During the 2002 Winter Olympics, a major publication featured a headline that read, “Crybaby Olympics.” The article highlighted the refrain of complaints launched by several competitors who felt they had been robbed of their legitimate attainment by some unscrupulous judge. In any competition there is always the possibility that someone has been cheated out of winning. Anyone who has ever competed knows the feeling of suspicion when medals are awarded on an inexact basis of measurement. Judging is a hazardous task, but so is judging the judges.

The truth is that judgment calls are part and parcel of most sports. In baseball it’s the balls and strikes. The old adage holds true of the umpire who said, “There are balls and there are strikes, and they ain’t nothing till I call them.” Cricket has that element too. It’s too complicated a game to explain in a few words. But anyone who goes to bat knows he can be the victim of a bad call. The hesitancy to leave the batman’s box or the home plate speaks volumes that the one called “out” has not taken kindly to the decision. In Toronto when I used to watch hockey, oftentimes when the home crowd disagreed with the referee’s call, the organist played “Three Blind Mice,” referring to the referee and his two able or “questionable” linesmen.

However legitimate one’s complaint might be, the fearful thing is that the winners of the award never seem to stop by the judge’s desk and say, “Excuse me, but I really do not think I deserved that.” Winners seldom question the validity of the judge’s decision. Losers often do.

All this displeasure proves two things. One, we expect a judge to be objective and fair. Two, there is a more serious concern: How does a judge actually judge if there are no absolutes by which to do the judging? You see, it is one thing to measure how far an object has been thrown and another thing to say which was a more beautiful performance on the ice. The latter demands an aesthetic measure, which is not always exact and can be quite subjective.

But you see, deep inside all of us are both of these moral realities. We affirm the need to be right and fair, and we somehow believe that even in beauty there are some misjudgements that reveal prejudice. What this tells us is that life must have absolutes. Even the aesthetic has to find some point of reference.

Interestingly, God in His Word tells us to worship Him in “the beauty of holiness” (Psalm 96:9 kjv). Even beauty has an element of judgment. This itself reveals the fact that we are born as moral agents and when that moral agency is violated— whether in the objective or subjective— deep inside we cry foul.

Judgment is unjust if the judge is corrupt. After all, is that not also the supposed weight of the question “How can God do such a thing?” The writers of the Bible spoke with that quest for justice. “Let me plead my cause,” they cry. Job questioned God as thoroughly as any-one, and he was considered one of the most upright ever to have lived.

The Bible makes it clear that God is a Judge and He is fair. One of the most telling passages is in the book of Genesis when God was judging the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham was troubled and asked God if He was going to wipe out both the righteous and the unrighteous. God assured Abraham that He saw everything, and Abraham replied, “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). That is the comfort we all need and the moral assurance we may all have. God sees all, knows all, and His judgments are right. It’s a word of comfort we must have when we come before Him. May I remind us that reason alone does not work here.

My father-in-law said he had an older brother who was brilliant in any work he assigned. If a heavy toy or game was brought down-stairs with which to play, at the end of the enjoyment, he would say, “I brought it down, now you take it up.” That worked well until the younger one brought it down. Then the older brother would say, “You brought it down, so it’s your responsibility to take it up.” No matter what, it always ended up with the younger one having to take it up. Such is the shifting sand of logic when we apply it to others. In more serious matters, the humor vanishes, and the pain emerges.

You and I may not have been robbed of a medal in the Olympics. But we do know that when destiny- defining decisions are made, the Judge of all the earth will do right. We can rest in the knowledge that our Lord is both just and gracious. He knows the absolutes, and He will not make a mistake. That is both comforting and daunting. We must take responsibility, and we must not live in fear or torment when we know the Advocate we have with the Father.

When poor judging denies an athlete a rightful victory, fans readily sympathize with their hurt. I wish to take it further, into the very heart of all reality. After all the effort and the pain that goes into preparing for competition, it is no doubt a disheartening sight to find dishonesty robbing the reward.

Although such a loss is merely that in athletic competition, it points to the greater need of how important being just really is. This truth is one of the most pertinent in any civilized society. George Washington said, “The due administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government.”¹ Previously, Aristotle had gone even further. He said: “Justice in this sense, then, is not part of virtue but virtue entire, nor is the contrary injustice a part of vice but vice entire.”²

One does not have to fully agree to note the power of what is being said. Justice is virtue entire? Being just is the sum and substance of good morality? Well, think about this. Suppose you say you love somebody, but you are unjust in your dealings with him or her. How would that person respond to your words, “But I love you”? Or what if you tell somebody that you will always speak the truth, but there will be times you are unjust in dealing with the truth? You see the point, don’t you? Justice is an intrinsic part of virtue. You can judge without loving, but you can’t love without also being just. That is a painful truth to stomach.

God in His nature is pure and just. His justice meets the demands of the law that must be met, if you and I are to be recipients of His mercy.

To the Christian, Good Friday is a very special day, because on that day two thousand years ago, a pure and just God paid the penalty for our separation from Him and made the way to be forgiven and live in a loving relationship with Him.

There is one verse in the Bible that occurs three times: once in the book of Hebrews to the Hebrew church, once in the book of Galatians to the church in Asia Minor, and once in the book of Romans to the European church. Each time it is a thought quoted from the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk. The verse says simply: “The just shall live by his faith” (2:4 nkjv). That verse comes within the context of Habakkuk asking God how He could witness rampant violence and tolerate wrong and evil. That question troubled Habakkuk, and it is within that context that God said to him that “the vision is yet for an appointed time” (2:3 nkjv).

That is an amazing word of how justice will not ultimately be thwarted. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said, “The mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small.”³ Elsewhere, the Scriptures remind us: “Whoever remains stiff- necked after many rebukes will suddenly be destroyed— without remedy” (Proverbs 29:1). That is a sobering reminder that God’s patience as well has its limit, if justice is to be fulfilled.

That is why the cross is the centerpiece of the gospel message. It is truly the intersection of love and justice, judgment and grace, exactitude and mercy.The demands of the law call for perfection. But the law itself cannot transform the human heart. What this really means is that perfection cannot get us into heaven, but our faith in the Perfect One can. His justice comes hand in hand with love. And neither ever violates the other.

Justice and love came in our Savior. We receive those twin gifts and must dispense them as well. In an amazing way, even the most popular of all verses, John 3:16, has underlying it a legal reality. How beautiful of our Lord to take the strength of the law and give it the Savior’s touch. Truly, sublimity at its best.

End Note:

1. “From George Washington to Edmund Randolph 28 September 1789,” accessed 19 October 2018, https://founders.archives.gov/documents /Washington/05-04-02-0073.
2. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, Chapter 1, accessed 23 July 2018, http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ari/nico/nico044.htm.
3. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poetical Works of Longfellow (Boston: Houghton, Miffl in & Company, n.d.), 616.

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This is an excerpt from the book “The Logic of God” by Ravi Zacharias.  To read more login at http://lfkv.co.in/