Obligatory Justice – The Law of God and Public Policy

Obligatory Justice
The Law of God and Public Policy

Justice begins with respecting the image of God in others.

“When you make your neighbor a loan of any sort, you shall not go into his house to collect his pledge. You shall stand outside, and the man to whom you make the loan shall bring the pledge out to you.” Deuteronomy 24:10, 11

The first and most basic facet of justice is obligatory justice. In the exercise of obligatory justice we give to others the dignity, respect, and love they deserve by virtue of their being human beings and image-bearers of God.

Paul paraphrased this aspect of a Biblical view of justice by writing that we should owe no man anything except to love him (Rom. 12:8). Biblical justice begins in our obligation to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to respect them as fellow beings made in the image of God. Obligatory justice is thus foundational to all other forms of justice. Unless obligatory justice is learned and practiced, from early on in life, it will be difficult to achieve justice according to any other of the facets of a Biblical view.

Our text gives an example of obligatory justice at work. Loans were not encouraged in ancient Israel, but neither were they forbidden. God understood that people could come upon hard times, and at such times it might be necessary to borrow from one’s neighbor. But coming into the debt of another person did not mean compromising one’s integrity.

In ancient Israel, making a loan to someone did not give the one who made the loan the right to violate the privacy or slight the honesty and integrity of the one who was the recipient of the loan. There were to be no Simon Legrees in ancient Israel. If the terms of the loan included a pledge, the one making the loan was expected to trust the good and honest intentions, as well as the word, of the one receiving the loan, and wait for him to bring the pledge out to him. Justice—neighbor-love—obligated the one making the loan to honor the word and property of the borrower.

We owe a good many things to all our fellow human beings. Together, these make up the various obligations of neighbor-love. We owe them honesty, truth, and fairness in contracts, wages, and communications; respect and care for their persons and property; due process in civil matters; and the protections of justice at all times. We are our neighbors’ keepers, and whatever love requires of us, we must be ready to perform. Justice begins with the sense of our being responsible to relate to our neighbors on the basis of love—the Golden Rule.

It is not the place of public policy to require neighbor-love, but to assume it. Much of what constitutes obligatory justice will be practiced only out of a sense of gratitude to God and devotion to His Law, quite apart from any statutory obligations. One’s own interests also come into play, as obligatory justice requires that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

However, when clear transgressions of obligatory justice are committed, it is the role of public policy to insure that redress is made. This it will do by engaging other facets of justice.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T. M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.