Whoever keeps the whole law but fails at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker. Speak and act as those who will be judged by the law of liberty, for judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
—James 2:10-13
In human courts, mercy and justice seem clearly to be mutually opposed: justice for the victims of crime means imposing punishments on criminals, and pleas for mercy are requests that those punishments be lessened (or not imposed at all). At the same time, the operation of human justice consists of the rendering and enactment of judgments on crime and criminals.
Given these realities, it’s no surprise that we assume God’s justice and mercy to be equally at odds. Salvation through Jesus is often understood as God’s mercy overcoming his justice, and this understanding is presented as a straightforward reading of James 2:13b: “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” We may not even notice that it says judgment rather than justice—after all, aren’t they the same thing?
Well, no. No, they aren’t. Judgments are on sinners, but justice is the destruction of sin and the restoration of right order. Human courts can only accomplish the latter through the former because they only have the ability to control and affect human bodies, and thus can only address sinful acts by physically punishing the people who commit them. God has no such limitations, and thus has other means besides judgment to enact justice.
God’s justice requires the destruction of sin, but not the destruction of sinners. Twice in the book of the prophet Ezekiel (18:23, 33:11) he makes it clear that he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but only when the wicked let go of their sin and turn to God, allowing him to destroy their sin without destroying them. If we will allow the sharp edge of God’s justice to be a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting out the cancer, it will be painful for us, but it will be the pain of healing and restoration rather than of judgment. It’s only when we cling to our sin, refusing to let him cut it away, that his justice against sin becomes judgment on us.
This is because the justice of God is not fundamentally about punishing sinners. It certainly involves punishing sinners, but that is neither its essence nor its ultimate purpose. As I’ve noted before, the Hebrew word for justice, mishpat, is about healing and reweaving the brokenness of creation into the integral, harmonious wholeness of the original created order. If we envision the world as we know it as an egg shattered on the floor, mishpat is the work of un-shattering it and returning it to being a pristine egg. Actions in keeping with mishpat are those which serve that restoration.
In that broader context, it becomes clear that we human beings are not necessarily or essentially God’s enemies (even if it often feels like he is ours). His great enemy is the one who rebelled against him and then seduced humanity into joining his rebellion. The Devil, 1 Peter 5:8 tells us, “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour”—we are his intended prey; we are responsible for our choices and our actions, but at the same time we are his victims.
Justice for the Devil’s crimes, then, is served by setting his victims free. Which is to say, it’s served by showing mercy to those of his victims who will receive it. As such, when mercy triumphs over judgment in the lives of sinners, it doesn’t mean mercy is trumping justice—not in the larger story. Quite the contrary. The triumph of mercy over judgment is the cosmic justice of God.