I. (to) justice, justicing, justiced, justices: the primary and general sense is to administrate justice, determine justice, or decide justice. To justice someone is to administer justice to them, taking in all the variables of justice—possible mercy, necessary punitive punishment, required compensations, the attitude and disposition of the defendant, guilt or innocence, and any other righteous or legal factor necessary to arrive at the correct justice, whether acquittal, pardon, or condmenation. Justicing is what a king, judge, village elder, city elder, or other person charged with judicial matters engages in.
a. In Hebrew (to) justice, can be used like the English word justify to mean evening out, or balancing out someting. The sense straightening out is a primary ancient sense. The scripture speaks of just scales. Calibrating the scales or using the correct weights to level them out is justifying them, justicing meaning to balance, to adjust, or to level out, much in the same sense that English uses justify to mean straigtening out text. This sense is expressed in a Piel (make to be just), or Hiphil (make just) stem. One can also speak of justifiying (or justicing) accounts to see if they blance.
b. In judicial matters the figure of determining justice with a set of scales is particularly illustrative of the concept of justicing. An ancient set of commercial scales has two pans suspended from a balance by chains. The balance is supported by a fulcrum in the middle. In the judicial balance, one pan is for debts, and the other side for credits or payments. A judge is free to alter quantities on both sides of the scale within the limits of justice and mercy. A case of justicing wherein the balances level out after removal of or actual payment of penalties is called a pardon. A case of justicing wherein the balances level out because nothing was ever put on the debt side is an acquittal. In the case of level balances, the defendant is free of punitive or compensatory debt.
c. The scriptural teaching of the justicing of the faithful may be illustrated using the figure of the judicial balance to decribe the administration of justice, in the following procedure. 1. defendant pleads guilty, 2. The judge sets up his balances and weights down the debt side for the defendant with weights representing his sentence, a. eternal death, b. restitution of all wrongs (comensation). The balance is now unlevel. 3. The defendant repents and asks for mercy. 4. The judge grants mercy, a. he replaces the eternal death weight with one called substitutionary sacrifice, and b. takes the comensation or restitution weight off the balance since it is impossible to make sin as if it never happened. These actions represent forgiveness and mercy. 5. The weight substitutionary sacrifice is still on the debit side, then 6. The judge adds a weight on the credit side called Messiah's death, and 7. the balances now balance, and the defendant is pardoned.
i. calling this “justification” or being “justified” in English is misleading because it suggests that the defendant was acquitted, proved right, made right, or declared in the right instead of just pardoned. To justify or show that someone is in the right is another definition of the word. See below.
ii. to justice, i.e. administrate justice is the verb definition of justice in English. It also was the primary sense in Latin, Greek, and an important sense in Hebrew. The word justify in English was archaically used in the same sense, but it is now too obscure to use in translation since it was theologically hijacked by Martin Luther and John Calvin.
iii. There is one more step to justicing mentioned under the last definition, i.e. being made righteous, which is completed at the return of Messiah.
iv. At no time are the works of the faithful put on the balance as if they could somehow compensate for sin. At no time does one right compensate for another wrong so as to undo it. That's not what justicing is about. Good works as part of repentence only dispose the Almighty to show mercy. To understand the mercy shown, it helps to understand compensatory justice. What most people understand as justice is really a punitive punishment in place of compensation where compensation is impossible. For example, the murderer cannot restore the life of the victim, nor can he undo the pain and suffering he caused. The captial punishment of the murderer does not truly compensate for the wrong. So when the Almighty commutes the justice required from eternal death to a penalty to be paid by Messiah, he is really reducing the penalty in three ways, a. eternal death is now a temporary death, and b. Messiah pays it, and c. compensation for the effects of past sin are forgiven. The payment is a limited punitive one, the suffering and death of Messiah. I say limited, I mean limited in time duration.
v. Further, at no time does justicing involve putting Messiah’s righteousness on the balance. The positive divine righteousness does not undo the effects of sin either. Messiah’s righteousness does not compensate for the permenant damages caused by past sins.
vi. The steps of mercy in justicing are not according to an absolutism of equity. Mercy is the opposite of what is equal or deserved. Those effects of sin which cannot be undone can only be forgiven. They cannot be compensated for in the justicing. Therefore divine justice for the faithful is all mercy. Theological speculations that all of Christ’s positive righteousness must go on the balance to compensate for sin are based on the legalism that sin can be compensated for. In fact the very idea that sin may be completely paid for and compensated by atonement is to treat the sacrifice as a magic wand that makes everything perfect as before. Such teaching makes little of the permenancy of sin’s effects and removes the fear of committing it in those who think the sacrifice can undo anything they do. All ideas of equitible compensation of the sins of the sinner oppose themselves to mercy and forgiveness, and are in fact philosophical legalism. The point of Messiah’s death is to show i) that we deserve such a penalty (and more), and ii) that we cannot pay it and live, and iii) his mercy in paying it for us. The point was not, and never was to compensate all sin or to pay it off so that it never happened such that its victims should never have a complaint against the sinner.
vii. Only some wrongs can be fully compensated for at loss to the perpetrator, such as theft if the thief repents and pays back the required multiple of what he stole. However, transgression and iniquity is of such a magnitude against holiness that it cannot be compensated for, even when the person repents and is forgiven and Messiah pays the penalty (such as is required after mercy). To think that the sin is compensated for is a legalism of the sort that is almost worse than the more overt and outward legalism of supposing that one’s good deeds compensate for one’s bad deeds. It is a philosophical legalism, a legalism in the heart, a legalism that prevents a correct understanding of divine justice and mercy.
II. (to) justice, etc: more specifically, to justice someone means (to) administer, or satisfy a penalty or punishment. In capital cases it has the sense of put to death. This sense is a specific application of the general definition I with widespread usage in Greek. Not extant in Hebrew, used by Josephus, and in Apocrypha.
III. justified, vindicated, proved right: Proving or showing that someone is in the right, acquit, justify, or vindicate. The case resulted in acquittal. He justified himself. It is an abomination to justify the guilty. The Almighty is vindicated in that he applies mercy or condemnation righteously. Qal, Niphal. [Thought. Justify really comes from the idea of balancing justice by one's own compensation. A person who justifies himself is not proving himself perfect, but arguing why he should be let off the hook for some wrong by stating circumcstances that balance it, and excuse. This might apply to Exodus 23:7: I will not balance out the wicked (his own merits for his demerits), or this could mean the unrepentant, with mercy being allowed in other cases.
IV. justicing, straighten: The correction or repair of something that is broken. To straighten out, make just, or put into a right condition. To make or cause to become righteous. All creation will be justiced in the end. The Temple will be justiced (cf. Dan. 8:14; straightened out and put back in order). The Salvation of Yahweh will justice his people. We as the temple of the Holy Spirit are being justiced. Hiphal, Hophal.