Sixty-six books in the Bible, thousands of words, hundreds of stories from dozens of cultures covering 4 millennium and the bright, crystallized gem radiating from the burning core of it all is this:

He has showed you, O man, 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.*

It seems to me that each of these three actions precludes an inner life of profound love. In this way Micah foreshadows the words of Jesus centuries later: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matt 22:37)

The interplay and apparent mutual exclusivity of justice and mercy both distresses and fascinates me. There is no law or policy that can prescribe a clear course between these two. Only love lived out in a particular situation towards a real and particular person can guide me through the messy, beautiful tangle that is justice and mercy.

Question I’m asking myself and you: Am I more oriented towards justice or mercy? In other words, when I become aware that someone has done something awfully bad, do I prefer that consequences are fairly and duly meted out? Or do I more naturally tip towards mercy, trying to take into account where someone is coming from, easing or eliminating the consequences of their choices, even allowing them to be blessed more than they deserve? I feel it’s really important to know this about oneself because I would posit that both justice and mercy can be acts of love, and both can be acts of total rubbish.

Tim Keller writes in The Prodigal God that God cares as much about why we do righteous acts as that we do them at all, and that sometimes we must repent of our motivations behind our good acts. In other words: God wants our heart. If we “act justly” out of ungodly indignation or a hunger to punish, then our just actions are rubbish. Similarly, to show mercy to everybody out of motivations such as guilt or pity is equally garbage.

I have often wondered if God vacillates between doling out justice and mercy, as if they’re some kind of cosmic salt and pepper shakers. Does he measure out one and when he’s gone too far, start supplementing with the other, to keep things balanced? When we haven’t had enough consequences lately, does he start to let us feel the pain again, and when we’ve felt enough pain, does he ease off and mete out mercy for awhile? This cannot be right; just writing it out makes it sound stupid. But I do know that despite their apparent paradox, mercy and justice suffered a head-on collision in the death of Christ. As someone who never sinned, he was the ultimate victim. Yet taking on himself the sins of every murderer, liar and thief, he became the ultimate victimizer. With his shed blood, justice was served to all victims. And yet at great cost to himself, all victimizers received breathtaking mercy.

I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I have been both the recipient of deep wounds and the giver of wounds. Here are some questions I’m considering and invite you to consider too;

Thinking of actual situations around me where people hurt others or me, do I naturally prefer justice or mercy? Why do I lean in that direction?

Are there motivations behind my desire for justice or my penchant for mercy that need to be repented of? To be a channel of God’s love is the only worthy motivation.

How was I a recipient of both mercy and justice at the cross and what does that do to me today?!?

Acting justly and loving mercy ultimately lead to walking humbly before God. In this stage of my life, is there a particular area I’d like to walk with God more humbly?

Take time to read the seven chapters in the book of Micah with an eye for the interplay of justice and mercy. Micah wrote during a time of economic prosperity to the point where wealth and power lay in the hands of a few and social injustice was rampant. His message alternates between oracles of justice and oracles of mercy and hope. Ask the Holy Spirit to challenge and expand your view of justice and mercy as you read.

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*Note: If you wish, you can look up this and other Bible passages online at biblegateway.com

Copyright ©2010 Tabitha Plueddemann