Responding to Unfairness with Love

October 18, 2024

Unfairness is part of the human condition.

We all learn pretty early on that life isn’t fair. And, you can’t live on this earth for long without feeling like someone has treated you unfairly.

Maybe it’s a parent who put you through a miserable childhood. Maybe it’s an employer who treats you more harshly than they treat your coworkers, or they overlook you and not other people. Maybe you feel like you were handled unfairly by the legal process. Maybe you didn’t get the opportunity you thought you deserved.

Whatever it is, we have all experienced this feeling of unfairness. So, how do you respond to it?

You can choose to respond to the people who hurt you by hurting them. That’s the easiest choice to make, no doubt about it!

But God gives us another option in his Word: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44 NIV).

When people hurt you, they expect you to retaliate. They expect you to seek revenge. But God wants you to do the exact opposite: He wants you to respond in love.

This is hard to do. Actually, without the love of Jesus in your life, it’s impossible to do. Responding to unfairness with love is a supernatural kind of love that can only come from the Holy Spirit working in your life.

This doesn’t mean you’re just a doormat letting people walk all over you. It’s actually a sign of strength and intentionality. It’s a decision.

If you respond to mistreatment with love, you’ll keep the other person from controlling you. You can’t control when another person treats you unfairly. You can control whether you get bitter in the process. You can control your response to injustice.

Like I said, just because you respond to an offender lovingly doesn’t mean you continue to allow injustice. On the contrary, we must lovingly seek justice. We must work for justice in the world without retaliating. The Bible commands us to be “fair-minded and just. Do what is right!” (Jeremiah 22:3 NLT).

That’s our calling as followers of Jesus. Unfairness and injustice may be part of the human condition, but we must not feed into it. Instead, God calls us to respond in love.