Love and Justice

November 20, 2022

“For I the LORD love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.” Isa. 61.8

“Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” 1Jn. 4.8

Isaiah places justice at the center of God’s identity. Time and again, God calls his people to justice (Isa. 58.6-7 is a particularly clear example). The Gospel of John places love at the center of God’s identity. Jesus’s death is characterized by love, the same love we are to have for one another (Jn. 13.34-35; 15.12-13).

It’s easy to separate love and justice. Love is personal; justice is impersonal. Love is gentle; justice is harsh. Love includes and forgives; justice separates and condemns. 

All Christians would confess we should love one another. Not all Christians would say we need to actively seek justice for one another. Love for one another is clearly the work of God, and something we should be active in. Bringing about concrete justice for one another is surely considered a good thing, but perhaps it isn’t the work of God, and perhaps we can get away without pursuing it actively. It’s easy to separate love and justice.

But what if they can’t be separated? What if love implies justice, and justice demands love? Perhaps this isn’t readily apparent from experience, but maybe we can see it in God. 

God creates us to be in relationship with one another and himself. God creates us out of and for love. If we define justice as “working according to the will of God,” then the first call of justice is to love one another. That is, after all, what God created us to do. Committing injustice, then, is being blind to God’s created order. If God created us all equal, to be equal recipients of his love, to be equal recipients of love from one another, then on what grounds do we oppress someone? 

Bringing love and justice together may help us clarify both. Love can be shallow and weak. Justice gives it flesh. Justice can morph into vengeance and self-righteousness. Love tempers excesses, and reminds us to be concerned about the spiritual health of the oppressor. We can be blind to justice. Love reminds us to listen to others, which is perhaps the first step in recognizing where injustice is done. 

Injustice is a corrosive sin rooted in pride. Pursuing justice is an act of love for the oppressed, as well as the oppressor. We do not love people we are oppressing, which means we cannot know God if we are oppressing others.

—John Coffey