Daily Devotional 9/12/22

Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.

Romans 12:17

IN WORD We might think that the best way to reflect God’s justice is to implement it, but it isn’t. We are certainly required to treat people honestly and fairly. But we are specifically told in Romans 12 not to seek our own form of judgment. Vengeance is God’s. We are to leave room for His wrath.

How does this reflect God’s justice? It acknowledges Him as judge over all the earth because it refuses to take justice into our own hands. Our governments must provide order, of course, and must execute justice fairly. But the individual Christian? We have a higher authority. Anything done to us unfairly will be dealt with by a zealously fair God. We are to seek fairness; we are never to seek revenge.

Jesus made it clear in the Sermon on the Mount. The eye-for-an-eye mentality laid out in the Mosaic law was an expression of God’s standards of righteousness. But righteousness has been fulfilled on the Cross, and our sin has been paid for. We have been treated with extreme grace, and we are to treat others with similar grace. Mercy saved us, and it is to shape our lives. “Eye for an eye” just doesn’t apply in the individual believer’s life anymore. We had to choose between a grace life or a justice life, and when we accepted Christ, we chose grace. Unless we want to submit to a system of justice and suffer the consequences of our sin, we’d best apply grace broadly.

IN DEED Justice is so sweet when it puts others in their place, yet so frightening when it threatens to do the same to us. But when we realized our sin and the impending judgment, we chose mercy. When we see the sin of others, we have to continue to choose it.

Just as with God and the Cross, love and justice are to meet in the heart of the believer. We may know what’s right, but we also know His grace. He turned justice on Himself and absorbed the cost of sin so others wouldn’t have to. We can reflect justice in exactly the same way—absorbing the cost of others’ sins and forgiving them in grace.

Do you wish to receive mercy? Show mercy to your neighbor.

—JOHN CHRYSOSTOM