Justice and Grace

And just as we can hardly fathom the divine ferocity awaiting those out of Christ, it is equally true that we can hardly fathom the divine tenderness already resting now on those in Christ.
– Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly

Sometimes I imagine a continuum existing between justice and grace. Justice, on one side, focuses on rules and consequences, on standards of behavior, and exacts perfection. Grace, on the other side, is more willing to bend the rules in the interest of some higher value, whether it be self-interest or kindness. The kids seem to naturally veer more towards one side or the other—those inclined towards justice care about integrity but can become judgmental; those inclined towards grace are more flexible but can get away with less than their best. The more tired or stressed someone is, the more their natural inclination on this continuum emerges.

Functionally speaking, it can be helpful to know where our kids tend to live on the continuum. We say to our justice-oriented kids a lot, “sometimes it’s more important to be kind than to be right.” We try to contextualize the idea of “fairness” (is being fair and being same equivalent? Are you bothered by true fairness or it not being fair to you?) and discuss the value of flexibility. If they mess up, we say “it’s okay to make mistakes” because they’re probably already criticizing themselves in their head. For our grace-oriented kids, we talk about the idea of righteousness—of not only right and wrong, but being right in relation to someone—and why integrity and holiness matter.

I’m not sure if adults find themselves veering more towards one end of the continuum or another (do you?). Maybe we do. Maybe our family culture tends to veer in one direction or another as well. Maybe that has implications for how our kids perceive God, and certainly for what they come to value. Or maybe all of that is an over-simplification.

But in reality, in conceptual truth, I don’t think justice and grace are as opposed as we like to think. The more I think about it, the more I feel that my conception of both is flawed, because I view them primarily in terms of how they relate to me. Justice is what I feel is right or wrong; it is how bad I may or may not feel about my sin. Grace exists only as a counterfoil to that; it is what “gets me off the hook,” what relieves my sense of guilt. Both become cheapened. I don’t have a real sense of the true weight of my sin and the true ferocity of divine wrath. I also don’t have a real sense of the costliest and preciousness of grace. I swing back and forth between one end of the pendulum and the other, while completely missing the point: it is not so much a continuum at all.

Let’s take justice: why is it we don’t feel the weight of our sin? Martyn Lloyd-Jones reflects on this:

You will never make yourself feel that you are a sinner, because there is a mechanism in you as a result of sin that will always be defending you against every accusation. We are all on very good terms with ourselves, and we can always put up a good case for ourselves. Even if we try to make ourselves feel that we are sinners, we will never do it. There is only one way to know that we are sinners, and that is to have some dim, glimmering conception of God.

Speaking of grace, Dane Ortlund writes:

But there is, purely speaking, no such “thing” as grace. That’s Roman Catholic theology, in which grace is a kind of stockpiled treasure that can be accessed through various carefully controlled means. But the grace of God comes to us no more and no less than Jesus Christ comes to us. In the biblical gospel we are not given a thing; we are given a person.

In other words, we don’t live with some kind of spiritual bank account, depositing justice and withdrawing grace. In the purest sense, justice and grace are not separate categories. They are not opposing sides that we choose. They don’t exist apart from each other. They are a person. They are both the person of God. The only way to grasp God’s wrath and God’s grace is to encounter God himself.

Our tendency will always be to put our own personal, human filters on these things. The filter of our own ideas, our personalities, our upbringings, our culture, our biases, our experiences. Perhaps filters are impossible to completely remove while living here on earth; we see now as through a veil. But the more we try to encounter and grasp and experience God for who he truly is, the more we understand justice and grace as the person of Jesus, the more we see the cheapened versions we functionally live with for what they are.

It’s still helpful to know if our kids tend to see the world more through the lens of justice or grace. It’s helpful to know if our church culture veers too much towards grace at the cost of holiness, or holiness at the cost of grace. But ultimately, transformational change does not happen by countering a human conception of justice with its human counterpart of grace. It happens by seeing that we live, all the time, not only in relation to ourselves and to each other, but in relation to God, the God of grace and truth. There is a lot to encounter and explore there. But the more we do so, the more we will be able to present a truer picture of justice, and of grace, to our kids and to each other.