The Weightier Matters of the Law: Justice, Mercy and Faith

Steve Corley

 

Given in Kingsport and Roanoke on December 11, 2021

Given in Knoxville on June 18, 2022

Given in London/Corbin on August 6, 2022

 

 

In an earlier sermon here in London, KY I touched on what Christ said in Matthew 23:23 – the scribes and Pharisees were making a show of strict observance of minor details of the Law while neglecting what He called the “weightier matters” at its core – justice (or judgment), mercy and faith.  I said that I planned to talk about these areas more in a later sermon – and here it is.  We can learn a lot from exploring all three of these concepts and how they are so deeply interrelated and intertwined.  In this sermon, I would like to do a “deep dive” into what the Bible tells us about these three core areas of judgment, mercy and faith – and what we thereby learn about how to live our Christian lives.  We can title the sermon simply “The Weightier Matters of the Law: Justice, Mercy and Faith.”

 

Let’s turn to Matthew 23:23 and read it again.  Doesn’t what Christ said here remind us of another Scripture?  Let’s turn to Micah 6:8.  The prophet here tells us that all that God requires of us is to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with Him.  We see justice and mercy specifically mentioned here also – and (as we will get into later) humility is a major part of being faithful.  Let’s also look at the Greek words used in Matt. 23:23.  The word for “justice” or “judgment” is Strong’s #2920, κρίσις (“krisis”), from which we get our word “crisis.”  (Observing how a person behaves in a crisis is indeed one way of judging his character and competence.)  Strong’s defines the word simply as “decision” or “judgment” – and also gives another definition we will discuss later.   The word for “mercy” is Strong’s #1656, ἔλεος (“eleos”), defined simply as “compassion.”  The word for “faith” is Strong’s #4102, πίστις (“pistis”), defined as conviction, constancy or faith.  If we look at Micah 6:8 in the Septuagint (Greek translation of the original Hebrew), we see that the Greek words for “justice” and “mercy” used here are the same ones used in Matt. 23:23.  Christ was evidently alluding to a portion of the Micah passage, just as He so often quoted other sections of the Old Testament – and He, the true Author of the Old Testament, was certainly the One who could clarify the exact and true meaning of any of its text.

 

We see that Micah 6:8 tells us that all that God requires of us is to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with Him.  But let’s turn to Matt. 22:37-40 – the famous passage where Christ gave the two great commandments.  But does that contradict what the passage in Micah tells us?  Certainly not.  The two passages are complementary, not contradictory.  We are to show justice, mercy and faith in our love for God.  Likewise the love that we are to show toward our fellow human being can be divided into the characteristics of justice, mercy and faith.  [Such is another illustration of the principle that the Bible is like a hologram.  If we look at it from a different angle we see something different – and all the different views are of something true and important.]

 

Let’s deal with justice (or judgment) first.  I gave a sermon on this topic here back in June. We are told in Matt. 7:1 not to judge lest we be judged but in John 7:24 we are told to judge righteous judgment.  The Greek word for judgment (or its verb form) is the same in all the cases – the same Greek word we mentioned earlier.  The seeming contradiction can be solved if we understand, however, that the Greek word can refer to “condemnation” as well as “judgment.” If we reread Matt. 7:1 as ‘condemn not, lest you be condemned” then the seeming contradiction with verses such as John 7:24 disappears.  Some versions do show in the margin that “condemn” is an alternative translation in Matt. 7:1.  In the second verse of Matthew 7, however, “judge” probably indeed is the best translation of the Greek.  In any case, the point here is that we should not condemn others – that is certainly a point of love toward neighbor!  (One place where we will certainly find people condemning others is on the Internet.  Anonymously, online, many people feel free to pour out venom toward anyone who does not meet their own humanly devised standards regarding health practices, diet, environmental consciousness, etc.)  But God rather judges righteously and we are indeed supposed to imitate Him by doing likewise.

