Justice, Mercy, and Humility the Jesus Way
What does God want from us, every day? How do we live lives that give glory and praise to God?
Three things.
Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly with God. (Micah 6:8)
What could it mean for us to do justice?
In the Bible, justice is God's justice, or it is not justice at all.
For Jesus, justice looks like when the Roman soldiers nailed him to a cross, and he said, "Father forgive them." True justice for Jesus is his dying for all. Not just for the rich, who had the money to corrupt human justice. Jesus died for all. For the poor. For the sinners. For the crippled. For the widows and orphans and strangers. The lives of the poor matter, too! Justice is the love of God, opening up his arms on the cross to say to the whole world: I am going ahead of you to prepare a place for you. Forever. You don't have to buy it. You don't have to pay for it. I give this to you, freely.
That is Jesus' way of justice.
The second way to live God's way: "love mercy."
What does it mean, to love mercy?
To Jesus, kindness meant stopping, and seeing.
He stopped to talk with the woman at the well, and he saw her as a child of God – not just as a Samaritan woman who was suspicious because she came out in the middle of the day (John 4). Jesus stopped when a woman touched the hem of his garment – and he looked at her, and he wondered at her faith (Matthew 9). When Jesus looked at the crowds who came after him, he wasn't angry or upset with them. He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without any shepherd (Mark 6:34).
This is what mercy means for Jesus: stopping, no matter how busy you might be, no matter how important your agenda is, no matter how tired you are. For Jesus, mercy means stopping and seeing beyond the obvious. For Jesus, mercy is the main strategy of God's new creation. "From now on we see no one from a human point of view" (2 Cor. 5: 16).
The third way to live God's way is to "walk humbly with God."
We remember that Jesus was not sinful at all, but he was baptized by John, just like ordinary sinners (Luke 3: 21-22). Even though he was the son of God, he took time to pray (Mark 6:46). Jesus didn't eat with the high and the mighty, but with tax collectors and sinners (Luke 15: 1-2). When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, he rode on a donkey, not on a majestic stallion (Matthew 21:7).
We remember what the early church sang about Jesus: "even though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God as something to be exploited, but he emptied himself, and took the form of a slave" (Philippians 2:6-7).
For Jesus, humility meant that, over and over, he identified with people who felt far away from God. He could have said, "Everyone look at me! I have never sinned!" But he said, "I can see everyone who has sinned. And these are my people. These are my people." So "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21).
Do justice the way Jesus did justice. By making a place for someone you have shut out of your life.
Love mercy the way Jesus loved mercy. By stopping and looking at someone long enough to see him as a child of God.
Walk humbly the way Jesus walked humbly. By putting away your pride, and being reconciled to all of your kin.
What gift could we give to God to thank God?
God says, "Do not worry about bringing anything fantastic. Just do these three ordinary things. They will be enough. Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly with me. And that is enough, because it is the way of Jesus my son, and if you want to know who I am, look at him."
—Paul Janssen
United Reformed Church
Somerville, New Jersey
United Reformed Church
Somerville, New Jersey