March 12, 2017: Justice, Forgiveness and Death – Landon Lynch

We are people who hold tightly to a justice. What we often overlook is that justice in the hand’s of anyone who is not willing “to lay down his life for his friends” … or his enemies – well that sense of justice often leads to blood shed. It leads to the death of the other, and in the end, may well lead to the death of everyone we know because everyone does things to upset us at some time or another. But there is another way of understanding justice … and that is through the lens of forgiveness. This is the story restorative justice tells.

 

The trouble with this perspective however is that we, the offended, are the ones whose blood is shed. We are the ones, who like God who forgave all in Christ, die to and die for the injustice committed against us. We can’t imagine ever doing such a thing! And this is perhaps due to how we unconsciously think of God. We can’t imagine that God really dropped all our sin in death – so how can we ever expect to do the same thing?