Can You Have Grace without Justice?

We often conceptualize grace and justice as opposites. But in the Kingdom of Jesus, they are not. You can't have justice without grace, nor grace without justice. Each one defines and empowers the other. And each one only has the power to change our world and transform our relationships if they work together. Grace without justice is impotent, and justice without grace is vengeance. As Martin Luther King Jr. rightly puts it, "Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love."

The challenge for us is integrating justice and grace well. Some, like myself, are conflict-avoidant and our lack of boundaries or tolerance of toxic behavior can be labeled in our hearts as grace. We think we are showing grace by enabling someone to avoid accountability. But in fact, grace never calls us to ignore, overlook, or excuse abusive or wrongful behavior (as much as some of us might wish that it did!). Others of us are justice-orientated. We aren't afraid to confront a wrong, but without grace, our confrontations become accusatory and condemning. We tell ourselves we are doing the right thing, but our sense of self-righteousness can entitle us to overestimate what is due to us as we take a defensive position and begin, what feminist and therapist Terry Real calls, "offending from the victim position". Whether we are grace-oriented or justice-oriented, we are at risk of our "grace" becoming enabling or our "justice" becoming oppressive.

Jesus tells us a parable that invites us to consider His Kingdom's ethics surrounding justice and grace. The story starts with a wealthy and generous landowner who goes out to hire workers for his vineyard. In many of Jesus' stories, God is portrayed as a person of abundant riches who owns everything the other characters in the story interact with. This reminder is crucial as we navigate the complexities of justice and grace. Everything comes from God's abundant goodness to us. In the end, we are not trying to decide what to do with what we are entitled to (because we don't own any of it anyway) but rather our concern is ensuring we don't deprive others of His goodness towards them. If we will start from this orientation during conflict, we will be far more likely to arrive at the right place because we started from the right place.

The landowner then hires groups of people looking for work in the town. Applying for a job is vulnerable because you are being evaluated, judged, and assessed. If you are qualified, or deemed "worthy", you get the job, but usually not before days or weeks of waiting to get clarity on someone else's evaluation of your worth. These men standing around looking for work are in a vulnerable position. They are not gainfully employed anywhere else. They are hoping someone will hire them for the day so that they can provide for their anxious spouses and hungry children. They are exposed in front of everyone as they stand there waiting for someone to come along and deem them "worthy" of work. And it is right here that the first unexpected thing happens that shows us how grace and justice work together in God's Kingdom.

After he hires a few, he comes back to hire more, and then seeing that some are still not hired, comes back again to hire the ones still unemployed. He goes back and forth five times in the hot desert sun, showing great care and respect for the dignity of those still waiting. His concern can be seen in his question to them, "Has no one hired you yet? Come work for me. I will pay you fairly." The landowner is concerned with their dignity. Even though he doesn't have to, he comes back for them as they wait. Justice and grace must always be concerned about the dignity of the person in question. Regardless of what reasons we think those men had to be unemployed at this point is irrelevant. Maybe they were subpar workers and had been fired from their previous jobs. Maybe they put themselves in this position. Maybe they were immigrants. Maybe they had been born into a lower socioeconomic status with little opportunity. It doesn't matter. The only thing that matters to the landowner is protecting their dignity now. As L. Gregory Jones says in Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis, "Christian forgiveness is richer and more comprehensive than is often thought. It is richer because forgiveness serves not primarily to absolve guilt but as a reminder, a gracious irritant, of what communion with God and with one another can and should be; and so it should enable and motivate our protest against any situation where people, either ourselves or others, are diminished or destroyed."

Finally, it becomes time to pay the workers. And here begins the conversation around justice, as the landowner pays all workers the same amount, regardless of how long they have been working. If you feel tension with this, you are meant to. The workers hired first probably did five or six times more work than the others but received the same wage! They understandably protest. Although there is some irony in their complaint, given that they themselves were only that morning also unemployed and in the vulnerable position of waiting to get hired. The landowner now must define his justice for the workers. "Did you not agree," he asks them, "to work for a fair wage for me? I have not been unjust towards you! I want to be generous with those who have been waiting all day for work. Besides do I not have the right to do what I want with my own money?" The near-literal translation reads that the landowner says to the complainers, "You who are doing all the shouting and making all this noise, take what is yours and go." And it is here we learn that true injustice in God's Kingdom occurs when we act as gatekeepers to God's grace. God's justice and fairness and human perspectives on justice and fairness are different.

Those who try to restrict God's goodness for others are rebuked, even though it appears that they have a reasonable "case" to make. This should serve as a fair warning to us. When we limit the ways others can participate in His Kingdom or receive grace, our positions may seem fair and reasonable to us. But as Jesus reminds us when He commands us to pray for our enemies in Matthew 5:45, "God's sun shines on the wicked and the righteous, he sends rain to both good and bad people."

Relationships will flourish when wrongs are not overlooked, but rightly condemned, and then forgiven. We can do this by remembering that God's heart is to give abundant goodness to everyone, regardless of how much we think they may or may not be worthy of it. As Bell Hooks said in her interview with Maya Angelou:

For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?

We do it by always protecting the dignity of the other, just as the compassionate employer does. We do it by remembering that we will inevitably have tension with God's justice and grace because they are not what we are used to. So seek them out with humility. As Proverbs tells us, "It is to one’s honor to avoid strife, but every fool is quick to quarrel. Pride brings a person low, but the lowly in spirit gain honor." Jesus echoes this sentiment in Proverbs when he finishes this story with, "The last will be first and the first will be last." As we seek to be agents of transformation to our world, to our relationships, and to ourselves, we must be watchful for the pride and entitlement that always proceed trying to restrict God's goodness towards others. We cannot pursue justice unless we are concerned with dignity.