This week I attended a workshop on restorative practices with a group of educators from across our county. We explored several exercises for working with youth that can help them build relationships, be heard, take responsibility for their actions, change their behavior, benefit from shame, and become productive, accepted members in their spheres of influence. I appreciated the curriculum’s emphasis on restoration for all stakeholders when someone offends versus solely isolating the offender and administering retribution.
This is clearly a biblical approach. In God’s righteous and holy kingdom all wrong must be accounted for. God will do so, but in the process of judging evil deeds he desires to spare and restore the evildoer as well as victims. In dealing with humankind God is always at work saving. Although we have all offended him through our willful disobedience and deserve to die, he desires to restore and reconcile us rather than punish and banish us. We are so important to him that he gave his Son, Jesus, to innocently die on our behalf so we can be saved. Through his death and resurrection Jesus made it possible for anyone to be made right with God now and forever.
Those who trust and obey Jesus to save them receive the righteousness he bought with his blood and are reconciled with God. They receive new life in Jesus and the power to become like Jesus. Those that don’t, continue in their guilt as self-declared rebels against God. They miss all that God has for them now and eventually, by their lifestyle they foolishly choose to pay the death penalty when Jesus returns in judgment to consummate his kingdom on earth.
God bestows the perfect balance of justice and mercy. In him we see tough love and soft love harmoniously working together to make right what we have made wrong. If he didn’t execute justice his permissive, condoning, or apathetic lack of action wouldn’t be loving to all the victims of evildoers nor would it save the evildoer from his destructive behavior. If he didn’t extend mercy he wouldn’t love people enough to give them a second chance. None of us would even live long enough to come to know God. Fortunately we can count on God to do the right thing all the time. God is love and he expresses it fully and fairly nurturing and holding accountable all people (1 John 4:7-12).
God wants his followers as members of his family to act the same way he does. As his ambassadors of reconciliation believers should also seek justice and extend mercy (2 Corinthians 5:17-18). The religious leaders of Jesus’ day did not do that so he rebuked them, “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in…Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!” (Matthew 23:13-14, 23-24). They boasted of keeping the letter of the law while missing the entire spirit of the law. Doing so not only separated them from God, but it also prevented others who looked to their leadership from drawing close to God.
If you want to follow Jesus you must act differently than those religious leaders and differently than your selfish human nature would default to dictate. Our world needs justice and mercy. By God’s grace and power believers must live as salt and light in our world individually and as the church which is the body of Jesus. Salt preserves, flavors, and cleanses. Likewise with Jesus at work through believers, we prevent decay, we testify to how great God is, and we model how to be righteous, pure, and holy. Jesus is the light of the world. His followers are also by reflecting his light so people can see the way out of darkness and death into eternal life with God (Matthew 5:13-16).
How do you know what’s right or how to make things right? Ask God. He is the source of all that is right and good. He will give you wisdom through his Spirit (Psalm 145:17; Deuteronomy 32:4; James 1:17; Luke 11:9-13). In addition, here are some principles you can follow to help you discern:
- Out of love for God study his word, the Bible, with a prayerful openness to apply it. As you read it, when God tells you to do something or not do something, obey him (Romans 7:14-20; James 4:17).
- Out of thanks for his mercy, give back to God all he has given you as a living sacrifice. When you forsake the world’s way of doing things and you allow God to transform your thinking, you’ll begin to understand God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will (Romans 12:1,2).
- Use the wisdom God’s already given you to answer objective questions like: Is it true, beneficial, and fair? Does it build others up? Is it glorifying to God? (adapted from the Four-Way-Test by Herbert Taylor)
- Love others, hate what is evil, and cling to what is good. This is challenging and counter-cultural in our world where people tend to love themselves more than others, call good evil, and call evil good (1 John 3; Romans 12:9-10; Isaiah 5:20).
- Get involved where God is already at work. Reach the unreached. Seek out the least, the lost, the last, and the outcast as Jesus did. Proclaim the truth to everyone, teach those who listen, and train those who respond. Let God work through you to recognize and address immediate physical and emotional needs then continue to allow God to build on that in order to bring deeper spiritual restoration.
God is always preparing you for what he has next. He is calling you to himself and to the restoration of others. Our duty is simple, yet not easy. “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). May each of us do that by God’s grace and power. Then when Jesus returns we will be delighted to hear him say, “‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!'” (Matthew 25:21).