I’ve been thinking about that phrase I’ve been using “do justice.”  I wanted to share some of Keller’s insights into what it means.  But he’s very thorough, so a little at a time. 

For today…

“…There is a direct relationship between a person’s grasp and experience of God’s grace, and his or her heart for justice and the poor.  In both settings [where I preached – Hopewell, VA and New York City], as I preached the classic message that God does not give us justice but saves us by free grace, I discovered that those most affected by the message became the most sensitive to the social inequities around them. 

One man in my church in Hopewell went through a profound transformation.  He moved out of a sterile, moralistic understanding of life and began to understand that his salvation was based on the free, unmerited grace of Jesus.  It gave him a new warmth, joy, and confidence that everyone could see.

But it had another surprising effect. 

‘You know,’ he said to me one day, ‘I’ve been a racist all my life.’

I was startled, because I had not yet preached to him or to the congregation on that subject.  He had put it together for himself.  When he lost his Phariseeism, his spiritual self-righteousness, he said, he lost his racism.

Elaine Scarry of Harvard has written a fascinating little book called On Beauty and Being Just.  Her thesis is that the experience of beauty makes us less self-centered and more open to justice.  I have observed over the decades that when people see the beauty of God’s grace in Christ, it leads them powerfully toward justice…

I recently met with Heather, a woman who attends my church in New York City.  After graduating from Harvard Law School she landed a lucrative job with a major law firm in Manhattan.  It was a dream come true for most aspiring young professionals.  She was a high-powered corporate lawyer, she was ‘living the life’ in the big city, and yet it was all strangely unsatisfying.  She wanted to make a difference in the lives of individuals, and she was concerned about those in society who could not afford the kind of fees her clients paid her firm.

For a fraction of her former salary, she became an assistant district attorney for New York County, where so many of the criminals she prosecutes are those who have been exploiting the poor, particularly poor women.

When I was a professor at a theological seminary in the mid-eighties, one of my students was a young man named Mark Gornik.  One day we were standing at the copier and he told me that he was about to move into Sandtown, one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in Baltimore. 

I remember being quite surprised.  When I asked him why, he said simply, ‘to do justice.’

It had been decades since any white people had moved into Sandtown.  For the first couple of years there it was touch and go.  Mark told a reporter, ‘The police thought I was a drug dealer and the drug dealers thought I was a police officer.  So, for a while there, I didn’t know who was going to shoot me first.’

Yet over the years Mark, along with leaders in the community, established a church and a comprehensive set of ministries that have slowly transformed the neighborhood.

Although both Heather and Mark were living comfortable, safe lives, they became concerned about the most vulnerable, poor, and marginalized members of our society, and they made long-term personal sacrifices in order to serve their interests, needs, and cause.

That is, according to the Bible, what it means to ‘do justice.'”

– Timothy Keller, Generous Justice (pgs. xix – 2)

So back and forth we’ll go.  It’s all tied together, you know.  Storing up treasures in heaven, having no other gods before Him, living in simplicity internally and externally, doing justice, loving our neighbor as ourselves.  Hope I can actually connect them adequately on here!