lenten blog | March 25, 2025

Law and Justice Are Not Always the Same

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for March 25th:  Psalm 39; Ezekiel 17:1-10; and Romans 2:12-16.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

The Ezekiel passage in isolation is unintelligible.  It is describing cryptically the realpolitik situation of the defeated nation of Judah.  The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar deported Jerusalem’s king Jehoiachin to Babylon and installed Zedekiah on the throne in Jerusalem.  Zedekiah held onto the hope of restoring national independence and so he attempted to play off the Egyptian empire against the Babylonian.  Zedekiah hoped that the Egyptians would be able to offer protection.  These efforts fail miserably and Nebuchadnezzar will return and utterly defeat the nation of Judah and demolish the city of Jerusalem, including its temple.  This tragedy marks the end of the Jewish nation-state and it will not be restored officially until 1948.  This is the meaning of Ezekiel’s parable when he writes:  “‘Will [the vine] not shrivel when the east wind blows?  It will wither on the soil where it was growing.’”

This may be a parable offered in a religious setting, but it is a story of naked earthly power.  It is the logic of might makes right.  It forces the will of the stronger upon the weaker.  It doesn’t seek to convince the weaker because it is not a relationship of allies, but of intimidation.  It is also inherently unstable.  When empires collapse, most others will celebrate new found freedom and opportunities.  Relationships based mainly on power last only as long as there is power.  Lose the power and the empire loses control because the ones subjugated were never allies.  The Nazis convinced themselves that their model would last a thousand years.  It never made a decade.  The Soviets subjugated Eastern Europe, but at their first opportunity those nations broke free.  Empire is not something that endures.  It rots from within because as Lord Acton noted in the 19th century, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Law in power-based nations is a tool of the powerful.  It is not intended to be about justice or rights.  It is simply another tool used to punish and subjugate the weak.  Laws are used when helpful and ignored when a hindrance.  Judges are praised for favourable decisions and threatened for anything less.  The diminishment of law and the courts so that they are only expected to sanction the rule of the powerful is a sure sign of national decay.  In such situations, legal and illegal cannot be equated with right and wrong, moral and immoral. 

This is why Paul makes the distinction that he does in today’s passage.  He separates sin and righteousness not on the basis of the presence or absence of the law.  Profoundly, morality is independent of the law.  To governments who control by power and who intimidate by laws, Paul offers this radical alternative of justice:  “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified.  When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves.  They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness.”  Conscience is supreme in this system of morality and justice because the laws cannot be trusted.    

I remember seeing Alexei Navalny held in a cage in a kangaroo courtroom in Russia while the judge presided over him.  Navalny was on the side of justice and right.  The judge and the system he perpetuated were on the side of injustice and tyranny.  When Putin had Navalny assassinated last February, Putin was on the right side of the law, but on the wrong side of morality.  Anyone with a conscience could see this.  Whenever the weak are toyed with by the powerful’s law, the law is unjust.  Whenever the powerful determine the law for their benefit, the law is unjust.  And Paul closes today’s passage, writing, “God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all.”  Those secret thoughts of conscience hold-up the unjustly convicted as righteous and condemn the manipulators of law as sinful.

Jesus was condemned by the powerful, by the state, by the state’s law enforcer and the state’s laws.  The righteousness of that convicted instigator who was hung upon the cross is now observed and followed some 2,000 years later, while that empire of power who convicted Him is consigned to history. 

Lent is our season to feed our conscience.  Our inner voice is ultimately the final voice of right and wrong.  Such authority must be nurtured.  So read the Bible, think about the Jesus of the Gospels, ponder the lessons of our crucified Saviour, and then live them “[f]or it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified.” 

If you would like to join us for our online Bible study, please send an email to [email protected] for the Zoom logins.
​
If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.