God’s justice includes salvation for the weak and oppressed

[This is an exerpt from a book I'm writing on social justice in the Old Testament.]

In the same way that Christians can find biblical principles in the Old Testament to answer the specific question of abortion, they can find the principles of justice and righteousness that help clarify biblical teaching on social justice. Following the pattern shown in the preceding section, the place to start is in the law given to Moses. What the Old Testament is to the Bible, the Mosaic Law is to the Old Testament. The instruction that God gave to the Israelites in the Torah is the background necessary to understand Old Testament history and prophesy. In it, God lays out the terms of His covenant with the Israelites and the teaching to which they must adhere as a society.

The law is the touchstone for understanding social morality and is replete with provisions meant to ensure an equitable society. If asked about these provisions, many Christians today would think of the commands that ensure fairness and impartiality. For example, the law not only prohibits stealing outright but even includes details such as the prohibition against moving a boundary marker between properties. In the judicial process, the law forbids both perjury and partiality. The law also includes sundry other stipulations for fair conduct between husbands and wives, and masters and slaves. Perhaps no other command sums up the fairness prescribed in the law as the phrase “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” recorded in Leviticus 24:17-22:

“If anyone takes the life of a human being, he must be put to death. Anyone who takes the life of someone’s animal must make restitution—life for life. If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured. Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a man must be put to death. You are to have the same law for the alien and the native-born. I am the Lord your God.”

All the provisions aforementioned describe a strict standard of justice in a purely legal sense, and for this reason the two tablets containing the Ten Commandments are displayed in courthouses throughout the United States. However, God’s standard of justice is not only characterized by fairness, but also by generous mercy and grace.[1] The social justice provisions in the Mosaic law go beyond fairness and impartiality—they teach the character of God as one who protects the weak and vulnerable from oppression and fills the hungry with good things. As Moses explained to the Israelites:

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the case of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing.[2]

Truly, God is fair and impartial in His judgments, but thankfully He is more than that. He is merciful and gracious, with a special eye for those who are desperate to receive His salvation and peace. If God was only concerned with strict justice in a legal sense, He never would have sent His Son Jesus to die as an atoning sacrifice for people’s sin. It is because of His loving kindness that He sent His Son to save needy people from their deserved punishment. Jesus Himself taught that God’s special favor was consummated in the incarnation of His Son, but that this favor was for the poor and needy, the weak and oppressed, and all who desperately hoped in Him.

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
      “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
                  Because he has anointed me                  to preach good news to the poor.      He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners                  and recovery of sight for the blind,      To release the oppressed,                  to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”[3] 

“The year of the Lord’s favor” in the passage refers to the Year of Jubilee, an important social justice provision in the Law of Moses that provided an economic salvation for poverty-stricken Israelites, but Jesus referenced it to describe his own ministry to the weak and marginalized. He later expanded this merciful characterization of His ministry, saying, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous [or, rather, those who consider themselves righteous], but sinners [who acknowledge themselves as such and admit their need of a Savior] to repentance.”[4] By examining the social justice provisions in the Mosaic Law, Christians can understand God’s standard of justice and righteousness as more than legal fairness or religious purity.

Unfortunately, many Christians miss the message of mercy and grace portrayed in the Law of Moses and instead focus on what it teaches about God’s holiness and wrath against sin. In the worst cases, Christians see the God as exhibiting different natures in the Old and New Testaments—punishing sin in the Old and extending mercy in the New.[5] But, more commonly, Christians simply do not understand the full extent to which God reveals His grace and mercy in the Old Testament, especially through the commands He gives in the Mosaic Law. As a result, they see sins of commission such as stealing, sexual deviance, or idolatry as clear breaches of God’s command in the Old Testament, but not the equally condemned sins of omission, such as the neglect of those in need or failure to protect the weak.

Christians living in representative democracies today must consider the totality of what the Old Testament teaches about the character of God if they are to advocate for policies that adhere to His standard of justice and righteousness—not just fairness and impartiality in a legal sense, but also protection for the weak and provision for those in need. They cannot fulfill their unique role as salt and light to society if they advocate a lop-sided view of God’s justice that zealously protects private property while paying only lip-service to social equity. They must balance the view that “God helps those who help themselves” with the realization that God delights in helping those who are unable to help themselves. Notice, again, how Moses describes God at the outset of his reiteration of the Law:

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the case of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing.[6]

Here, Moses holds God up as the ultimate arbiter—and, indeed, source—of true justice. There is no higher authority to which one could appeal, nor any need for appeal. God is, in His nature, the final and inflexible standard of justice and righteousness. Yet, in the same breath, Moses declares God’s intervention on behalf of a special segment of society—a bias for the disadvantaged and marginalized. This brief statement by Moses encapsulates the essential truth about God’s justice: that His mercy is not contrasted against His absolute justice, but instead is an integral part of that justice.

Christians who seek to advocate for the biblical standard of justice and righteousness need to understand how God’s justice includes salvation for the weak and oppressed. To do so, we must look back to what the Old Testament reveals of God’s character, starting with the Law of Moses.

[This post is an excerpt of my work-in-progress book on social justice in the Old Testament. Feedback is welcome! More on Learning to Do Right.] 

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[1] As James put it in James 2:13, “Mercy triumphs over judgment!”

[2] Deuteronomy 10:17-18

[3] Luke 4:16-21, referencing Isaiah 61:1-2

[4] Luke 5:31, with amplification from the author.

[5] The Second Century heretic Marcion, for example, rejected the Old Testament and Jewish elements in the New Testament because he saw them as contradictory to a message of grace. Today, some Christian “grace” preachers make the same mistake.

[6] Deuteronomy 10:17-18