At Gateway Austin, we continued our new series “Hello, My Name Is….”
Your view of God shapes everything—how you pray, how you lead, how you suffer, how you love. What we believe about God will determine the kind of world we imagine we’re living in.
But what if our view of God is all wrong?
When Moses asked to see God’s glory, God did not first display raw power. He proclaimed His name and revealed His character: compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin – yet not leaving the guilty unpunished.
This six-week journey shows what we can learn about God from His interaction with kings, poets, prophets, and people just like you and me. When we know who God really is, we can know Him more and make Him known.
Digging Deeper:
Gateway South Austin Video Message:
Gateway South Austin Audio Message:
Message Notes by Justin McCarty:
Your view of God shapes everything—how you pray, how you lead, how you suffer, how you love. What we believe about God will determine the kind of world we imagine we’re living in.
But what if our view of God is all wrong?
Rather than having a skewed version of God based on what the world has told us or what others have told us. We’ve been looking at what God has revealed about himself to us.
When Moses asked to see God’s glory, God did not first display raw power; instead, he revealed his heart and his character.
“God passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6-7)
We love the first part of this description of God but struggle with the last phrase.
This last phrase takes us back to a view of an angry, vengeful God. It’s why some of us may struggle with the Old Testament and the book of Revelation because we don’t like the idea of God’s judgment. We get tripped up by his justice.
Today we are going to do a deep dive into this topic, and we are going to look at it through the lens of the cross. We are going to help make sense of the Old Testament by looking at the New Testament because when we truly understand God’s justice, we will be more in awe and more in love with Him.
Before that, let me just explain this last phrase about punishment being passed down to the 3rd and 4th generation.
You see, God is warning us that sin has consequences that can ripple through generations, and when those generations continue in the same rebellion, God will not pretend that rebellion doesn’t matter. Yet His covenant love and forgiveness extend vastly farther than the reach of human sin. The name of God shows us that the consequences of sin reaches to the third and fourth generation, while his faithful love extends to thousand of generations when we trust Him and walk in His ways.
Now to truly understand God’s justice, you need to know that I may say some things today that don’t make you happy; you may be upset or in disagreement. That’s okay. The church is meant to be a community where we work through tough issues with God’s help and a commitment to love one another through the difficulties. I want to prime you for that and ask for your prayers and grace as we walk through this.
As we talk about God being a God of justice today, the reason this is difficult is that we often approach the topic of justice as wounded, angry, or unforgiving people. There is no possibility of justice if you are carrying those things in your heart. If you walked into a courtroom with a wounded, angry, unforgiving judge, you shouldn’t expect justice. They wouldn’t be qualified to judge rightly.
In the same way, if we approach God or the need for justice in our world with those things in our hearts, we shouldn’t expect to ever find real justice. I want to ask you to consider the possibility today that our hunger for justice is often fueled and guided by the wrong things. If you find yourself getting angry, frustrated or opposed to what I’m saying, just remember that we are often approaching this topic with those filters and it makes it difficult to hear what God says about himself and the true nature of justice.
THE REAL QUESTION FIRST
Let’s just jump straight to the question that most conversations about God’s justice eventually center on: How can God be just when there is so much unjust suffering in the world? If God is really all that we’ve been saying he is throughout this series – compassionate, gracious, patient, etc. – if he really is so good, how can he let this world be so bad? Why do innocent people suffer? Why do bad things happen to good people?
There are usually two primary reasons people ask this question:
Cognitive Dissonance: The facts of the world don’t line up with the good vision of God presented. This is a more abstract philosophical or theological journey – how can we reconcile human experience with the reality we experience? Or are we just making this up? Inquiring minds want to know…
Personal Suffering: The deeper reason this question haunts us is that we or people we love have suffered greatly. This isn’t abstract; it’s deeply personal and touches the core of our emotions. The question is: “If God is good and just, why did he let this happen to me?”
