Truth for When Life Seems Unfair

“This just isn’t fair. Why is this happening to me?”

Have those words ever sprung forth from your mouth? You stand, facing a painful trial or ongoing hardship, and suddenly you feel as if you drew the short stick in life. Maybe the hand you were dealt by the dealer wasn’t exactly a righteous deal in your opinion?

As a girl who experienced the severity of this broken world from an early age and throughout my adult life through abuse, abandonment, poverty, and most recently, multiple miscarriages, I understand the temptation to feel like life is unfair.

Truly, for the Christian, life is unfair…but not in the way we think.

You Don’t Want “Fair”

Over the last several months, I have had my fair share (pun intended) of questioning the “fairness” of my lot in life. It’s easy to look at the unappreciative people who receive what we long for and feel resentment. It’s easy because it’s sin, and we naturally gravitate toward our old ways. We need truth that will set us free from our destructive flesh.

READ: Don’t Envy the Wicked

Biblically speaking, what is fair?

For the wages of sin is death, (Romans 6:23a ESV)

All humans, by their sin, have earned themselves a place in Hell. We don’t even deserve an ounce of the free grace offered to all creatures. The breeze on a spring day, the beauty of the mountains, the warm smile of our spouse, the sweetness of fresh fruit, and the senses that enable us to experience these things. You and I don’t even deserve the breath God has placed in our lungs. We are not good, and we don’t deserve anything good. (Romans 3:10). Our wages are death and Hell.

Friend, we don’t want what’s truly fair.

The Unfair Gift

but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23b ESV)

This is what makes amazing grace so unfathomably amazing! We don’t get what we deserve. The born again believer is given salvation, justification, and ultimately, glorification through the blood of Christ alone.

Praise God for his unfairness!

All blessings we receive in this life are like rosettes on the top of a wedding cake. God could have saved us and left us to fend for ourselves, and that would be reason enough to praise him all our days. But he goes even further:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:3-14 ESV)

Truly, we are blessed by a good, good Father.

The Unfairness of the Cross

The only person whose feet have roamed the earth and has the right to make a claim to unfairness is Jesus. He lived a perfectly obedient life in our place and died the horrific death you and I earned by our sin. But further than that, his life wasn’t one of ease either. He lived a lowly life as a carpenter. Surely, he was made the laughingstock of Nazareth, as fellow residents suspected he was conceived inappropriately. He had nowhere to lay his head as he poured himself out to the poor and healed the sick. (Matthew 8:20).

The holy Son of God, who created the world, deserved to have every face touch the ground as he walked by and yet, he knelt to wash the feet of sinners like you and I. (John 13:1-17). And that same God was nailed to the cross, as the Father turned his face away, pouring his cup of wrath out upon his only Son.

This is true unfairness. You and I know nothing of this. Because of Jesus, believers only know grace.

I know life is hard. I understand the weight of this world and the pain so many of us have walked through. Let us fix our eyes on Christ. Let us remember that because of him, we can rejoice, knowing that we didn’t get what we deserve, but instead received grace upon grace.