Requirement for Consent

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exalted’ (Ps. 89:16, AV; cf. a similar contrast within Is. 56:1). When Isaiah, therefore, speaks of ‘a just [AV; righteous, RSV; ṣaddîq] God and a Saviour’ (Is. 45:21), his thought is not, ‘A just God, and yet at the same time a Saviour’, but rather, ‘A ṣaddîq God, and therefore a Saviour’ (cf. the parallelism of *‘RIGHTEOUSNESS’ with salvation in Is. 45:8; 46:13). Correspondingly, we read in the NT that ‘if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just [dikaios=faithful to his gracious promise, not, demanding justice] and will forgive our sins’ (1 Jn. 1:9). Such concepts of non-judicial ‘justice’, however, must be limited to those passages in which this usage is specifically intended. In Rom. 3, on the contrary, with its contextual emphasis upon the wrath of God against sin and upon the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ for the satisfaction of the Father’s justice, we must continue to understand dikaios (Rom. 3:26) in its traditional sense: ‘That he [God] might be just [exacting punishment, according to sense 5 above], and [yet at the same time] the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus’ (AV; see 8. As a condition that arises out of God’s forgiving ‘justice’, there next appears in Scripture a humanly possessed ṣeḏāqâ, which is simultaneously declared to have been God’s own moral attribute (ṣeḏāqâ in sense 4 above), but which has now been imparted to those who believe on his grace. Moses thus describes how Abraham’s faith served as a medium for imputed righteousness (Gn. 15:6), though one must, of course, observe that his faith did not constitute in itself the meritorious righteousness but was merely ‘reckoned’ so. He was justified through faith, not because of it (cf. John Murray, Redemption, Accomplished and Applied, 1955, p. 155). Habakkuk likewise declared, ‘The just shall live by his faith’ (Hab. 2:4, AV), though here too the justification derives, not from man’s own, rugged ‘faithfulness’ (RSVmg.), but from his humble dependence upon God’s mercy (contrast the self-reliance of the Babylonians, which the same context condemns; and cf. Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11). It was God’s prophet Isaiah, however, who first spoke directly of ‘the heritage of the servants of the Lord … their ṣeḏāqâ from me’ (Is. 54:17). Of this ‘righteousness’, A. B. Davidson accurately observed, ‘lt is not a Divine attribute. It is a Divine effect … produced in the world by God’ (The Theology of the Old Testament, 1925, p. 143). That is to say, there exists within Yahweh a righteousness which, by his grace, becomes the possession of the believer (Is. 45:24). Our own righteousness is totally inadequate (Is. 64:6); but ‘in Yahweh’ we ‘are righteous’ (ṣāḏaq) (Is. 45:25), having been made just by the imputed merit of Christ (Phil. 3:9). A century later, Jeremiah thus speaks both of Judah and of God himself as a ‘habitation of justice’ (Je. 31:23; 50:7, AV), i.e. a source of justification for the faithful (cf. Je. 23:6; 33:16, ‘Yahweh our righteousness’, 9. But even as God in his grace bestows righteousness upon the unworthy, so the people of God are called upon to ‘seek justice’ (Is. 1:17) in the sense of pleading for the widow and ‘judging the cause of the poor and needy’ (Je. 22:16). ‘Justice’ has thus come to connote goodness (Lk. 23:50) and loving consideration (Mt. 1:19). Further, from the days of the Exile onward, Aram. ṣiḏqâ, ‘righteousness’, becomes specialized into a designation for alms or charity (Dn. 4:27), an equivalent expression for ‘giving to the poor’ (Ps. 112:9; cf. Mt. 6:1) One might therefore be led to conceive of biblical ‘justice’, particularly in these last three, supra-judicial senses, as involving a certain tension or even contradiction: e.g. ṣeḏāqâ in its 7th, gracious sense seems to forgive the very crimes that it condemns in its 5th, punitive sense. The ultimate solution, however, appears in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The ethical example furnished by his sinless life (Heb. 4:15) constitutes the climax of biblical revelation on the moral will of God and far exceeds the perverted though seemingly lofty justice of the scribes and Pharisees (Mt. 5:20). Yet he who commanded men to be perfect, even as their heavenly Father is perfect (Mt. 5:48), exhibited at the same time that love which has no equal, as he laid down his life for his undeserving friends (Jn. 15:13). Here was revealed ṣeḏāqâ, ‘justice’, in its ethical stage 5, in its redemptive stage 7, and in its imputed stage 8, all united in one. He came that God might be just and yet the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus (Rom. 3:26) and that we might be found in him, who is made BIBLIOGRAPHY. H. Conzelmann, ‘Current Problems in Pauline Research’, in R. Batey (ed.), New Testament Issues, 1970, pp. 130 – 147; W. Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, 1, 1961, pp. 239 – 249; D. Hill, Greek Words and Hebrew Meanings, 1967, pp. 82 – 162; J. Jeremias, The Central Message of the New Testament, 1965, pp. 51 – 70; G. E. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, 1975, pp. 437 – 450; J. B. Payne, Theology of the Older Testament, 1962, pp. 155 – 161, 165f.; G. Quell and G. Schrenk, TDNT 2, pp. 174 – 225); Norman H. Snaith, Mercy and Sacrifice, 1953, pp. 70 – 79; and The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament, 1946; J. A. Ziesler, The Meaning of Righteousness in Paul, 1972; H. Seebass, C. Brown, NIDNTT 3, pp. 352 – 377. Sanday and Headlam, ICC; *JUSTIFICATION). Theo. Laetsch, Biblical Commentary, Jeremiah, 1952, pp. 191 – 192, 254). our righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30).

Payne, J. B. (1996). Justice. In D. R. W. Wood, I. H. Marshall, A. R. Millard, J. I. Packer, & D. J. Wiseman (Eds.), New Bible dictionary (3rd ed., pp. 634 – 636). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity

Press.

[The New Bible Dictionary, Third Edition]

Below is what God expects of ALL judges, including secular judges: 57

Unjust Judgments Rebuked.

A Psalm of Asaph.

Requirement for Consent

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EXHIBIT:________

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