Biblical Justice is more than innocence or guilt it's also Truth coming to light
Just recently, a young man in my home town was shot in the back three times, accused of having waved a gun at the plain clothes officer. The problem with this accusation is that the young man had subway sandwiches in one hand, and a key opening the door to his house in the other hand.
There's no justification for shooting anyone in the back, when there's no threat to the officer's life and the accused is not endangering the life of another, even if he's in the process of criminal behavior, which was not the case with this young man. Justice in this situation deals with the truth coming to light and the process of the unnecessary use of force used by law enforcement against certain people groups being condemned and rectified.
In the summer of 2020 in Wisconsin, another young man, Jacob Blake, was shot in the back 7 times and paralyzed, but this time there was video evidence of him discarding the orders of the police to put his hands up and surrender.
On August 9, 2014, the shooting of Michael Brown occurred in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown was an unarmed, 18year-old African-American male, killed after being shot multiple times by a Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, as he was purported to be holding his “Hands Up” saying, “Don’t Shoot,” The incident sparked protests and acts of vandalism in the St. Louis suburb, as well as national calls for an investigation. The rallying cry for this protest became the slogan “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.”
I know there will be some that will speak out in opposition to this Michael Brown shooting and say, “Officer Wilson was exonerated, or not indicted for any wrong doing in this tragedy, so why are you mentioning this incident of Michael Brown, who was obviously culpable in his own death, with video footage of him having just robbed a convenience store, and then him being purported to having attempted to go after the officer’s gun, before He was killed? Yet there was a cry for justice in both cases, as well as in all the cases of police involved shootings of unarmed Black men over the last 25 years.
Why? because, A Cry for Justice is also a Cry for a Just One in the administering of the consequences of wrong behavior. A cry for justice is not saying Jacob Blake did not have to obey the officer’s orders, or that Micheal Brown wasn't wrong in the incident with the convenient store or with his interaction with Officer Wilson. A cry for justice is also saying that the officer didn’t have to shoot him 7 times in the back. Or that officer Wilson didn't have to shoot a 18 year old 7 times with no weapon, to restrain or subdue him, or that Murderer Meade didn't have to shoot Casey Goodson Jr in the back three times with a rifle.
Casey Goodson purportedly waving a gun at the officer, or Jacobs wrong, or Micheal Browns wrong does not preclude the injustice of excessive use of force in police brutality of the officer enforcing the law. Any shooting of any man by a police officer, black or white, in the back, 3 or 7 times, of a young man that has no weapon, or that's not pointed at the officer, is unjustified.
And justice must be served.
These are just a few recent, more prominent, documented accounts of police brutality in America’s not too distant past. However, police brutality has been present in the African American plight throughout its history in America. From slavery, through the Civil Rights Movement, to the Rodney King beating, which led to the L.A. riots, up to this decades beating of Brandon Johnson by a police officer in 2010, to the present, it still exists in the year 2021.
Biblical Justice is more than innocence or guilt, it is about truth. Biblical Justice is about the truth coming to light. A person can be wrong and be just, or a person can be right and yet be unjust in a particular situation. A person can be wrong, and justice still not be served in his situation, even in his wrong, if he/she has been treated unjustly or unfairly in the process of the administration of justice.
When there is an unjust balance in the justice system concerning certain people, injustice can still be perpetrated even when a accused person is found to be in the wrong. When there is preferential treatment for certain people caught in criminal activity and others are not given that same treatment or they're not given the benefit of the doubt, there is injustice happening even to those that are perceived to be in criminal activity, or even caught in criminal activity.
When Whites are given a pass or given the opportunity to stand trial and go through the legislative process when they are caught in criminal activity, and blacks are not, but are gunned down for the very appearance of a crime committed, that is unjust, even though the black man may very well had committed a crime. The very fact that the White man is able to make it to a court room and be tried for his crime and the black man is killed, often times without a weapon, is unjust.
Justice is not about innocence or guilt but about the process of the truth coming to light. It is about fairness, and just weights and balances on a scale, and deals with wrongs being made right in both the process and the administering of the justice. It is also the reconciliation of the wronged with those who have wronged them, when this is possible.
So, when a cry for justice goes up from an oppressed people for the unjust handling of someone that is perceived by the masses to have committed a crime, the source of the cry for justice is more than the guilt or innocence of the person being accused of the crime, but also, the just process of the person enforcing the law, was it fair or unfair and necessary or unnecessary force to the persons perceived to be in the wrong.
We need extended times of Prayer for Justice before we Protest for Justice.
With this in mind, there is a need for the oppressed to approach these situations with a wisdom that assures these situations are rightly and truthfully addressed, and not just a band aid placed over these incidents because an officer was caught on camera. This is why we must pursue God's justice from a Biblical vantage point. God's justice is a process that will assure that those in the wrong recognizes their wrong and truly repents because they were wrong, not just because they were caught.
There are biblical principles and virtues that are a part of God's process to justice, that when enacted will bring more than surface, superficial responses and operational changes in how law enforcement administer the law. I call this form of justice, biblical justice, which is superior to social justice that comes out of being caught by society administering an unjust weight on the balance scale of justice.
Biblical justice must be initiated through prayer for justice, going to the judge of heaven and earth for justice first, as we see in Luke 18:1-8, for the release of the conviction that causes the wrong to admit their wrong, rather than a protest only method for justice, that may get the attention of the Judges for justice, but not necessarily convince them that there has been an injustice committed.
