Warrior Jesus 5, Jesus Defeats Injustice

In a nutshell: Every human being is hardwired to detect injustice – as soon as we sense it, our alarm bells start ringing. Sometimes this sense of right and wrong has its wires crossed and we are too aware of sleights we receive while not having sufficient empathy for real victims of injustice. But often we see mankind at its best when there is injustice – when people care passionately about fair trade, about Darfur, about sex trafficking, about corruption in government. We know that the world is not as it should be, and we want it to change. But no matter how much campaigning or fund raising we do it seems there is always a fresh injustice springing up somewhere. We need one who is not only able to judge perfectly, but has power to implement the verdict. This judge is Jesus. Jesus defeats all enemies. Jesus defeats injustice.

Our sense of justice is an echo of God
All of us have suffered injustice at some level and all of us are born with a sense of right and wrong. We see this in children whenever they say, “its not fair!” Often our sense of injustice is perverted by our selfishness, but the ability to recognize injustice is a consequence of us being made in the image of God.

We also see people at their best when they have a right reaction to injustice. We should kick out against injustice. We should want to do something about it.

Campaigning against injustice is fashionable
Since Live Aid in 1985 there has been a new attitude to injustice, and the springing up of many campaigning organisations – Fairtrade, Stop the Traffik, Jubilee 2000, Make Poverty History, Comic Relief, etc.

The irony though is that even this can be twisted. We start to think there is salvation through wrist bands, or through drinking fair trade coffee. We start to see visible adherence to these things as a distinguishing mark of being fashionable, of being socially acceptable.

We start to miss the point.

The campaigning will never stop
Why can’t we fix injustice? We have laws, law enforcers, and lawyers in abundance, but there is still injustice. The more we talk about ‘rights’ the less generous towards others we seem to be. And even when we do manage to deal with some gross injustice another is always ready to spring up and take its place – we dealt with slavery, but got apartheid. We dealt with apartheid, but got genocide in Rwanda. We have cleared some third world debt, but the global depression will hit the poor hardest of all.

We all want things to be put to rights but don’t seem able to do it. In the end I have to conclude that the problem is me! There is something about us humans that prevents there ever being complete justice.

We need a champion who can fully defeat injustice
I need one who can answer my inner longing for justice and deal with the problem inside me which corrupts justice. We need one who can do what all the laws and lawyers and law enforcers and campaigners cannot do. We need a champion who can win justice.

Jesus is that champion!

How Jesus defeats injustice
1. By siding with the oppressed (Luke 4:14-21)
Jesus came to undo injustice: he came to beat poverty, captivity, sickness, and oppression. A champion from heaven came to do this!

2. By acting this out in his ministry
Jesus walked with the weak. He removed peoples shame; he cleansed the lepers, he made well the woman made unclean through bleeding. Jesus healed people. Jesus cast out demons.

3. By not using earthly methods
A hero is expected to act in heroic ways, which to us always means violence. We expect a hero – Zoro like! – to overthrow the baddies by violence. Jesus didn’t do this. He made a weakness play rather than a power play.

4. By becoming a victim of injustice
This was the least expected play of all. By suffering as a victim of injustice Jesus makes justice possible. How?

Acts 17:22-31

The Athenians were very like us. They were looking for salvation but were not sure where to find it, and they were engaged in a constant debate about how to make society better.

Paul’s answer to the Athenians debates was this: “What you’ve been doing is not without value; but here is how the problem is really going to get resolved: One day a judgement will happen that will be absolutely right. How can we know this will happen? Because Jesus has been raised from the dead.”

Paul comes back to where we started this series – death is the chief enemy. Beat it, and you beat all the enemies.

How does Jesus’ victory over death defeat injustice?
There can be no peace, no justice, without reconciliation. What we need more than anything else is reconciliation with God. Reconciliation has been made possible because of Christ’s total obedience to his Father. Jesus was the perfect man. He reconciled humanity to God by killing sin in his body on the cross. It is sin that leads to injustice and Jesus has made a way for sin to be dealt with. Jesus has made a way to conquer the split in my soul; to conquer the divide between the part of me that longs for justice and the part of me that creates injustice.

Jesus now has the right to judge all because he is the only one who has ever acted completely justly. His perfection was proved by his resurrection. As risen king he will come to judge.

How, then, should we respond to injustice
1. As ministers of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:17-21)
People cannot be reconciled to one another until there is reconciliation with God. We who have experienced this reconciliation are now to act as ministers of reconciliation. We are to help people come into peace with God, and so into peace with one another.

2. By finding the answer to suffering in Christ
All of us suffer and all of us sin. The answer to our sin and the answer to our suffering is only found in Christ’s sinless suffering.

3. By learning to forgive
We all experience injustice. We can either hold onto our sense of grievance, nurture it and look for revenge; or we can kill it in the way Jesus has killed it: through forgiveness.

4. By remembering the poor
This is the apostolic commission. We are called to be a people of compassion. We are called to do the works of the Kingdom. We are called to be Christ to the world.

A great example of this is John Newton. Newton caused a great deal of injustice through his involvement in the slave trade. He also suffered injustice, and was for a time himself enslaved. Newton then came to faith in Jesus, and came to see the appalling injustice of the slave trade. He then became a fighter for justice, and was instrumental in the campaign to ban slavery in Britain.

This is what Jesus does: Jesus defeats all enemies. Jesus defeats injustice.


Application Questions
• How have you sinned? And how have you suffered?
• What types of injustice make you the most angry? Why?
• How can you work for justice?
• How can you be a minister of reconciliation?