Get your sins out of my sight.…
Give up your evil ways.
Learn to do good.
Seek justice.
Help the oppressed.
Defend the cause of orphans.
Fight for the rights of widows.
Isaiah 1:15-20 is an incredible passage that graphically underlines what God sees as the fundamental basis for justice: love & taking up the cause of the oppressed, orphans & widows. (strangers?) justice is the opposite of “hands that kill”, it is hands who take up the cause of “the other” & “the stranger”. From Genesis to the prophets, to Revelation this is our God. It is Jubilee (freeing the oppressed, wealthy being voluntarily more than fair with poor, etc.) and Sabbath (rest for all, STRANGER included) that was envisioned as bringing lasting peace, justice & liberty throughout the land (quoted on American liberty bell). When Jesus came and stood up in the Temple, He effectively said, “I am instituting the much awaited Jubilee!” Jesus championed a new Kingdom based on Jubilee, and rejected violence as the needed foundation for justice and concretely rejected violent revolution (Peter) and death for breaking the law (woman caught in adultery/John 8:4). James is in perfect harmony with the the God of the OT, the prophets and spirit of Jesus when he says: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” (James 1:27)
Some versions of “justice” might be blind, but not God’s version.
Mennonite Minute 