The descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had become slaves in Egypt. They were suffering under the oppression of their cruel Egyptian taskmasters, and they cried out to God for deliverance. God heard their cry, and he raised up Moses to deliver them from the hand of their oppressors. The book of Exodus allows us to eavesdrop on God’s conversation with Moses:
And the Lord said, “I have certainly seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their outcry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. So I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. And now, behold, the cry of the sons of Israel has come to Me; furthermore, I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians are oppressing them”. (Exodus 3:7-9) God heard their cries for justice, His heart was moved, and he sent a deliverer to free his people from oppression. This shows us that God is not a callous, power-mongering, utilitarian God who uses his people as pawns to satisfy his every whim, without any concern for their well-being. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is a compassionate God who cares for his people and who intervenes on their behalf. Unlike the other gods of antiquity, God’s heart breaks when his people suffer. If, as Tozer taught, a people can rise no higher than the level of their gods, then those who belong to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob should be the most compassionate of all peoples of the earth. We have a God who is not untouched by the suffering of humanity. God suffers when he sees oppression and injustice, he weeps with those who weep, and his compassion moves him to intervene on their behalf. As is the character of God, such must be the character of the people of God. Our hearts should break for the things that break the heart of God, and our compassion should motivate our action. Those of us who own the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as our God (Jews and Christians) should be examples of compassion and pursuers of justice, for such is the character our God, and such should be the character of who we are becoming. Jesus picked up on this theme in his Sermon on the Mount. Surrounded by a mixed crowd, some of whom were his disciples but most of whom were probably curious onlookers who were living in a world of oppression and injustice, Jesus said “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6). Some who read that verse will assume that Jesus was speaking about personal holiness. Others who read that same verse will assume that Jesus was speaking about justice in society. In my understanding, Jesus was probably referring to both. The Greek word “dikaiosune” may be translated as either “righteousness” or as “justice” (the same is true for Italian word “giustizia” and for the Spanish word “justicia”). If you have an Italian Bible or a Spanish Bible, look up Matthew 5:6 and Matthew 6:33 and you’ll see what I mean. Personal righteousness and justice in society are inseparable. We can’t have justice in society until we have hearts that are righteous, and if we have hearts that are righteous, then we will “hunger and thirst” for justice in society. They are the same word because they are the same concept. We can’t separate righteousness on a personal level from justice on a societal level because they are both expressions of the same heart posture. Unrighteous people can’t build a just society. Righteous people can’t ignore injustice in society. God must change our hearts before we can work toward building a more just society, and if we are not hungering and thirsting for a more just society, then perhaps our hearts have not yet been made righteous. While it is true that we will not have a completely just society until Jesus sets up his reign upon the earth, we dare not use that as an excuse not to do what we can to alleviate the suffering of those who are experiencing the effects of an unjust society (or, at the very least, to hunger and thirst for it and to model it in the Church). Indifference toward either personal holiness or toward the injustices of our society is a red flag indicating that something is drastically wrong with the condition of our hearts. It means that we need to ask God to do a greater work of forming the character of Christ in us. If we are not hungering and thirsting for a more just society, then why would we ever want to live for a thousand years in a kingdom that is characterized by righteousness and justice? If we are not cultivating an appetite for both personal holiness and societal justice, then the thought of spending a thousand years living in that kind of world will be nauseating to us, which means that we don’t really want Jesus to be our King, which means that when Jesus sets up his kingdom upon the earth, tragically, some of us who expect to be a part of that kingdom may find ourselves on the outside looking in. I shudder at the thought, but Jesus did warn us, and we need to take his warning seriously. The Church must be a billboard pointing to the coming Kingdom. We need to be a people who hunger and thirst for righteousness (for personal holiness as well as for a society that is free from injustice and oppression). The Church is called to be a community of the redeemed whose hearts are broken by the things that break the heart of God. If the presence of injustice and oppression in the world in which we live, as well as the presence of sin in our own personal lives, do not break our hearts, if we do not grieve with and for those who are suffering as a result of injustice and oppression (as well as grieving over our own personal lack of holiness) then we are failing at our mission to be the Church that reflects the heart of God and the character of Christ and that points to the coming Kingdom. A Christian is not one who pursues only personal holiness while ignoring the injustices in the world around us, and a Christian is not one who pursues only justice in society while ignoring the pursuit of personal holiness. A Christian is both. To try to separate them is linguistically, psychologically, and theologically impossible. The Sermon on the Mount certainly does not allow for that kind of thinking. This either/or approach that is so popular in the Church in the US is a betrayal of the heart of God, of the character of Christ, and of the mission of the Church. We need to ask God for a heart that aches for both personal holiness and societal justice. We need to ask God to give us a heart that breaks for the things that break his heart. In this way we become bearers of God’s glory and reflectors of the character of Christ. In this way God’s Church fulfills our mission of being salt and light, calling all the peoples of the earth to taste and see the goodness of our God and to experience the redemption that is in Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father. It is the cross of Christ that distinguishes the Christian pursuit of righteousness and justice from the secular pursuit of righteousness and justice. That is a topic for another blog post.
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