“For I, the Lord, love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.” 

Isaiah 61:8

Read Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 

Recently I met a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. As a young girl she saw her father killed and her mother raped. An orphan, she was left to care for her younger siblings. She and her parents had done no wrong to the people who attacked them, yet they were treated as if they had been murderers. I hope that no one reading this has had to live through similar experiences, yet we have all experienced unjust treatment (even if only for having been punished by our parents for some wrongdoing our siblings committed). It is not a pleasant experience, and our entire being cries out (even if silently) for justice. 

Isaiah 61 announces that the prophet was called to “comfort all who mourn” (v. 2). When Jesus read Isaiah 61:1-2a in the Nazareth synagogue (Luke 4:18-19), he inserted a line from Isaiah 58:6, “to let those oppressed [by injustice] go free,” before declaring that these verses had been fulfilled on that day. 

Isaiah 61:8 says that God “loves justice” and “hates wrongdoing”; through Jesus God has made an “everlasting covenant with us” (see Jeremiah 31:31), one in which he can “faithfully give us our recompense,” bringing justice into the injustices we have suffered. 

The Rwandan survivor is not free of lingering emotional scars, but her walk of faith has taught her that in Jesus God redeems unjust situations in miraculous ways. That is the hope of the Advent season. 

Heavenly Father, thank you for the new covenant in Jesus and the hope it gives that in him you redeem injustices.