Visionary Justice
In Hebrew, vindication and redemption are one word. When Job was confident that his redeemer lived, he was looking forward to his vindication against his “comforters.”
Jesus’ words against the Temple hung over Jerusalem for a generation, and would be vindicated despite Herod’s obsessive glorification of his graven image. Its completion in AD64 was taken as proof that Jesus was indeed a false prophet.
Christ came in judgment as He promised and the Temple was destroyed. Vindication and redemption came in one event, and new worship would be born through the death of the old.
“The pagan view of law is that justice is a balancing of the scales. The biblical view of law is that justice is transformational.”1
The death and resurrection of Israel in Christ as the head would be measured out in the people of God as the body. God’s Word brings division that leads totransfiguration. His justice always has one eye on the future.
1 James B. Jordan, Preterism vs. Gnosticism [lecture]. Available from www.wordmp3.com
