The Tilted Scales of Modern Justice Text: Proverbs 18:5
Introduction: The War on Objectivity
We live in an age that has declared war on reality. It is an age that despises sharp lines, clear definitions, and objective standards. Our generation wants to have its cake and eat it too; it wants the fruit of justice without the root of righteousness. It speaks endlessly of "social justice," but what it means by this is a justice untethered from the God of justice. It is a justice based on feelings, grievances, and identity politics. It is a justice that is, by definition, partial. And a partial justice is no justice at all; it is a well-dressed lie.
The book of Proverbs is a bucket of cold, clear water thrown on the fevered face of our times. It does not offer sentimental platitudes. It gives us the hard, unyielding grain of reality as God created it. The wisdom of Proverbs is not a collection of helpful hints for a better life; it is a description of how the universe actually works. To defy these principles is not to be a rebel; it is to be a fool. It is to argue with the law of gravity while stepping off a cliff.
Today's proverb addresses the very foundation of a sane and stable society: the administration of justice. A society is only as healthy as its courts. When the place of judgment becomes a place of injustice, the entire structure begins to rot from the head down. And the primary way that justice is corrupted is through partiality. It is through putting a thumb on the scales. It is through looking at the man instead of the matter. God's law commands the judge to be blind, blind to wealth, blind to poverty, blind to status, blind to anything but the objective facts of the case and the objective standard of God's law. But our modern world insists that the judge must peek. In fact, it insists that he must do more than peek; he must stare intently at the man, his group identity, his historical grievances, and then weigh the verdict accordingly. This is not justice. This is vengeance with a powdered wig.
Proverbs 18:5 gives us two sides of the same corrupt coin. It shows us the two fundamental ways that judgment is perverted: by favoring the wicked and by disenfranchising the righteous. These are not two separate problems, but rather two motions in the same wicked dance. When you tilt the scales to help the guilty, you are simultaneously tilting them against the innocent.
The Text
To show partiality to the wicked is not good,
Nor to thrust aside the righteous in judgment.
(Proverbs 18:5 LSB)
Favoring the Guilty (v. 5a)
The first clause is a straightforward indictment of a particular kind of favoritism.
"To show partiality to the wicked is not good..." (Proverbs 18:5a)
The phrase "to show partiality" in the Hebrew is literally "to lift up the face of." It is the idea of looking at someone's station, their power, their influence, or perhaps their sob story, and letting that determine the outcome. The "wicked" here is the one who is in the wrong, the one who has transgressed the law. The proverb tells us that to "lift up the face" of such a person is "not good." This is a classic piece of biblical understatement. It is like saying that jumping into a volcano is "not good" for your complexion. The law of God is more direct. "You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly" (Leviticus 19:15).
Why would anyone show partiality to the wicked? There are a host of reasons, and they are all rooted in fear and self-interest. Perhaps the wicked man is powerful, and the judge fears retribution. Perhaps the wicked man is part of a favored group, and the judge wants to signal his virtue to the watching world. Perhaps the wicked man is simply persuasive, and the judge is a sentimentalist who mistakes excuses for reasons. In our day, we have institutionalized this very thing. We are told that certain groups, because of their history of oppression, cannot be oppressors. Their wickedness is redefined as a cry for justice. This is nothing less than showing partiality to the wicked on a grand, societal scale.
But notice what this does. It untethers justice from a fixed, transcendent standard. If justice is not about what was done, but about who did it, then there is no law. There is only power. The one with the most cultural cachet wins. This is the law of the jungle, not the law of God. God's law is objective. It does not care about your feelings. It does not care about your identity group. It cares about righteousness. To acquit the guilty is an abomination to the Lord (Proverbs 17:15). It is to call evil good, which is to spit in the face of the God who is goodness itself.
When a culture begins to systematically favor the wicked, it is a sign that it is under divine judgment. The very institutions that were meant to be a terror to evildoers become their protectors. The police are told to stand down. Prosecutors refuse to prosecute. Criminals are released without bail. And the law-abiding are told that they are the problem. This is not a policy failure; it is a theological collapse. It is a society that has decided to lift up the face of the wicked, and as a result, God is lowering His face from them.
