Demystifying Biblical Justice
Ecourse
The Demystifying Biblical Justice eCourse introduces the topic of biblical justice in an approachable, understandable way.
This series is taught by Jessica Nicholas, author of God Loves Justice: A User-Friendly Guide to Biblical Justice and Righteousness. Questions addressed include:
How does the Bible define justice and righteousness?
What are some biblical examples of doing justice?
How are our modern ideas of justice different from Biblical ones?
Why can it be hard to see justice in the New Testament?
Can we do justice and evangelism?
How do we keep hope alive in the midst of seeing and experiencing injustice?
Each video teaching comes with a downloadable outline, which includes the sources for the material.
Chapter 1
What Does God Say That He Loves?
To launch this eCourse about Biblical justice, we are going to start by looking at what God says that He loves in the Old Testament. God’s heart is the best starting place to learn about justice.
Chapter 2
God Loves Justice
God says that He loves justice, so if we want to love what He loves, we need to learn what His justice is. We look at the Hebrew word for justice, mishpat, and what it means. God’s mishpat is transformational—restoring the world back to right again—and covenantal—restoring our relationships with Him and others. It brings order where there is chaos, life where there is death, and salvation where there is destruction.
Chapter 3
God Loves Righteousness
God says that He loves righteousness, so if we want to love what He loves, we need to learn what His righteousness is. We look at the Hebrew word for righteousness, sedeq, and what it means. Biblical righteousness has much more to do with social morality and is foundational to relationship. It is demonstrated through right, constructive action, not merely refraining from wrong behavior.
Chapter 4
God Loves Justice and Righteousness
What does it mean when justice and righteousness appear together? Not only do mishpat and sedeq show up frequently by themselves; they also are used as a word pair around 80 times in Scripture, including Psalm 33:5, which says that God “loves sedeqah and mishpat.” This is a closer look at what it means when justice and righteousness are paired in the Old Testament.
Chapter 5
Doing Mishpat
What would it look like to do mishpat? In Israel, mishpat was dynamic, causing change and making wrongs right again. This is a look at a story from the life of Solomon gives us a great example of how to express mishpat in action.
Chapter 6
Hebrew Versus Western Views of Justice
Part of the challenge of learning about biblical justice is that our Western-ish views of justice are so different from the views from the time the Bible was originally written in. How can we change our Western-ish flavored views of justice to a more biblical view? A helpful place to start is to get an overview of how different the Hebrew views of justice are compared to the Western.
Chapter 7
Rivers Versus Scales
A helpful illustration of just how different our Western views of justice are from Biblical justice can be seen in the two of the culture's symbols: scales versus rivers. We look at the common western symbol for justice, Lady Justice, and compare it to an image in the book of Amos, a mighty river.
Chapter 8
Happy, Delightful Justice
If you got the news that God’s justice was coming, how would you feel? Confused? Scared? Nothing? The emotional response we see in the Bible makes a clear picture: God's justice and righteousness are so awesome that it makes pretty much everyone and everything everywhere happy. This is an important lesson for us. Being shaped by God's own heart for justice and righteousness, and getting a biblical understanding for that they are, means that our reaction to justice and righteousness should include excitement, happiness, and delight.
Chapter 9
Wisdom: Our Guidebook for Justice
Even when you learn how God defines justice, how then are we supposed to bring that awesome justice into the world in a practical way is hard to wrestle through. Shouldn’t there be a nice, neat little formula to follow? Or at least a detailed how-to guide? Alas, the Bible does not contain justice formulas or manuals. We aren’t alone in this wrestling process. The person in the Bible best set up to administrate justice to his nation had to work through a similar problem: Solomon. Through his life, we can see how God equipped him to do justice with a tool accessible to all of us, the tool of wisdom.
Chapter 10
Why is it Hard to See Justice in the New Testament?
For many growing up in modern, western evangelical churches, we were taught that justice and social justice were not part of our Christian lives. Often, we got the message that social justice is anti-biblical. There are many reasons for the misconceptions. Let’s go through some of what I think are some of the reasons why Western Evangelical Christians have a hard time seeing justice and righteousness/social justice in the New Testament.
Chapter 11
Justice: Hiding in New Testament Translations
If you look for the English word “justice” in the New Testament, it appears less than 10 times in most translations. It’s hard to see that the New Testament values justice when it seems almost silent on the subject. Justice is an important part of the New Testament, but it takes a bit of work for Western, evangelical Christians to learn to see it.
Chapter 12
God’s Heart for Widows
Throughout the Bible, God shows over and over again that He is deeply concerned with the most vulnerable and marginalized in the world. Caring about the poor and vulnerable is a reflection of the character and nature of God himself. This is a look at how Old Testament and New, God and His people demonstrate care for one group that was especially vulnerable during their time, widows.
Chapter 13
Bruised Reeds and Smoldering Wicks
Are Evangelism and justice competing for space in our expressions of Christian living? Understanding how justice and evangelism can fit synchronically into the kingdom of God is challenging because there have been splits in the history of the Protestant church over the topic.
Chapter 14
Hope-Filled Justice
Have you ever been completely overwhelmed when looking at an issue of injustice—especially one that feels huge and totally out of your control? You want to just let your heart break over it, but there’s so much going on and it feels enormous and unsolvable. That doesn’t seem like the ideal circumstances to feel hope. But Our God is a God of justice, love, and compassion—and all of that is joined with the most hopeful perspective on injustice. It’s so important that we as Christians reflect the hope our God has, especially when we look in the face of seemingly hopeless situations.