Woke pastor of Renaissance Church, Jordan Rice, attempts to redefine the meaning of the biblical term, mishpat (translated as justice), to mean not only punitive or judicial justice, but “restorative justice.”
In the woke world, “restorative justice” is a term they coined to in order to seek such things as slave reparations. Rice, in the video below, defines it as “universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight, a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts are fruitfully employed all under the arc of God’s love.” Then he states that to “seek justice” is “the way things ought to be.”
Now, of course, this is simply reading the modern zeitgeist of social justice into the biblical text and the original Hebrew word, mishpat, means none of that — at all. In fact, the word is defined by Strong’s as “properly, a verdict (favorable or unfavorable) pronounced judicially, especially a sentence or formal decree (human or (participant’s) divine law, individual or collective), including the act, the place, the suit, the crime, and the penalty.” None of this “restorative justice” or reparations is in that word. It’s a lie and this social justice gospel is rank heresy.