Thrusting Aside the Righteous (v. 5b)
The second clause shows us the necessary and tragic consequence of the first.
"...Nor to thrust aside the righteous in judgment." (Proverbs 18:5b LSB)
When you "lift up the face" of the wicked, you must necessarily "thrust aside" the righteous. The verb here means to push away, to deny, to subvert. The "righteous" is the one who is in the right, the victim, the one whose cause is just. When a judge decides a case based on the identity of the litigants rather than the merits of the case, the innocent party is automatically shoved out of the way. His righteousness counts for nothing.
Imagine a courtroom where a man has been clearly robbed. The evidence is overwhelming. But the thief is a member of a protected class, and the victim is not. The judge, in an act of "social justice," decides to "lift up the face" of the thief, perhaps giving him a light sentence or no sentence at all, citing his difficult upbringing. In that very act, the judge has thrust aside the righteous victim. He has told him that the violation he suffered does not matter. He has told him that, in the great calculus of grievances, his personal righteousness is irrelevant. He has been sacrificed on the altar of partiality.
This is corrosive to the soul of a nation. When the righteous see that there is no recourse for them in the courts, that their integrity and innocence are a liability, one of two things will happen. Either they will become cynical and despairing, losing all respect for the law, or they will be tempted to take the law into their own hands. Both outcomes lead to the dissolution of social order. A society cannot long survive when it punishes righteousness and rewards wickedness. It is a society at war with the moral structure of the universe, and the universe always wins those battles.
We see this happening all around us. The man who defends his family is treated as a criminal. The business owner who tries to stop a shoplifter is prosecuted. The parent who objects to the corruption of his children at school is labeled a domestic terrorist. In each case, the righteous are being thrust aside in judgment to make way for a new, politically-correct class of the wicked. This is not merely unjust; it is suicidal. It is a culture sawing off the branch it is sitting on.
The Gospel and True Justice
So where is the hope? If our human courts are so easily corrupted, if our societies are so bent on this kind of self-destruction, where can we turn for true justice? This proverb, like all of Scripture, ultimately points us to the character of God and the work of His Son.
The Bible tells us that God is the ultimate, impartial judge. "For there is no partiality with God" (Romans 2:11). He is the one judge who cannot be bribed, cannot be intimidated, and cannot be fooled. He will render to every man according to his deeds. The wicked will not escape, and the righteous will be vindicated. This is the great hope that anchors the soul of the believer in a world of injustice. The final judgment is coming, and there, the scales will be perfectly balanced.
But there is an even greater story here. The gospel itself is the story of the greatest act of judgment in the history of the world. At the cross, God dealt with sin with perfect, impartial justice. The full, unmitigated wrath that our wickedness deserved was poured out. God did not "show partiality" to our sin. He did not wave it away. He judged it utterly.
And yet, in that same act, He performed the most glorious and unexpected reversal. We, who were wicked, were not thrust aside. And Jesus, the only truly righteous one, was. "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). At the cross, Jesus, the righteous one, was "thrust aside" in judgment. He was pushed away by the Father, bearing our guilt, so that we, the wicked, could have our faces "lifted up" in grace. God showed partiality, but it was a holy partiality. He showed favor to us, the guilty, by placing our guilt on His own Son.
This is the foundation of all true justice. Any attempt at justice that is not grounded in the cross will eventually devolve into the kind of corrupt partiality described in our proverb. But for those who have come to the cross, we are now called to be agents of true justice in the world. Because we have been shown grace, we must not show sinful partiality. In our homes, in our churches, and in our communities, we must be people who love the clear, sharp lines of God's law. We must defend the righteous, even when it is unpopular. And we must call wickedness what it is, even when the world wants to call it a virtue.
We do not despair when we see the courts of men fail, because we serve a judge who will never fail. And we do not grow weary in doing good, because we know that the one who was thrust aside for us has now been raised and seated at the right hand of the Majesty on High, from where He will come to judge the living and the dead. And in His courtroom, there will be no partiality.