2546AFC111425 – Immutable Justice
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Malachi 4:2 – 2 But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. *
In the NABRE, this passage is part of the continuation of Chapter 3
Psalm 98:9 c –
He will judge the world with righteousness,
and the peoples with equity.
2 Thessalonians 3:10 – 10 For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.
Luke 21:19 – 19 By your endurance you will gain your souls.
Luke 21:28 – 28 Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.
Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, in truth and love. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him. In the past few weeks we have heard about one of the fundamental characteristics of our Amazing Triune God – Immutable Justice (← Check it out!). I should point out that EVERYTHING about God is immutable. You may also recall that we read several verses in which God himself states that he is unchanging. Even in this chapter of the book of the Prophet Malachi we hear: Malachi 3:6 – 6 For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished. This idea is also expressed in verses such as Hebrews 13:8, James 1:17, and Numbers 23:19. This means that God’s Perfect Integrity, Endless Mercy, Everlasting Love, And Eternal Salvation are all immutable. What do we mean in the word IMMUTABLE?
“Immutability” is a term often used in data management. Once something enters a “fixed state,” – fixed as immobile or unchangeable – no matter what happens to it or around it, it does not change, cannot be changed, and its status is permanent. These data have predictable behaviors. They have stringent protections for data integrity and compliance with functional requirements. When we think of this word in Theology we mean that God’s Will, his Character, his Promises, his Presence, His Grace, and his Justice – which is tempered with Mercy – never, ever, change. Whatever we can say about, or do with and for, God, his influence is always ultimate and superlative. I think this is why, when we are sometimes confronted with something immensely unusual, we sometimes exclaim, “GREAT GOD ALMIGHTY!” (As always, God hears that prayer.) With God, he establishes and lives by the rules because if any rule can be named, God is that rule; moreover, he is also every rule that we cannot know and therefore cannot name. All, indeed ALL, of that can be applied to God’s Immutable Justice.
Now, what do we mean by “JUSTICE?” Crucita and I watch a lot of those “true crime” and procedural drama shows on TV. In many of them we hear about “getting justice” for the person who was wronged, or injured, or killed. That aspect of judgement is vindication for the plaintiff and conviction for the defendant. If we apply that sort of template to our relationship with God, we can eventually come to the conclusion that God is the plaintiff, and we are the defendants. The upshot of that is that the Prosecuting Attorney is Satan, and the Attorney for the Defense is Jesus. However, God is also the judge, and it’s always a Bench Trial – no jury of peers is involved – and whatever the plaintiff’s prosecutor says, (yes, God did give that Old Dragon that job) it is God’s Immutable Justice which is applied. If God says, “You don’t Love me anymore,” The Accuser (ha-Satan) spews out a whole list of sins against The Law for which we must pay.
What is the penalty for sins against The Law? “Purge the Evil from your midst!” The penalty is Death. Our Defense Attorney approaches the Bench offering expiation and asking for exculpation for those sins. He gains a Judgement that causes each sin to be forgotten so the “death penalty is off the table”, but God’s justice also requires that the mortal, terrestrial consequence be imposed. We might ask “What does that mean?” That means that there are temporal consequences for everything that we do. The eternal consequences are taken care of so to speak through the death and Resurrection of Christ, there are still temporal consequences that need to be taken care of. “All right then, what are temporal consequences?”
Temporal consequences are those things which level the scales of justice. They are the so-called payment for the things that were damaged by our rebellion against God’s rules. We could say that it has its roots an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth in the Old Testament, but it is a more refined and nuanced form of restitution. It’s more refined because it requires the concept of metanoia – that complete change of mindset and heart that end up in a new Vision Of Life. It is the concept of confession plus repentance, we admit that we were wrong, and promise not to do wrong again. In this way the charges against us are either reduced, or, in most cases, dismissed.
In the Key Verse from the Old Testament for today, we have a promise from our God that the righteous – that is the person confined – will receive freedom like “a calf leaping from the stall.” Some might ask, “Why would a calf be kept in a stall?” That’s how we get veal. Imagine being cooped up in a small stall for all of your life from infancy to early childhood. Freedom from that sort of limitation would be very liberating. That sort of liberty is what every soul craves; but, we are too bound and constrained by sin to possess that liberty. To gain – and accept – that liberty, we are to revere God. To revere God means we admire, respect, venerate, worship, and obey God. Now, there is a sort of irony in that because if we do obey God, then we do so when admiring, respecting, venerating, and worshipping him. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” How should we Love him? Keep his commandments. How can we keep his commandments? By loving him and each other. That is righteousness – Doing The Right Thing.
That is how God judges the World, with righteousness and equity which is impartiality in dispensing Justice. One of those Eternal Qualities I keep listing is “God is Just and Merciful.” Those last three words are the way I think about how Grace works. Justice is getting what we deserve. Grace is getting what we do not deserve which only happens because of God’s Mercy. Here, we are reminded of the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy. One of the Corporal Works of Mercy we hear about lately is Feeding the Hungry. “Some” commentators have brought that up when talking about the SNAP benefits. “I thought Christians were supposed to be into feeding the hungry.” Hmmm. Take a look at what The Apostle Paul said about that: “If you won’t work, you won’t eat.”
