God of Justice

What does that mean? What does justice mean? How is God's character just? How do we play into that attribute of His as His image-bearers and His children? All questions I've been asking for awhile. I'm reading a great book right now called Good News about Injustice by Gary Haugen, president of IJM. Here are some things I've read in it today that have stuck out to me and given me glimpses of some answers to the questions posed above.

"'Did not your father...do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He pled the cause of the afflicted and needy; then it was well. Is that not what it means to know Me?' declares the Lord (Jer 22:15-16 NASB). To know Him means to do justice and righteousness. To know Him means to plead the cause of the afflicted and needy. Why have we taken this out of our Christianity?!

He has told us what He desires from us, what He expects from us. "He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8 NRSV). Why haven't we heeded that? Why have we ignored what pleases our Father and just done our own thing? Especially after all He's done for us!

The word compassion comes from two Latin words: passio ("to suffer") and cum ("with"), so literally, when God has compassion on someone, He is suffering with them (Haugen 93). I never thought of compassion in that way before. "...imagine what it must be like for God to be present, this year, at the rape of all the world's child prostitutes, at the beatings of all the world's prisoners of conscience, at the moment the last breath of hope expires from the breast of each of the millions of small children languishing in slavery. As I would approach my God in prayer, I could hear His gentle voice saying to me, 'Son, do you have any idea where your Father has been lately?'" (95). "To understand where the God of compassion has been is to begin to understand God's passion for justice. Justice for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, is not a good idea, a noble aspiration, a theoretical satisfaction, or an impersonal principle--it is His beating heart. He is the 'man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering,' who weeps with those who weep (Isaiah 53:3, John 11:33-35)" (96).

God, I want to know the beating of your heart. I want my heart to beat the same as yours. Open my eyes and break my heart to the injustice all around me. Let me feel what you feel when you suffer with them. Make me willing to suffer with them, as you, the Father of compassion do. Burn within me a passion for justice that matches your own. Don't let these lines from this book become only good lines; let them become my life.