Justice and the Spirit of Love

This is Part 1 in our Spirit, Love, Justice, and Truth Series 

Happy New Year!

Our reading this first weekend after Epiphany is from the gospel of Luke:

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The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire . . . When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:15-17, 21-22, NIV)

We covered the first part of this reading during this most recent Advent season. I think the last part of it has a special insight for us as we consider what lies ahead in 2025.

The language in this last portion is rooted in two passages from the Hebrew scriptures, one in the book of Psalms and the other in Isaiah.

I will proclaim the LORD’S decree:

  He said to me, “You are my son;

today I have become your father. (Psalms 2:7, NIV)

The rest of Psalms 2 is abysmally violent and nationalistic. But as the author connects Jesus to this psalm, they don’t only challenge the Roman claim that Caesar was the son of God, they also tie Jesus to David and the people’s contemporary hopes for their own liberation and restoration.

In Isaiah we read:

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,

my chosen one in whom I delight;

I will put my Spirit on him,

and he will bring justice to the nations . . . 

A bruised reed he will not break,

and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.

In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;

he will not falter or be discouraged 

till he establishes justice on earth.” (Isaiah 42:1, 3-4, NIV)

As we begin a new year, it’s good to remind ourselves what following Jesus, that Galilean prophet of the poor ministering on the edges of his own society, should be all about. At the core of his message, the heart of Christianity, is the call to love our neighbor. And loving one’s neighbor is what we call today social justice: making sure we and all of our neighbors have what they need to thrive, not just barely survive. Dedication and commitment to the ethic of loving our neighbor will, if consistently applied, ultimately bring “justice on earth.” It would take participation from everyone, but that is the ultimate goal: establishing justice here.

Social justice is rooted in love, specifically love of one’s neighbor. It calls us to engage our civic responsibility toward one another. It calls us to take inventory of how we are sharing space with others we live alongside with on our planet.  

In Isaiah, “my chosen one in whom I delight” will establish justice on Earth as the fruit of the Spirit. In our reading, that Spirit descends in the bodily form of a dove, which many today take as the symbol of peace arrived at because universal distributive justice has been established. There is an interesting passage from the apocryphal book of the Wisdom of Solomon describing the Spirit/Wisdom and its result:

“She renews all things;

in every generation she passes into holy souls

and makes them friends of God, and prophets;”

(Wisdom of Solomon 7:27, NRSV, italics added.)

Wisdom makes those on whom her Spirit rests both friends of God and prophets. So many prophetic voices throughout the centuries have called for justice. Let’s consider a sample from the Hebrew prophetic justice tradition. Let’t take a look at how many times justice toward one another is the theme. We’ll begin there, in Part 2.

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