“You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s.”
- Deuteronomy 1:17
Most of us have a healthy aversion to the idea of “playing favorites.” It’s not a good look, to be sure. We hate to see it on the Rec League ball field and we loathe the reality in the workplace. But it’s also important to view favoritism from God’s perspective. While we have an intuitive sense that it’s wrong, we should also understand why it’s wrong in God’s eyes. This passage in Deuteronomy gives us some insight into why God himself hates favoritism.
Moses had set up a leadership structure in Israel to help carry out life as a people. One of his goals was to ensure just judgment during instances of conflict. He charged the judges to judge justly. And the rationale Moses gave them for judging justly between people both great and small is profound: “for the judgment is God’s.” Indeed, this is the very reason Moses encouraged his judges not to be “intimidated by anyone.”
We should likewise view our lives and responsibilities toward others in terms of God’s justice and not our own. If we are here to carry out our own sense of justice, we have not only placed ourselves in the role of God, but we have invited pride and even insecurity and intimidation. We are fallible, so such intimidation and insecurity is somewhat natural when we are executing our own idea of justice. But if the justice we are to exhibit is God’s, then there’s no need to be intimidated. Why? Because the standard is not ours. We are simply emissaries or ambassadors of the true and better judge!
If we depart from carrying out God’s justice, we invite all kinds of evil to burst forth from our own hearts. Take anger for instance. Anger arises from our own sense of justice that’s been implanted by God. Everyone has a sense of justice; this is why everyone has something that has the potential to evoke an angry response. But the Bible warns us that “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (Jas 1:20). In other words, when we allow our sense of justice to become twisted, a sinfully angry response is what results. But when we allow God’s sense of justice to rule, we have no need to respond by seeking revenge.
In the same way, our sense of justice is easily tainted by our broken, sinful condition. Our hearts are naturally turned away from God and often reach the wrong conclusions (Jer. 17, Rom. 3). As such, we need to continually return to God’s standard of justice and his model of dealing with others justly. Only in this context can we escape the fear of man associated with intimidation by those powerful over us and only in this context can we also treat the man of low estate fairly.
Are you tempted to be intimidated by someone who has influence over you? Are you tempted to sidestep justice when they are clearly in the wrong because of what it would cost you? Remember: justice is not yours; it belongs to the Lord. Ask God for wisdom to deal justly with those both more and less powerful than you so that you can show a watching world what it means to serve and fear a just God alone.
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