“Don’t judge me!” No one likes to be pulled up and judged, especially if they are guilty. After all, who likes to admit failure or face the consequences of their mistakes and misdemeanours? We would rather avoid being caught, shift the blame or brush things under the carpet. Excusing, minimising or even denying our wrongdoing feels easier than admitting, confessing and confronting the consequences of our sins.
On the other hand, we all believe in justice. At least we do in general and in theory until it’s me on the hook: just as I believe in road traffic rules until I get a speeding ticket. Justice is a deeply held and God-given human quality. We look out upon global inequalities and abuses and ask: “Why should they get away with it?” Our hope for justice is that one day there will be a reckoning. Of course, we hope such a reckoning will overlook our own moral failures.
Question: how do you react to justice and the prospect of judgement?
In Matthew 7:13-29 Jesus brings warnings about judgement. For those of us happy to hear that chapter 7 begins “do not judge” it’s a bit unnerving that the second half of the chapter is a warning about the consequences of our decisions in this life and judgment to come at the end.
Question: what is the difference between Jesus’ instruction not to judge and the judgement listed at the end?
Grace appears to be the alternative to judgment. But “grace” is often misunderstood. We confuse it with “tolerance” or “acceptance”, perhaps interpreting grace as turning a blind eye to offence. But grace is the opposite of denying or ignoring. Grace is what God offers to those who are judged guilty and admit their failing.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer published his landmark book “The Cost of Discipleship” in Nazi Germany in 1938. Conscious of the heinous evil committed all around him and the complicity of many Christians in the abuses of the Third Reich he coined the term “cheap grace”. Bonhoeffer was concerned that grace was being misused to endorse and excuse evil and to overlook the need for admission of sin, and repentance. After all, we might add, if God in grace can tolerate and acquiesce in our sin then there is no need for his fierce and costly commitment to the cross.
True grace invites me to openly offer the full extent of my guilt before the endless scope of God’s forgiveness. True grace reaches deeper than my sin.
Justice has two arms: retributive and restorative. Retributive justice is punitive reminding us of the need for a perpetrator to pay fully for their crimes. Restorative justice argues that full resolution only comes when harm is repaired and when perpetrators recognise the injury they have caused others and begin to change .
Fleming Rutledge says
“In the Cross of Christ, retributive justice — the law that condemns — is put to death and is replaced by restorative justice — the law that gives life.”
Her point? Jesus bears the necessary punitive, retributive, justice upon himself so that we may experience the transforming power of restorative justice and life in the Spirit.
Without our crimes admitted and paid for we are under the looming shadow of judgement and the fear that “our sins will eventually find us out”. Mere toleration is not liberating but leaves us living under the ongoing cloud of condemnation.
True grace declares us innocent, and places us in Jesus, beyond the scrutiny of suspicion. What good news: my sin is judged in Jesus on the cross and I am reckoned to be clear of guilt, and innocent. As the song says:
“No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine!”
Question: how do we recognise cheap grace and how can we live in true freedom through Christ?
Jesus offers two ways (Matt 7:13,14): life or destruction. What way are you on?
Iain