So let me offer a preliminary in response to each as we look closer at Jesus and the scriptures to reflect on what God has revealed about himself and about justice:
Do the work: If you have serious intellectual or theological questions, there are two millennia worth of research, writings, debates, and answers. We live in an age that attempts to reduce highly complicated issues down to soundbites, one-liners, and 30 second Instagram reels. You will not find a satisfactory answer if those are your sources. Smarter people than us have wrestled with this – follow their trail.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
Seek a personal encounter with God: If what haunts you is deeply personal, know now that there is nothing I or anyone else can say that can change the past or undo what it has cost you. Although there is no answer that can undo the wreckage, God can profoundly change your future. You need to encounter God himself on this issue. The Book of Job is a case study in how dumb answers from well-intentioned people didn’t do a thing to help – but when Job’s heart was ready, God showed up in a way that helped Job move forward into a new kind of future. I don’t know what you need to see or experience of God, but if you insist on encountering him, he will honor that faith.
THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD
If God claims to be a God of justice, what does that mean and how can we really trust him? Let’s center our discussion on a single passage of scripture – written after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus because Jesus helps make sense of God’s justice in such an amazing and beautiful way. We will be spending time today in Romans 3. As we do so, it’s helpful to be clear on terms. We’re going to see the word “righteousness” a bunch – not a word that we use much. The word translated righteousness is Dikaiosyne (di-KAI-oh-SOON-eh): Righteousness or Justice – it is also translated as “justice.” Its meaning is less about legal justice and more along the lines of “what makes someone a truly good person.” Think dikaiosyne when you see “righteousness” or even “justified.”
But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 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— 26 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 3:21-26
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
Let’s just walk this through for a moment:
Retributive Justice
When we approach justice, we typically mean that we want things to be “made right.” When a bad person does bad things, they receive punishment. That’s Retributive Justice: You must pay for what you’ve done. Let’s try retributive justice on the human situation: Let’s start with the good people – bring in everyone who has done purely good and never engaged in any form of evil. Okay, no one. Then everyone else is tainted with bad. If we demand retributive justice, everyone who has ever lived needs punishment for their wrongs. If you demand retributive justice, you are demanding punishment for yourself. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23 NIV) If retributive justice is what we want, it’s going to be unpleasant for everyone.
The arc of the Bible reveals that God would like to move beyond retributive justice as a way of dealing with evil. However, if you insist on dealing with God, others, and life in these terms, he will allow it. As we discussed on Week 4, there is a “day of judgment” coming that the scriptures speak of – and if you’ve demanded retributive justice as your rule of life, you will find it, but it may not be all you were hoping for.
Rehabilitation & Restoration
What we’re seeing in this passage is that God is revealing his kind of righteousness (his dikaiosyne) in a different way – it is something more like Rehabilitation and Restoration. We shouldn’t be surprised, given what we explored about God in Week 4 of this series. God’s kind of justice isn’t focused on meting out punishment for all guilty parties – it’s about overwhelming evil with good; he desires to rescue people from the evil within them and, through them, heal what they have put into the world.
Romans 3 is telling us that God went for the jugular by not just addressing the symptoms of human evil (that would be retributive punishment for everyone’s sins). Through Jesus, he entered into death himself and destroyed the power of sin. God’s righteousness was revealed in his refusal to simply “give us what we deserved” – he sacrificed himself to atone (unify) us with God and liberate us from sin and death. He is “just” (dikaios) and “justifier” (dikaioo)– he is not only the good, right person, but his kind of righteousness is revealed by his choice to transform our evil into righteousness, rather than punish everyone for their mistakes.
ATONEMENT
How did all this happen? If we think of sin and death as a deadly infection, then Jesus’ work of atonement is like a transfusion of God’s eternal kind of life that overwhelms the infection, but comes at the cost of Jesus’ life. Christ is both God’s mercy (free gift of new life) and justice (reckoning with sin) working together at the same time – it is all a manifestation of God’s righteousness (dikaiosyne).
God, in effect, is saying, “Hello, my name is Dikaiosyne, and if you want to know how, let’s meet near the cross and empty tomb of Jesus.”
God doesn’t dodge evil. He has met it head-on. The unjust suffering in the world is a symptom of the rebellion, sin, and death at work in the human race – which each of us has perpetuated and added to. But his kind of dikaiosyne means he chooses to deal with the root causes; he wants to transform human nature, preserving human agency, rather than simply punishing all of our wrongs or abandoning us entirely to the full “wages” of sin and death.
