In s strange way, according to the Bible, God’s justice works in two ways. 

We like to celebrate His justice when it works in our favour. When we suffer at the hands of others, despite our passion to retaliate, we resign ourselves to the promise that God will avenge the wrongs done to us. We are content to let Him fight our cause for us. 

“Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭12‬:‭19‬ ‭NIV‬‬

In fact, we look forward to the day when God’s vengeance falls on the heads of those who have hurt us!

Let’s pause for a moment to take a look at the way God’s justice works. 

Does God enjoy punishing people for doing wrong? No, He doesn’t! 

“As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of wicked people. I only want them to turn from their wicked ways so they can live. Turn! Turn from your wickedness, O people of Israel! Why should you die?”

‭‭Ezekiel‬ ‭33‬:‭11‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Unlike us, He grieves when people defy Him. He created every human being to love Him and to enjoy the benefits of His love. People hate God, first because sin makes them afraid of Him. Second, people run from God because they don’t know Him. 

God doesn’t usually punish people by inflicting something bad on them although, in the Bible, there were times when He did judge them for really wicked behaviour in response to blatant disobedience, defiance, or rebellion. 

Of course, the greatest evidence of His justice is the exile of His people to Babylon. He said it would happen if they persisted in their idolatry…and they did persist…and it did happen. God always keeps His Word. 

In the main, how does God’s justice work and how is His justice just?

Everything we say and do has consequences. Sometimes the consequences are good and sometimes they are bad…and sometimes doing the right thing can even have adverse results. 

God warns us of the consequences of doing wrong so that we can make the right choices and take responsibility for the choices we make. This is the place where God’s justice begins to work. 

God gave Adam the right to make choices and decisions before he sinned. After he sinned, he still had the right to make choices but…only within the sinful nature he had chosen after he had fallen. 

Consequences are the way that God’s justice works in practice. If you stick your hand in the fire, you will be burned. That was your choice, not God’s fault. God simply confirms the choices we make. 

There are examples in Scripture of how this works. 

Take Pharaoh, for example. God told Moses to go to Pharaoh, to tell him to release the Israelites. Pharaoh refused…five times…five plagues followed, one consequence for each refusal, confirming Pharaoh’s decisions.   Then God hardened Pharaoh’s heart five times…another five plagues…again confirming Pharaoh’s choices. 

Paul explains God’s justice more clearly in Romans 1. Wicked people refuse to acknowledge God. They worship idols and reject God’s moral standards. In response, God confirms their perverse sexual behaviour by giving them over to their lusts and to a reprobate or depraved mind so that they could no longer make moral judgments. 

So, in simple terms, if people persist in rejecting God and truth, choosing to follow their sinful desires, God gives them what they want…and with it, a dead conscience…and the inability to know the difference between right and wrong. 

How just is God’s justice!

However, God’s justice works in another way as well. 

God is love. His nature is love…therefore He refuses to allow sin to destroy forever the people He made. To reconcile sinners to Himself, the  debt of sin had  to be paid. Since God is perfectly just, sin’s debt must be paid by a human because humans incurred the debt. 

So, what did God do? There was, is, and never has been a human, born into this world, who is without sin. The only alternative, for God, was to come Himself, with the same nature as humans…but without sinning…to live under the same conditions as humans…and to die the death that humans must die to pay the debt of sin. 

We must pay the debt for our sin because God is just. God, in the person of Jesus, paid our debt in our place because God is just.  

So, Paul could write…triumphantly…

“God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭3‬:‭25‬-‭26‬ ‭NIV‬‬

God’s justice is satisfied in that Jesus paid sin’s debt for all people and…in that He is perfectly just in that He can declare that all people who receive His gift of forgiveness by faith, are not guilty. 

God’s justice costs us nothing if we leave vengeance to Him. He repays those who do wrong to us through the consequences that follow them. 

Since we sinned, God’s justice costs us everything if we refuse to repent. Since Jesus did not sin, God’s justice cost Him everything to pay our debt and set us free from the penalty of our sin. 

We can, therefore, say that God’s justice is perfectly just in every way.