Article November 10, 1997 Issue

Justice and the law of divine Love

Robert A. Johnson

Lawmakers often struggle long and hard to make laws they feel will serve their constituents and their country well. Even so, there are times when a higher law is called for—times when justice calls for solutions that are not provided for in human law, or when the applicable law is obscure and hidden from view.

When faced with an apparently unsolvable problem, we can always appeal to God's law of divine Love for a just solution. There is no higher law. It can adjust whatever needs adjusting, even when all hope seems lost. Our appeal to divine law, though, must not be for the purpose of personal profit, advantage, or manipulation, but for the purpose of seeing God's will done in human affairs.

Someone who regularly called on divine law both for himself and for others was Christ Jesus. He understood the higher law of Love to be just, merciful, and impartial—always blessing and never cursing. When an angry mob threatened to throw him off a cliff, he walked through the midst of the crowd and went his way (see Luke 4:28–30). Again, when he was asked to pass judgment on a woman caught in the act of adultery, one whom the law said should be stoned, he answered, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." When the accusers left one by one without accusing her, Jesus evidently recognized her repentance, for he said, "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more" (John 8:7, 11).

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