of sufficiency. Our minds, our hearts, they are enough to carry us through, or so we think. We traipse around, forgetting God in deed if not word, and we consider our own judgement sufficient for the mundane problems of the day. God is for big problems and hard issues, not all the little decisions of relationship, not all the mundane uses of authority which necessarily pervade our lives- dealing with kids, with employees, with trainees, with any person we are to lead or to be led by. In doing so, we forget not only the only sufficient rest of our judgement but the greatest comfort of our lives, the greatest guide to our hearts, the necessary tools of righteousness.
Justice is essentially Divine. To be just is to imitate God; it is not for giggles that Psalm 82 terms the judges of the earth (its kings) as ‘gods’ (1-4). They are not, as Mormonism would most reprehensibly assert, Divine in the sense that Christ or the Father are Divine; they are instead divine in the sense that they fulfill a divine role, imperfectly and indeed often maliciously (Ps. 2:1-4). Today’s verse assures of this much. All the instruments of justice are His, and therefore any administration of justice is ultimately reliant entirely upon Him.
Because justice is His, all just judgements require His hand of blessing, His guidance, but equally so in Him justice is truly possible. While on this earth we will never quite be disentangled from the biases of our passions and our cupidity, never quite capable of total impartiality, His hand can guide us to a truly just decision despite those same prejudices. While on this earth we are incapable of that omniscience or pervasion of knowledge which is required for absolute (rather than sufficient) certainty of innocence or guilt, He can guide our eyes to what is needed, our minds to its meaning, our hearts to its weight.
All this is a tough job, of course. To find the truth in judgement is often difficult beyond certainty. Yet He gives us wisdom and direction, the tools by which we may find true justice. In problems of weight, for instance, He gives us the instructions of the Pentateuch as to judicial matters- to seek two independent lines of testimony, to assume innocence rather than guilt, and more. Whether by lacking an expectation of culprit or by virtue of relative lightness, not all problems merit these specifics rules, though they will constantly reoccur when wisdom is speaking. The wisdom of Scripture will nevertheless suffice for all problems, all judgements, being the sufficient word of God for all acts of Godliness (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
The tools of wisdom have many homes, therefore. Our lives are perpetually requiring careful judgement. Sometimes the problems are small- choosing kindness towards another, dealing with a passing offense, coming to accord over a muffin stolen by another. Sometimes they are a large- a contract made, a friendship broken, a crime committed. Sometimes the application is by us as leaders, making judgments upon another; sometimes it is by us as led, making judgements of how the leading ought to be in order to both help the leader towards righteousness (as well as consequent effectiveness) and to discern where we must seek to remedy injustice against ourselves or others.
In all this, we must not see God’s justice merely as mechanical or necessary or pragmatic. It’s a little bit of the third, very much the second, and not at all the first, but to stop even with the correct bits of this impression would be, besides sin, an act of spectacular self-sabotage, self-harm, and foolishness. The comfort and glory and all-encompassing beauty of God’s justice is this: the Creator of the universe, the Lord of hosts, the Kind of Glory, He who is ‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ this God comes to His people bringing justice not merely from duty but from everlasting love and from compassion without plumb; He comes with a justice which clasps in its midst eternal mercy, His Son’s death that we might live. His justice is thus our rightful and eternal comfort, a beauty and sustenance which should cut deep past our complacency, our mundane pride, and call us to take refuge in Him, abandoning pretense, seeking His wisdom that we might have true and abiding rest.
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
