Staggeringly, there are people who believe this life is it. Good, bad or ugly, the end is the same: You die, and “that’s yer lot, chum.”
So all those people who lived a horrible life, in poverty and polluted cities, in constant threat of lunatics and psychopaths, who lived out their lives in unceasing pain, damaged by poor choices and drugs, who were scammed, cheated and lied to, were stuck in unhappy marriages, and had to watch their kids be consumed and groomed by filthy minded deviants, and all of it without justice ever being done – and people casually say, “Well, that’s life, chum, that’s all there is, so suck it up because there’s no hope or proof of anything better.”
And that’s acceptable? By whom, pray tell?
Not by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus, who all believe in justice, because of one crucial point: that this life isn’t all there is. There’s a life after death, preceded by a day of reckoning in which all of us are held accountable for our actions in this life now (Romans 2:5-11). Bad people get what’s coming to them. But people who tried their level best to live by the Golden Rule, live a good life in accord with their conscience, and brought up their kids to be responsible citizens – surely, there has to be justice for them too, right?
Absolutely right, say Christians, because that’s why Jesus came to this earth as a human being, to take upon himself every injustice ever done in all human history, take the suffering and punishment it all warranted and deserved, and without doing one wrong thing himself be falsely charged and put to death at the hands of self-righteous hypocrites gleefully using their power to get rid of him. So he knows what injustice feels like, all right.
We’re not alone, then, when we’re tormented by injustice too. And what a relief that three days after Jesus was unjustly murdered he was raised back to life again, and given the power to deal with all this awful injustice going on. And it’s so good to know that God “has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed,” Acts 17:31.
We cry out for justice, because God built that into us. As children we’re incensed if something isn’t fair. And we’re in a world right now that cries out for “equity.” Well if we don’t get it now – because it’s simply beyond us to create it – the good news is: justice will be done, the proof of which was God “raising Jesus from the dead,” verse 31.
Buck To Basics 