When You Pray, Say....The 7 prayers of encounter to Accelerate the prophetic promises over your life and regionIf there is not prayer for justice, as opposed to just protest for justice, there may never be true justice administered from the vantage point of righting a wrong, as opposed to just silencing the cries of the oppressed for justice after the wrong is exposed. Conviction that is released for the wrong to repent of their unjust deeds requires righteous means for its release.
It requires prayer and wisdom from God that considers God’s desire for both the wronged and those that have wronged them to be transformed, restored to wholeness, and reconciled to one another. If that does not happen, you can spend all day changing the system of operation but if the individuals operating the system never change, it’s just a matter of time until the unjust handling of the oppressed that has been done in the past will be done in the present.
Therefore, justice must begin with truth and righteousness that brings a just weight or a just balance on a scale, for liberty and justice for all. This can only happen from the place of prayer FIRST for justice, as opposed to just protests for justice. A Cry for Justice is a Cry for a Just One. That just one is Jesus, Yeshua Hamischiach......Coming Soon from by book ,BIBLICAL JUSTICE.
Why Prayer Day and Night-Luke 18:1-8
1.Now Yeshua was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart, saying, “In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect man. There was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, ‘Give me Justice from my opponent.’ For a while he was unwilling; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her Justice, otherwise by continually coming she will wear me out.’ ” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge *said; now, will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them? I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”
We need to begin with Luke 18:1-8 prayer day and night, because when you realize you’re being treated unfairly in an unjust system, and you don’t keep yourself covered through prayer, in the midst of injustice, you are going to respond wrong. Remember righteous methods to obtain justice releases righteousness or right to the one who has committed the injustice. Remember, Jesus modeled this in His presentation to His disciples of how to petition for justice in the midst of injustice.
Jesus gives this parable of the unjust judge in the context of the Roman empire colonizing Israel in their own land. Israel was being held down in Marshall Law, through this colonial type of oppression. It was akin to slavery. It’s a form of slavery, where the rulers or the conquerors of a people or a region, send their emissaries and their governors and rulers and armies to rule over the people in their own land.
This is the context that Jesus comes into the earth for – to the oppressed. Because His message, His good news is to and for the oppressed. That is why the only hope for an oppressed people is the gospel of Yeshua Hamishiach. And if we are believers in Christ, and if we are ambassadors for Christ, when we see oppression, the gospel of Yeshua Hamishiach ought to spring up inside of us, to meet the oppressed with a message of hope and help.
Not a message of condemnation that looks to explain why they are going through what they are going through because of something they have done wrong, NO! The good news that God sees what you are going through, and He will bring vengeance and recompense in the end. And until then, he will keep you in the peace that surpasses all understanding. Those that preach the good news treat the oppressed as Yeshua treated them. Like the woman that was caught in adultery in John 8.
Justice said she should be stoned. But Yeshua said Go and Sin no more. I have already put in place a plan from the foundation of the world, to take your sins upon my back to take your place and carry those sins away. And even though you should be stoned, I say to you…. Has any man condemned you? Where are your accusers? No one, Lord. Neither do I, GO AND SIN NO MORE.
This is how Yeshua treats the oppressed. He does not condone their sin, He covers, while He atones and cleanses their sin, and then sends them to sin no more. Many Christians in this back and forth debating over social justice in the black community and in race relations, they are busy trying to prove that the oppressed people group are either wrong, or they are not experiencing the oppression they say they are experiencing.
Why don’t they just obey the police? they say. If they would just follow orders and obey the law, they wouldn’t get shot 10 times without a weapon. That is not the heart of Yeshua. That just reveals that we are operating out of religion, and not out of the faith in the man that we serve, that came to an oppressed people and loved on them and gave His life for them.
In this particular parable in Luke 18, Jesus says, concerning the widow woman. Listen what the unjust judge says and will not God avenge the very elect that cry out to Him day and night?
The disciples thought their Messiah would come to overthrow, with a violent overthrow, their oppressors. They thought Yeshua was going to overthrow Rome. Especially Judas, which had formerly been a part of a zealot group, set on overthrowing the Romans by any means necessary. This is one of the reason Judas betrayed Yeshua.
Yeshua’s plan of how He would bring salvation to the nation did not line up with Judas’ plan of what He thought Yeshua Hamishiach would come and do to overthrow Rome. Yeshua’s plan for the nation of Israel in their dealings with their oppressors, was to love their enemies, bless those that persecute you. Pray for those in authority over you. This plan that could only be enacted through prayer, day, and night, was diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive to Judas’ plan. Therefore, Judas’ betrayal was inevitable once he was unwilling to lay aside his own plan and take up his cross and follow Christ.
If we are going to have the fortitude to wait on God’s plan for justice to be enacted in the earth, we are going to have to first approach justice with day and night prayer. If you do not pray day and night for justice, you are liable to develop a bitterness and offence towards those that are oppressing you that slowly eats away at your soul while you're waiting. And that does not end well for either party, the oppressor, nor the oppressed. We must pray to cover your heart, while waiting on God to convict those that are in the wrong and release biblical justice.
Many African Americans, if we do not give ourselves to God’s process for Biblical justice, that begins with prayer for justice, before protest for justice, if were not careful, we’ll end of betraying Christ as Judas, because of offense with God’s process to Biblical justice. We must pray to avoid falling into the trap and deception of the anti-Christ.