Jesus shows us what the justice of God looks like — it begins with a personal investment of loving mercy to make things right. He doesn’t desire retribution; he aims for repentance. Remember the words we looked at during Week 3 of this series regarding God’s patience: 2 Peter 3:9 (NIV) – “Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” God’s kind of righteousness means that he offers reconciliation (atonement) through Christ to anyone who will receive him.
WAITING FOR JUSTICE
Now, here’s the rub. Because God has given people the opportunity for repentance and transformation, he is not “fixing” every wrong choice. Hence, our big problem with injustice on this earth.
We often pray that God would make justice roll down like waters (Amos 5:4). We want God to be kind of like Batman—terrorizing the criminals and making them pay. But the hard truth is, we’re the accomplices to the wrong that has ruined our world. There is a lot you will not see “made right” here and now. Dikaiosyne only prevails where God is King, and everything is not yet under his rule. In the words of management experts, “our system is perfectly designed to get the results that we are getting.” The lack of God’s kingdom is the root of injustice.
While we wait and ask, “Where is the justice? Why do so many suffer unjustly?” God looks at us from the cross and answers, “I’m working on it— where are you?”
Many quarters of the church still pray for God to rend the heavens and clean things up through sheer brute force. But God’s plan isn’t “shock and awe.” Instead, we have a strange kind of justice enacted through radically sacrificial love—a justice that restores by drawing the evil out of our hearts and filling us with a new kind of goodness.
True justice and righteousness on earth wait for the people of God to live from the kingdom of God in their everyday lives. We are the agents of dikaiosyne as we allow his Kingdom to come through us. Which means There will be no justice for all of us until the righteous heart of God beats in each of us.
FOLLOWING JESUS INTO JUSTICE
“That’s all well and good, pastor, but I live in the real world – with a spouse who has lied and cheated on me; friends who have betrayed me; business partners who have stolen from me; parents who abused me; a legal system that has failed my family and me; racist and classist inequalities that block me because of the color of my skin; an economic system that constantly has a foot on my neck and won’t allow me to get up. What does anything in Romans 3 or this entire message have to say about the injustices I still have to deal with?”
We gather here to learn to be Jesus’ disciples. So we approach the injustices we face as Jesus’ disciple – learning from him how to be like him. How did he approach the injustices inflicted on him?
JESUS FORGIVES
Romans 3 tells us that he didn’t track down everyone who had sinned against him, demanding full payment for their wrongs. It says, “In his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished” (Romans 3:25) choosing instead to forgive rather than punish. In the last moments of Jesus’ life, we see this embodied concretely as he prays for the forgiveness of the soldiers who are torturing and killing him.
The first step toward true justice is to surrender the woundedness, the anger, the resentment, the hatred – the unforgiveness in our own hearts. Justice will never “be enough” as long as we allow the toxic cloud of unforgiveness to choke our souls.
The truth is, I don’t know what was done to you, but I know that human beings do horrific things to one another, and sometimes this world can be brutally unfair. But Jesus’ life shows us that even those experiences can be enfolded into the kingdom of God – and from there, they begin to look different. As we’ve discovered about God’s character, God mourns with those who mourn. He comforts those who need comfort. God did not inflict that evil upon you. He is not the author of evil. He is the One who can heal us from the effects of evil and even forgive us and cleanse us from our evil. What happened to you in the past doesn’t have to define and rule your future, but it begins by forgiving. This is what Jesus lived and it’s where he invites you to follow:
To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. 1 Peter 3:21-23 NIV
JESUS DOESN’T DISTANCE
The other thing we learn from Jesus about his approach to justice in our world is that he didn’t stay distant. Let’s be clear: We were the ones who had transgressed against him; we were the criminals, and he made the move toward us. Despite the injustices perpetrated against him, he didn’t wash his hands of us or condemn us – he came closer in proximity rather than pushing us away.
To be clear: that doesn’t mean that you buddy up with everyone that’s done you wrong. In many cases, the wise and good thing to do is to keep someone from perpetrating repeated harm or abuse; we don’t participate in the sins of others. But it doesn’t mean that we dehumanize or demonize them. We can still push to see them as human beings, flawed and broken – just as we are. We can refuse to let pain drive our hearts away from the humanity of those who have wounded us, opening the door for God’s kingdom to transform our relationship with them.
