The Criminal Justice System in The Kingdom of God
“Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven” is supposed to be part of the Christian’s daily prayer (Matthew 6:10). So before we jump into how Christians should think of criminal justice on Earth, the most logical place to start is how it operates in the Kingdom, or at least my best understanding of such.
One of my sisters, (I won’t mention any names, but her initials growing up were M.M.), used to be fearful of just about everything. She’d contemplate what she was being asked to do, darkly fantasize about what the newspaper headline would be if she died from doing said thing, and then refuse to do it. Because of this, I often find myself thinking of things in headlines. If this was a newspaper article, I imagine the title would be — -Judge Sentences His Own Son to Death so that All Defendants May Go Free. In our society, this would certainly beg some questions: 1) What were the crimes that these defendants committed? 2) What was supposed to be their punishment? 3) Why would a judge do such a thing? And 4) Won’t this just encourage more crime?
I’ll take these questions in order. Despite the popularity of the 10 Commandments, you can basically sum up the entire Kingdom Crimes Code in two statutes: love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22: 37–40). You keep these two and you’re a model citizen. You break one, even a little bit, and you’re a criminal. (You might use the term “sinner” in church. Same thing.)
Unfortunately (or, depending on how you look at it, fortunately), it’s a lot more intricate than it sounds. As a public defender, I’m often analyzing statutes, caselaw, and legal definitions to determine whether the facts alleged actually constitute a crime. For instance, what does “reckless” really mean? Or, to quote the only case I remember from my Contracts class, “The issue is, what is chicken?” (Yeah, it’s a civil case, but it still illustrates my point.)
In the Kingdom of God, the judge does not concern Himself with such technical matters. The main thing the judge concerns Himself with is the heart. In the New Testament, Jesus, the Kingdom Crimes Code in the flesh, consistently condemns the Pharisees for their obsession with cleaning the “outside of the cup” yet completely neglecting the inside. Whereas the term murderer is reserved in our society for those who have physically ended the life of another (with some additional qualifications, of course), anyone who hates another is considered a murderer in the Kingdom of God. To be clear, I don’t think the judge is mainly concerned with the heart as opposed to the external. Rather, If we lived in a world where people loved the Lord with all their heart and loved their neighbors as themselves, poverty, hunger, oppression, and the like would all be foreign concepts.
It probably wouldn’t surprise most people that every human being except for the Crimes Code Himself (Christ), is a criminal in the Kingdom of God. “For all have committed crimes and fall short of the Glory of God” (Romans 3:23). What might surprise people is the absurd mandatory sentence attached to each conviction: eternal banishment from the Kingdom, i.e. death. (Just when you thought mandatory minimums couldn’t get any worse…).
The judge’s explanation for this is admittedly really hard to understand and even harder to explain. And I’m not smart enough to do either well. Thankfully, we have the likes of C.S. Lewis and Tim Keller for this kind of stuff. The most important thing, for my purposes at least, is that it’s true. If you commit a crime in the Kingdom of God, the law says you get life in prison without parole. It’s not a metaphor. It’s not some abstract theoretical concept. You, according to the law, deserve death. Read the first part of Romans 6:23.
And then read the second part. “[…]the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” So the judge finds everyone guilty. The law mandates that everyone gets death. And then the judge let’s everyone live? Forever? I can sense the Americans getting uncomfortable here. The “do the crime, do the time” mentality has no place in the Kingdom of God.
But what about justice, you ask? What about public safety? Ah. We did skip an important step. The step where crime gets punished. Where evil is banished from the Kingdom. The judge loves the people he sees seated at the bar of court. He knows that their crimes hurt them and the Kingdom at large. Banishing the people he loves would bring Him no joy. Ignoring their crimes would do them no good. And so He came up with an alternative. Many of you are familiar with the idea of transferred intent. In the Kingdom of God, there is also transferred accountability, otherwise known as atonement. And so the judge chose the only suspect that wasn’t guilty to serve the sentence that we all deserved. He chose the only human not already on death row. He chose His Son.
And, finally, what are the effects of this? How can you expect people to love others when there is no punishment awaiting them when they don’t? Well, I suppose there are the temporary effects and the eternal effects, but we must first deal with another very confusing concept- “the already, but not yet.” While Earth operates on a chronological timeline, the Kingdom of God doesn’t. It exists outside of time. Christians believe that Christ has already conquered death and the war against evil, but that the Christian’s Earthly journey is still a battle against it. Christians are commanded to live their lives in a way that furthers the work Christ has already accomplished- bringing healing and reconciliation to a shattered world- establishing His Kingdom here on Earth. And so we have nearly come full circle.
The eternal effects are simple, albeit unfathomable. We are able to one day live in a world without evil. A world where we are perfectly loved and love perfectly in return. Where there is no death. No Covid-19. No shortage of toilet paper. No people locked in cages.
The temporary effects are a bit more interesting. The Gospel certainly doesn’t teach us that we ever stop committing crimes this side of Heaven. As Paul, one of the primary authors of the New Testament, states, “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing,” Romans 7:19. Paul remained a criminal until his death.
But Paul also experienced radical transformation here on Earth. Paul, formerly known as Saul, was responsible for the murder of many Christians. And by murder, I mean the killing-the-actual-body kind. And yet, when the judge called Paul’s case, He extended mercy. That mercy transformed Paul into the man that would later die on behalf of the Gospel. It was because of mercy that Paul was bothered by his crimes. Not because of some punishment he was promised and saw others receive.
Likewise, if ever I am able to love well, it is only because I myself have been loved. If ever I am able to forgive, it is only because I myself have been forgiven. If ever I forsake my pride, it is because my Savior was crowned with thorns. And if ever I have courage, it is because perfect love has cast out fear (1 John 4:18). It is not the threat of Hell that brings out the best in me- it is the fact that a man took the punishment for my crime. That he willingly died a brutal death. That a judge had mercy, and that my record is now clean.
-Meredith Manchester
