Injustice of the world

1 Peter 2:11-12 (NLT)

11 Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. 12 Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world.

The apostle gives warning to those who have accepted God’s salvation through Jesus Christ. For now they remain here on the earth where they battle against the temptations of sin. They are told to live properly, in wise fashion among those who do not place their trust in Christ. They do this so that in time the unbelievers will see their honorable behavior when God reveals the injustice of the world.

Author Henri Nouwen tells the story of a family he knew in Paraguay. The father, a doctor, spoke out against the military regime there and its human rights abuses. Local police took their revenge on him by arresting his teenage son and torturing him to death. Enraged townsfolk wanted to turn the boy's funeral into a huge protest march, but the doctor chose another means of protest. At the funeral, the father displayed his son's body as he had found it in the jail—naked, scarred from electric shocks and cigarette burns, and beatings. All the villagers filed past the corpse, which lay not in a coffin but on the blood-soaked mattress from the prison. It was the strongest protest imaginable, for it put injustice on grotesque display.

Isn't that what God did at Calvary? … The cross that held Jesus' body, naked and marked with scars, exposed all the violence and injustice of this world. At once, the cross revealed what kind of world we have and what kind of God we have: a world of gross unfairness, a God of sacrificial love.  [Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God (Zondervan, 1997), pp. 185-186]

We often miss seeing the injustice of this world, but this father laid his son out for all to see. He allowed them to see what was done by the hands of others. Their shame was put on display for all to recognize the evil that exists in the world.