justice and mercy

at Convergence, the young adult group at my church, we have just finished up a series on Romans 12: In View of God's Mercy. it just so happens that in conjunction with this series i have been studying justice in school, and i have a few thoughts about the two. when one thinks of justice and mercy, they seem to be two contradictory things. you can bring justice to someone by punishing an offensive action, or you can show mercy to someone by sparing from punishment or forgiving an offensive action. an example of this would be court judges. a judge is commonly known for either his justice or his mercy. similarly, when we think of social justice in the form of the trend that has swept the church in the past decade or two we think of bringing justice to evildoers that have infringed on human rights around the world (freeing sex slaves and punishing brothel owners in southeast asia, or trying corrupt leaders for war crimes or genocide in war-torn african countries). biblically, i think the two are not only complimentary, but inextricable. pursuing social justice is good, but i believe the bible calls us to move beyond social justice to social mercy as well. it is only when justice and mercy are intertwined do we come close to presenting the gospel. there are several instances in the bible where God begins to tell us of the link between justice and mercy: Zechariah 7:9, Micah 6:8 and Matthew 23:23 to name a few. if the gospel stopped at justice, we would all be doomed. thankfully God has brought justice by also showing mercy which brings us into a place of reconciliation. when we unite justice and mercy we bring the oppressor and the oppressed face to face, we find forgiveness, reconciliation and redemption and we are brought to our knees in the presence of our redeemer...together. now that is the gospel.