 

One passage which deals with an aspect of righteous judgment which is very much part of love toward neighbor is James 2:1-9.  We must not show partiality or bias toward particular persons.  We must not discriminate against people based on what they are (with respect to race (Acts 8:26-38), ethnicity (Col. 9:11), national or family origin, socioeconomic status, etc. – the last of which is particularly called out in this passage in James).  (Of course we certainly may discriminate against people based on what they do – their behavior – as Paul in fact commanded the Corinthians to do in 1 Cor. 5:1-5, to put out of the Church a member who was openly living an immoral lifestyle.)  In John 7:24, before being commanded to judge righteous judgment we are told not to judge according to appearance.  Samuel had been similarly warned not to do this much earlier in 1 Sam. 16:6-7.  Complementary to the passage in James 2 we read, we are similarly told in Exodus 23:3 that we also must not show partiality in the reverse direction – we should not be biased in favor of a poor man in a dispute merely because we sympathize with him for being poor.  Similarly, if we have any power over judging a dispute we are not to take a bribe from any of the parties – such introduces automatic bias in favor of the one who gave the bribe (Deut. 16:19).  Samuel’s sons were condemned for taking bribes while serving as judges (1 Sam. 8:1-3).  Similarly we should not let factors such as friendship toward one of the parties cause us to be biased in a dispute if we are in the position of trying to resolve it.

 

We should remember that God’s commitment to justice is so total that He required the death of His Son in order to pay the penalty for our sins.  The wages, the penalty, of sin – the transgression of the law, lawlessness (1 John 3:4) – is death (Rom. 6:23) and God the Father required that this penalty be paid.  Since the One who became Christ was the Creator of humanity, His life was worth more than the sum total of the lives of all other human beings and hence His death could pay the total penalty for the sins of all other human beings.  In this we see the link between justice and the second of the “weightier matters of the law,” mercy.  The death of Christ, fulfilling the justice of God, made the mercy of God possible – the fact that the death penalty was paid for us allows our sins to be forgiven upon repentance and enables the gift of eternal life (remainder of Rom. 6:23).  Here we see how justice and mercy are intertwined – the justice of God enables His mercy toward us, which is far greater than any mercy we can possibly show toward others.

 

But because we have been extended tremendous mercy by God and have been forgiven for our sins against Him (since Christ has already paid the penalty), we must “pay forward” by showing similar mercy toward those who commit sins against us. We must imitate God – we must show mercy just as God shows mercy.  The parable of the unforgiving servant (Matt. 18:23-35) warns us of what will happen to us if we do not extend mercy and forgiveness to those who have committed offenses against us.  In Matt. 7:2 we are warned that we will be judged by the same degree of strictness we have used in judging [condemning?] others.  In James 2:13 we are similarly told that judgment [condemnation?] is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. 

 

But what about the final sentence in this verse of James 2:13 – “mercy triumphs over judgment” – with respect to what we have seen earlier about how we should judge righteous judgment and also how God’s justice makes His mercy possible, then what is wrong with judgment and why should mercy have to “triumph” over it?  Do we have a contradiction here?  Again, possibly a better translation of the Greek here would be “mercy triumphs over condemnation” – which indeed hopefully will eventually be the case for the vast majority of humanity.  God wants to extend mercy, not condemnation, to everyone (2 Peter 3:9).  We have all sinned – we have all broken God’s Law, we have all earned the penalty of eternal death by doing so and no amount of good works on our part can change that fact.  Only God’s mercy to us – made possible by the fact that the death of Christ has already paid the penalty – can remove that penalty from us.  However, God’s mercy does have conditions.  We must repent of breaking God’s Law and we must strive to obey His commandments to the best of our ability in the future.  And one of these commandments is that we must extend mercy toward our fellow human beings, just as God is merciful to us (remember the parable we read of the unforgiving servant).  Everyone who becomes incorrigible, everyone who refuses to meet the conditions required to receive God’s mercy and whom God must eventually condemn to the lake of fire, represents a victory of Satan over God in the life of that particular person.