Here’s what it can look like sometimes:
In 2006, the small village of Nickel Mines in Pennsylvania was subjected to a shocking tragedy. A local truck driver, Charles Roberts, entered a one-room Amish schoolhouse, barricaded the doors, and took ten young schoolgirls (ages 6 to 13) hostage. He shot all ten girls, killing five, before taking his own life. The world watched the news in horror, but the Amish families of these girls opened the door for the Kingdom of God to break in.
On the day of the shooting, an Amish grandfather of one of the murdered girls urged younger relatives not to hate the killer, saying, “We must not think evil of this man.” Hours after the attack, members of the Amish community visited Roberts’ widow, Marie, and his parents. One Amish man held Roberts’ father in his arms for over an hour to comfort him. At Charles Roberts’ funeral, around 30 Amish community members arrived to show support for his family. They formed a physical wall with their backs turned to the news media to shield the grieving family from cameras. The Amish community later established a charitable fund from donations received worldwide and directed a portion of those funds to Roberts’ widow and three young children.
Why would the Amish do this? Because they were following the way of Jesus. Now, we differ in our theology in many ways. The Amish see all technological advancements of the 1880s and beyond as giving into “the ways of the world” whereas we see ourselves as called to be a light in the midst of the darkness.
Here’s what we need to know: God didn’t just deal with the injustice perpetrated against him by cutting us out of his life – in Jesus, he drew nearer to us, he put his arms around us, he loved us where we were – and he invites his followers to learn how to do the same.
JESUS PRIORITIZES RESTORATION
Lastly, we see in Jesus the desire to bring justice through restoration. He would prefer repentance to retribution. Recall the famous scene from John 8, where Jesus publicly defends a woman caught in the act of adultery. There is no question of her wrongdoing – Jesus himself doesn’t avoid the truth. But in choosing to advocate for her, he opens the door to restoration. Her repentance didn’t fix the home or family she had wrecked, but the rule of God emerged in her heart and life – and the dikaiosyne of God broke through into our world.
Awesome for Jesus, but how do we seek the restoration of people who have clearly done wrong? As we see in John 8, Justice exercised in love doesn’t offer simplistic formulas. You will still have to act in your life and exercise wisdom. Dikaiosyne doesn’t mean you can’t seek legal justice for someone who has wronged you; it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t seek to end oppressive systems and structures; it doesn’t tell you how to vote or what laws to advocate for.
But Jesus calls you to examine your heart — to look to him, the one who showed us what God’s kind of justice looks like — and consider the kind of action you might need to take, rather than just reacting to the wrong. There is no formula, no easy answer – it requires you to move closer in proximity, to understand, to seek repentance over retribution, to salvage what can be saved, to prioritize restoration if at all possible. It doesn’t always work as you’d hoped — even God’s track record isn’t perfect.
But this is how we follow Jesus to bring true justice, in the name of God, to our world – life by life.
So let’s consider a few questions. Just take a moment and pray within your heart and mind and ask God:
Heavenly Father, who do I need to forgive?
Would you help me forgive them because you have forgiven me?
Dear Jesus, to whom do I need to draw close?
Who needs to know your love and comfort through my kindness, my actions, and my willingness to tell them about you?
Dear Holy Spirit, show me where I’m struggling to trust you because of the injustice of our world?
Show me my part to play to bring justice, to make things right for those who are suffering.
Finally, I want to invite you to surrender your heart and life to God. This could be the first time for you do this. You are ready to begin a relationship with God. Or you’ve wandered from following Jesus, and this could be your moment to reconnect and start afresh living a life fully surrounded to Jesus. Or if you already follow Jesus this could be part of your ongoing surrender.
Wherever you’ve been or wherever you are now, if you want to follow Jesus pray this in your heart after me.
Dear God, I surrender my life to you and ask you to forgive me of all my unrighteous thoughts and acts. Thank you for coming to rescue us and taking my sin on that cross. Thank you for dying on the cross – defeating the dark powers, sin, and death. Thank you for rising from the dead and offering me new life and your Spirit to live within me! Guide me in my next step to live a fully surrendered life to you! Help me fully experience your life, peacefully kindness, goodness, peace, and joy and help me bring more of Your presence to those around me! In Jesus’ name. Amen.
