"Let Right Be Done"

“Very easy to do justice. Very hard to do right,” says Sir Robert Morton in “The Winslow Boy.” But is that right?

Justice, from jus, juris: law. Portia, in Merchant of Venice, reminds us of the shortcomings of justice in praising mercy:

“It is an attribute to God Himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice.”

Justice is not enough. In the case of the Winslow Boy (an excellent movie based on a play, which is presumably also excellent), justice would have been following the technicalities of law, which would have resulted in doing wrong. This was partly because human justice is imperfect. But even pure “justice” which knows all the facts does not go far enough. It leaves us all condemned; unless we go beyond the justice of the law to the justice of grace. “Whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” Justice is, in a sense, very easy. It is written where we may all see, declaring all of us guilty.

Except that Someone took upon Himself the harder course of “right,” and made it just. Or rather, made us just, even though we were guilty. That is the righteousness apart from the law, in which we are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, “that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus…therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law (emphasis added).”

It’s also easier to accept justice than right (or grace). If we were justified by law, we would all know that we got what we deserved. Under grace, we know we don’t deserve what we get; we deserve nothing, and are not capable of justifying ourselves. This is the stumbling-block simplicity of Christianity: there is nothing we can do for ourselves, for we are justified only by grace through faith.

This is what makes the chapter before Javert’s suicide in Les Miserables so powerful: he is an exact picture of someone who is so riveted on justice that he cannot accept grace. When the law condemns him, he refuses to acknowledge that there is a higher law which will save him, the law of right, and so he condemns himself.

And this is ultimately the problem with an idea of salvation based on works: it’s setting ourselves up as God, the arbiters of a different standard than the one He set. But it is easy to produce our own rules, by which we can condemn others and save ourselves, and much harder to admit that we are nothing, that we can do nothing, that we deserve nothing but punishment. That we need a God who will make us just because He is righteous.

“If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.”

“Grace, grace, God’s grace:
Grace that will pardon and cleanse within;
Grace, grace, God’s grace:
Grace that is greater than all our sin."