 

Now let us discuss the third area of the “weightier matters of the Law” which Christ mentioned – faith.  As we mentioned at the beginning, the Greek word πίστις (“pistis”) is defined by Strong’s as conviction, constancy or faith.  God is faithful.  He always keeps His agreements and promises.  He has absolute power to do so – nothing can prevent Him from carrying out what He has said He will do.  He will even go so far as to honor completely an agreement which He apparently made with Satan.  He apparently allotted Satan a certain definite number of years as ruler of this earth but will have to take Satan out of power before the allotted time is up to prevent Satan from destroying humanity – and specifically for the sake of us, His Church, the elect (Matt. 24:22, compare Matt. 16:18).  But God will still keep His agreement to give Satan the allotted time – that seems to be the probable reason He will release Satan for a short time after the Millennium (Rev. 20:3, 7-10).

 

We are similarly supposed to be faithful – we must imitate God who is faithful.  We must uphold all agreements we have made – our agreements with other humans and most especially our covenants with God.  (Of course, unlike God, we as physical beings do not have absolute power to carry out what we have agreed to or promised – outside forces can prevent us from doing so.  However, as far as depends on us, we must honor our commitments.)  And here we can go back to the third requirement mentioned in the parallel passage of Micah 6:8 – that we “walk humbly with our God.”  Faithfulness requires humility.  It requires a recognition that God and His Law are above us – we are subject to His Law and are not free to ignore it (in contrast to the brazen example of King Jehoiakim in Jer. 36:21-25 when he cut up and burned the scroll of the words of the prophet Jeremiah).  In a sense, all [deliberate] sins are sins of pride.  By knowingly violating God’s Law we are failing to acknowledge that God and His Law stand above us and that our agreements and covenants bind us.  If we have “signed onto” the New Covenant with God at baptism, we must recognize that we are supposed to be having God’s Law written on our hearts and in our minds (Jer. 31:31-33, Heb. 8:8-10).  How does He write His Law in our hearts and minds?  Through our study of His Word.   We must recognize that we are supposed to obey all of God’s Law – in contrast to the scribes and Pharisees who made a show of strict obedience to minor points, while flagrantly disregarding much more important areas of the Law. 

 

Likewise, faithfulness requires a humble admission that we are also subject to, and under, any agreements we have made with our fellow human beings – they also must be honored.  Our agreements must be ironclad – especially our marriage agreement (Mal. 2:16, 1 Cor. 7:10-14).  [Of course, there are certain Biblical conditions given where termination of a marriage can indeed be justified in the sight of God – Matt. 5:32 and 19:9, 1 Cor. 7:15.]  An exception to the rule that agreements must be honored, however, is a prior agreement to do something which is unlawful – which is forbidden by God’s Law (note example of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:8-9).

 

We are among the few who are called and chosen by God in this age.  In order to meet Christ in the air when He returns (1 Thess. 4:17) and then to be among these who will come back with Him to earth to rule under him, we must complete our part of the process by being faithful (Rev. 17:14). 

 

We have explored the three points called out by Jesus Christ as being “weightier matters” of the Law – justice (or judgment), mercy and faith.  We have seen that the specific verse in Matthew where these words appear echoes a verse in Micah – and that being faithful (as mentioned in Matthew) certainly requires walking humbly with God (as described in the parallel verse in Micah).  God the Father and Jesus Christ themselves are our perfect examples of justice, mercy and faithfulness and we must strive to imitate them in all three areas.  God judges perfectly – He knows the heart of each human being (1 Sam. 16:7) – and in fact it is His justice which has made His mercy possible.  He wants to extend His mercy to all mankind – it is not His will that any should perish [eternally] but rather that all people should come to repentance [a key condition for receiving His mercy which leads to eternal life].  And God the Father and Jesus Christ are the ultimate examples of faithfulness – they always keep without fail all their agreements, covenants and promises.  And if we are truly faithful we will follow God’s commands to “do justly and love mercy” toward other human beings also.  Let us follow Christ’s instructions and pay particular heed to the “weightier matters” of the Law.  Let us be among those who meet Christ in the air when He returns and accompany Him back to earth to rule under Him – those who are “called, chosen and faithful” (as we read in Rev. 17:14).