Romans 5:1-11
Christians have spilled untold gallons of ink on the concepts of justification and reconciliation in Romans and elsewhere in the New Testament, but rarely do they consider the implications of God’s mechanisms of justice for their own “justice systems.” You could go to any number of theologians for the former, so let’s focus on the latter. In the United States, our “justice system” has its basis in retributive justice, the kind where punishment is the response to wrongdoing. That is not the pattern described in the New Testament.
Instead of exacting punishment to get justice, which our current “justice system” attempts to do, God’s mechanism for justice in the New Testament is justification followed by reconciliation. The goal is not simply to punish anyone, but to reconcile enemies. The whole point of justification and reconciliation is the elimination of enmity for the sake of our collective salvation and liberation.
How does that compare to our “justice system?” Our system doesn’t eliminate enmity; rather, it exacerbates it:
- The removal of someone from society via incarceration as a punishment results in disruption to family and community systems, many of which may have depended on the incarcerated individual.
- The individual incarcerated suffers from increased economic instability, inequality, and distress, particularly in regard to legal discrimination toward the incarcerated in housing and employment.
- Whether it is between incarcerated people or between staff and those incarcerated, prisons are sites of further brutalization and violence—they do not stop violence. No one is reconciled, just punished and victimized.
Consider, too, that “levels of imprisonment increased fivefold since 1973, crime rates have not dropped proportionately during this period.”* The massive prison industrial complex we’ve built has not achieved significant crime reduction or gains in public safety. Our system simply reproduces violence and increases enmity between persons. If the goal of God’s justice is to eliminate enmity and provide reconciliation, as Paul suggests in Romans 5, why do Christians so readily concede to a “justice system” that does the opposite?
When preaching about these theological concepts, keep in mind their implications for social organization. While Paul is not laying out a model for civil society explicitly, you can’t believe one thing when it comes to your own reconciliation to God and something completely different and disconnected for our reconciliation to each other.
* =Todd Clear, Backfire: When Incarceration Increases Crime
Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/him/his) is a writer and Baptist pastor in North Carolina.