Worshipping God as Just Changes Our Perspective

8 February 2021
Randy Wollf

Many hands holding the balance scale level

Do you ever feel like you’ve been unjustly treated? Perhaps, you’ve been a victim of other people’s poor choices or circumstances that you had little or no control over. Life sometimes seems very unfair.

As leaders, we’re particularly prone to experiencing unfair treatment. Someone gets the credit for work you did. A group covertly lobbies for your ouster from a project or even your position. You work really hard on something only to have your team move in a different direction. Personal slights, undermining, end runs where someone goes around you to get what they want, both subtle and overt character assassinations, lack of respect, mutinies, insubordination, and the nasty list of injustices goes on.

In previous blogs, we saw the importance of worshipping God as sovereign, loving, wise, and good. When we worship God as sovereign in the midst of injustice, we acknowledge that He is still on His throne, working out His ultimate plans despite people’s best attempts to thwart them. When we revere God as a God who loves, we can find our comfort and solace in His loving arms. We can allow His love to transform our hearts and the way we view the perpetrators of the injustice. When we worship God as wise, we can imagine with hope that God’s wise ways transcend the immediate. His wisdom has an eternal outlook. God is also good. He can bring good even out of the bad stuff. Our God is a redeeming God – One who delights in taking what people intend for evil and turning it into something good, as we see in the story of Joseph in Genesis.

Deeply adoring God in these ways helps us to face injustice in a helpful, God-honoring way. Yet, we also know from Scripture that God is just. Isaiah 30:18-19 says, “Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him! People of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you.”

Later in Isaiah 51:4-5, Isaiah records God’s words to Israel, “Listen to me, my people; hear me, my nation: Instruction will go out from me; my justice will become a light to the nations. My righteousness draws near speedily, my salvation is on the way, and my arm will bring justice to the nations. The islands will look to me and wait in hope for my arm.”

Throughout Scripture, we see God’s heart of justice for those who are oppressed like is Isaiah 1:17, “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”

Of course, God also calls us to live justly, to reflect His justice to the world. We see this call in passages like Micah 6:8: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes try to take justice into my own hands. I want people to get tried and convicted, at least in the court of public opinion. Or sometimes I’ll carry a grudge and look for ways to hurt the other person by saying hurtful things about them, withholding resources or opportunities, or not giving them and their ideas due credit.

Now, of course, we need to address real injustices. Yet, it’s helpful to remember that God is the ultimate Judge. Paul reminds us in Romans 12:19: “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.”

When I personally experience a legitimate injustice, I can rest in the fact that God, as the ultimate Judge, sees everything and executes justice now and/or in the future. And His justice is completely fair. Worshipping God as just brings us closer to our just God and helps us to accept both the timing and the means of His justice even as we lovingly and courageously address the injustices that we experience.

So, how does this relate to some of the larger societal injustices like racial discrimination, ageism, sexuality and gender, child welfare, and poverty? I believe that our just God is against all societal injustices that go against His standards of justice. His heart breaks for the broken-hearted, the marginalized, the down-trodden. As we worship God as just, our hearts should break, too, as we see how people and the system sometimes treats people unfairly. We should stand up for those who are relegated to the fringes of society. We should support them and help them in respectful ways that uphold their dignity while clearing paths to a more equitable place within society.

Worshipping God as just changes the way we see and respond to injustice at an interpersonal level, but also within the larger society and the world. The world desperately needs more people who worship a just God deeply and who actively seek to promote His just ways.

Blogs in the Worship Changes Our Perspective Series

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