A worthless witness mocks at justice, and the mouth of the wicked devours iniquity.
We want to believe that everybody values justice and goodness and what-not. As a matter of fact, however, the wicked man’s desire is against justice, and he makes a mock of it all too often. Men find many, many ways to turn their own desires into ‘wisdom’ (1 Cor. 1:20), and part of this is turning His justice into a joke, a flim-flam, a subject of ridicule. Too often Christians play along, submitting a part of His righteousness to the world’s criticisms, eager to befriend. We must take a holier course.
Mockery is a powerful tool in man’s arsenal. God Himself levies it against sinners: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matt 23:27). Isaiah 44:9-20 too displays His mockery of sin. In the hands of the wicked man, however, mockery becomes a tool to deny a truth the sinner cannot rid himself of. Instead of denying justice’s truth, he degrades its importance and even the reality of its category. Justice becomes a joke, not a falsehood—and men will cling to falsehood longer than to an unpleasant joke.
Wicked mockery attacks virtue by making it a stench to pride and relationship. All of us have pride; all of us have relationships which we feel, rightly or not, depend on a certain image in us. When justice is mocked, we start to wonder if justice is not a danger to our pride, to our self-perception and to how others perceive us. Justice now has a greater cost—not only its own cost but the cost of striving against the world, of becoming lesser in other men’s eyes. We should not quickly scoff, here; ostracism carves deep wounds, though the Lord suffices and abounds so that we ought not to fear it (Gen. 2:18).
For the wicked man, mockery has an additional virtue: it requires no truth. Mockery can throw lies around like candy, retreating behind that, “I was only joking” (Prov. 26:18-19) whenever it is caught. Mockery does not need to assail the truth of God’s law; it only needs to pretend God’s law doesn’t matter, that justice is a farce, that care for righteousness is silliness. Men, already predisposed in our flesh to prefer the easy path, take well to this policy of avoiding responsibility.
The truth of God’s world, however, is that justice is deadly serious, in all parts of life. In no time is justice superfluous and in no relationship (Mark 12:28-33). Ourselves with God; our families; our communities; our churches; our governments. All of these parts of us have an utmost duty to love Him and thus to love His law (Mic. 6:8; Matt. 22:36-40; Rom. 13:8-10).
Jesting and joking must be within justice, where they are great, not outside, where they are poison. Mockery, as Isaiah 44:9-20 proves, has a place: pointing out what is truly ridiculous and vicious and contemptible. Joking and jesting too have their place: serving His kingdom. They must never be means of lying, however, or of malice, envy, injustice, cupidity, lust, lasciviousness, or any of the rest of them (1 Pet. 2:1). The wicked may feast himself on iniquity; we must feed our souls and our brother’s souls only with the honey of His word, at times sweet, at times bitter (Ex. 3:3; Rev. 10:9).
For those saved by His blood, this duty does not abate but rather redoubles. The duty of the reprobate to be righteous, to obey, is a son of his nature as God’s creation, as a creature, as a descendant of Adam whom God made, as a being preserved in existence by the Lord. The duty of God’s child to obey rests on that foundation but also upon His blood (2 Tim. 1:8-10), upon our debt to Him for salvation, upon our relationship with Him (John 1:9-13) (and its proper love (14:15)), upon His continual gift of the Spirit (14:26), upon our nature as His covenant children (Is. 64:8), upon His gifts of the sacraments (1 Cor. 11:17-34), upon the gift of our salvation (2 Cor. 9:15), upon all the gifts of His covenant, including our sanctification (Is. 26:12) and our fellowship with each other (John 13:35). Our duty is thus immeasurably more than the reprobate’s already-complete duty—and more joyful, for He has given us already salvation, that we may work it out in fear and trembling (Eph. 6:5).
God bless.
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.
Colson Potter writes copious fiction and nonfiction, including a weekly Proverbs post and his blog at Creational Story.
