What kind of "justice" is that?

Have you ever noticed how some words have undergone a tremendous change in meaning, sometimes even in our own lifetimes? I think the first time I became aware of that is when my grandmother got a new pair of very lively, colorful pajamas. When she tried them on, she broke out in a grin, saying, “Don’t I look gay in these?” I didn’t have the heart to remind her of the modern definition of the word “gay”.

Another word whose meaning has changed over time is “justice”, which was the central theme of Pope Benedict XVI’s address at the start of Lent this year. Reading his words, I realized that the popular view of what “justice" is has undergone some important changes from Biblical times to our current day.

I did some searching on the web to find out how the word “justice” is defined nowadays. Here are some examples:

• From the Missiouri Coalition Against Domestic And Sexual Violence: Justice is generally understood to mean what is right, fair, appropriate, deserved. Justice is achieved when an unjust act is redressed and the victim feels whole again. Justice also means the offender is held accountable for his behavior. 
•  From Wikipedia, Justice concerns itself with the proper ordering of things and people within a society.
•  A political dictionary discussion of justice is a bit more detailed: [Justice] is the existence of a proper balance. Justice in law illustrates applications of the notion of a proper balance: a fair trial, which, among other things, achieves a proper balance between the ability of the defendant to establish innocence and the ability of the prosecution to establish guilt; a just sentence (see punishment) which balances the precedent wrong with a present response.

In other words, “justice” means “we get what we deserve”.

It seems that we’ve tilted our sense of the word “justice” to mean “retribution”. For most of us, “seeking justice” means that wrongdoers will be punished in a way manner commensurate with their crime.

In contrast to this view, though, Pope Benedict points out that “the Christian Good News responds positively to man's thirst for justice, as Saint Paul affirms in the Letter to the Romans: 'But now the justice of God has been manifested apart from law … the justice of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction; since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith' (3, 21-25).”

The Pope points out that the word "sedaqah" is the Hebrew word which expresses the concept of “justice”. In Sedaqah In Jewish/Christian Tradition, William Most says that the word “acquired the meaning of salvific activity on the part of God”.

Not “retribution”, but “salvific activity”. In the words of 1 John 3:4-5, “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins.”

Not “getting one’s due”, but just the opposite.

Or, as Pope Benedict says:

What then is the justice of Christ? Above all, it is the justice that comes from grace, where it is not man who makes amends, heals himself and others. The fact that "expiation" flows from the "blood" of Christ signifies that it is not man's sacrifices that free him from the weight of his faults, but the loving act of God who opens Himself in the extreme, even to the point of bearing in Himself the "curse" due to man so as to give in return the "blessing" due to God (cf. Gal 3, 13-14).


But this raises an immediate objection: what kind of justice is this where the just man dies for the guilty and the guilty receives in return the blessing due to the just one? Would this not mean that each one receives the contrary of his "due"? In reality, here we discover divine justice, which is so profoundly different from its human counterpart.

Imagine what the world would be like if we aligned our understanding of the word “justice” with “sedaqah”… if we placed our emphasis on “restoration and reconciliation” rather than “retribution”.

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