Now, of course there are tens-of-thousands on SNAP who are marginally employed. They’re doing what they can in their own circumstances to work and live a decent law-abiding life. For 2025, the national poverty line is $15,650 for a single person and $32,150 for a family of four in the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia. That’s $1,304 per month for an individual and $2,679 per month for a family of four. The hourly wage for that single person would be $7.52 and for the family, net family income per hour would be $15.46. As you know, I don’t understand money at all, but it seems like that’s how the math works out using 173.3 hour/month. The point is that there are thousands of jobs “created” every month (Historically, the average has been about 170,000 jobs per month), there are over 7 million unemployed persons, and virtually every business in every town has a sign out front saying “Now Hiring! Earn up to $25 an hour.” And yet you see people on the MSMOs saying it’s just impossible to find a job. Does that mean we don’t feed them?
Not really. The Apostle Paul is talking specifically about the adelphos, the members of The Church (called The Way at that time), but Social Justice (↔ Click Link) says we must also follow Jesus’ commands to feed the hungry, care for the sick, instruct the ignorant, and bury the dead, and all the other Acts of Corporal and Spiritual Mercy. That’s righteousness – which is following God’s rules as God intends them to be followed – but not as we pretend to follow them. The fewer people who follow the rules and the fewer rules that are followed, the more and more we make ourselves vulnerable to those temporal costs of sin – disasters, wars, cataclysmic changes in sky, land, and sea. It’s enough to try our souls!
Those trials – which some of us mistakenly take so personally – are what Jesus is talking about in Luke 21. This is very similar to what we read in Matthew 24:3-44 – the destruction of the Temple, the signs of the end of The Age (this present age, the Age of the Church), all the persecutions and sufferings that follow because we are Christians, terrible sacrileges, and the return of Christ. The recent violent insurgencies and massacres in several nations in Africa and Asia remind us of what Jesus told us about being persecuted for his Name. In addition, we have had terrible earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and typhoons, signs and wonders in the sky (Northern Lights seen in Florida?!), famine, pestilence, mindless violence, unwarranted hatred, and a relaxing of moral standards that is utterly scandalous. Jesus has told us these things must happen first. The secular argument is that these things happen all the time; they’re just more frequent and more noticeable because news about them is shared almost instantly around the world. To that objection, Scripture tells us to take a posture of watchful waiting – even if we are the ones who are suffering or being persecuted, because By your endurance you will gain your souls. Nonetheless, we are also commanded to be witnesses – martyrs – for Christ because Jesus is merciful (↔ Music Link)
Another question we hear from both secular and religious persons is, “How can a just and loving God cause all this suffering?” Well, first, God does not cause this suffering but he does allow it. Why? To help us learn to turn to him in all things, first with praise, next with thanksgiving, and last with our petitions. God hears and answers all our prayers – yep, ALL of them. In these grim situations, it is difficult – but still very important – to maintain that “attitude of gratitude.” Gratitude is a prerogative made possible by being aware we cannot fill our emptiness with ourselves or by ourselves. Only God can fill us because only God created us. Sounds simple enough, but, when we let Pride and Greed get in the way … well, you know how that usually ends!
I believe the reason it is so easy to forget how this works (there it is again, “we forget”) is because of the magnitude and permanence of God’s Immutable Justice. It goes from Age to Age and includes every Created Thing. There is nothing that is not included in God’s Immutable Justice. That double negative means Everything That Can Be Named as well as Everything That Cannot Be Named is covered by that Immutable Justice. Not only that, but ALL the other things I keep bringing up – Perfect Integrity, Endless Mercy, Everlasting Love, And Eternal Salvation – have the same coverage. We earthlings aren’t used to that kind of permanent, total, unwavering, God-given protection. Yes, I say protection, because Immutable Justice is what protects us from the Prosecutor’s FALSE accusations. I’m going to include the rest of the reading from This Sunday’s Old Testament reading in Malachi ~~
Malachi 4:1-3 – 1 See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. 2 But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. 3 And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.
That is the Immutable Justice that awaits all those people you and I see out there doing everything from assassinations to child molestation to “shaving down there” to whatever-other-disgusting-things we see. We know, appreciate, and understand that. Our attention, then, must be focused not on our suffering at present, but rather on preventing others from suffering by letting them know we are Christians. Yes, our offering to God, our Sacrifice of Praise, is to be a Witness, to stand at the Foot of the Cross (↔ Music Link) with Mary and hold on (↔ Music Link) to that which is right and good – Hope. Peace. Love. Joy. These are the rewards of God’s Immutable Justice. Seek and find. Ask and receive. Watch. Wait. Here comes the Judge! The Day of Reward is one day closer today!! Alleluia!
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
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