Why Christians Must Care About Politics

Why Christians Must Care about Politics

By Natasha Crain / June 16, 2022

There are few things more controversial than whether Christians should be involved with politics, and if so, to what degree and how that involvement should happen. In this episode, I break down two basic premises for thinking well about this subject:

1. Christians have the right, politically speaking, to advocate for our views in the public square.

2. Christians have the calling, spiritually speaking, to advocate for the good of others.

I then respond to seven common objections to Christian political involvement. These (errant) ideas are unfortunately found throughout Pastor Andy Stanley’s new book, Not In It to Win It, so I use quotes from that book as a case study to show the problems with such thinking. (To be clear, these are problems I believe there are with what he wrote, not problems he is presenting.)

The objections to involvement that I address are:

1. People don’t like the church when we focus on politics.

Response: If the church was primarily associated with secular leftist political ideology, this objection goes away. People leave because they think the church is too focused on political views they disagree with. If those views are consistent with a biblical worldview, however, we shouldn’t care whether nonbelievers take issue with us over it! Of course they will!  

2. Neither party represents Christianity, so Christians shouldn’t be known to be affiliated with a specific party.

Response: We should affirm our identity is in Christ, not a political party. We are Christ-followers first. This being said, if the platform of one party broadly aligns more with a biblical worldview, it is not odd there is a correlation. 

3. You can’t change people’s hearts by changing laws.

Response: We want to advocate for the good of others for the good of society to restrain evil and promote justice, as defined by godly standards. The gospel is the priority over social concerns and politics. 

4. Nation changing wasn’t part of Jesus’s mission, so it shouldn’t be part of ours.

Response: Jesus wasn't out to save a nation politically - he was here to save people from all nations spiritually. Just because Jesus did or didn't do something, doesn't mean we are supposed to do or don't something. We are not him and we are to act in consistency with a biblical worldview, which may be different than Jesus' own very specific mission. 

5. In “fighting” for our rights, we’re not putting others first.

Response: Christians should advocate for God-given rights, rights given to everyone. A right given to one doesn't necessarily mean someone else loses a right. The desire to put others first, while being biblical, doesn't mean we should affirm everything they want or believe if it is not based on a biblical worldview. We should determine all our views, including political views, from a biblical worldview. 

6. Politics create division and division is the enemy.

Response: Unity requires truth around which to unify. The existence of disagreement is not the enemy; it's naïve that if we all stopped caring about politics, we'd all agree in the church. No, the problem is our fallen nature. 

7. Politically concerned Christians just want to “get our way” or gain “power.”

Response: Wanting to get your way is not a bad thing if what you want is actually God's way. Certainly some politicians are in it for the power - disingenuous to characterize all Christians in this way. 

There ARE unhealthy mixes of faith and politics, but that’s not the subject of this episode (though I do acknowledge those a bit as I address the above points). My purpose here is to address those who are cautioning Christians to stay out of politics in significant ways. I think that is a grave mistake.

Buying a Gun and Getting an Abortion Aren’t the Same

 Buying a Gun and Getting an Abortion Aren’t the Same 

from here: https://www.str.org/w/buying-a-gun-and-getting-an-abortion-aren-t-the-same

Should gun buyers be subjected to the same restrictions as women who seek an abortion? That’s what some people seem to suggest, and they’ve have been sharing a social media post about it that’s been circulating for years. Here’s one version of the post:

How about we treat every young man who wants to buy a gun like every woman who wants to get an abortion—mandatory 48-hr waiting period, parental permission, a note from his doctor proving he understands what he's about to do, a video he has to watch about the effects of gun violence, an ultrasound wand up the ass (just because). Let's close down all but one gun shop in every state and make him travel hundreds of miles, take time off work, and stay overnight in a strange town to get a gun. Make him walk through a gauntlet of people holding photos of loved ones who were shot to death, people who call him a murderer and beg him not to buy a gun.

It makes more sense to do this with young men and guns than with women and health care, right? I mean, no woman getting an abortion has killed a room full of people in seconds, right?

To be clear, this is offered more as a thought experiment to show how women are unfairly hampered from procuring an abortion. The thinking is that young men (why only young men?) should also be equally inhibited from buying a gun so that people can better understand the problem with abortion restrictions.

It’s a clever and quick read, but like many things, it takes some unpacking to see why this is not a fair comparison. The post hypothetically suggests imposing on young men (who want to purchase a gun) the same obstacles that are placed on women (who want an abortion). The key question with this post is whether procuring an abortion and purchasing a gun are comparable in relevant ways. Upon a little reflection, however, it seems that’s not the case.

First, procuring an abortion is not a right that’s protected in the Constitution, whereas the Second Amendment declares the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It seems that procuring an abortion doesn’t possess the same constitutional grounding that lawful gun purchases might enjoy. In fact, it could be argued that a person’s right to life is infringed by their mother aborting them. At the very least, however, the two behaviors are not protected from restrictions to the same degree.

Second, nearly every abortion results in the death of an innocent human being. Even in the instances where the unborn survives the abortion (an exceedingly rare situation), the intent to kill them was still present. That means that of the 2,363 instances (just today) in the United States where a woman procured an abortion, almost all of them resulted in the death of the human being in the mother’s womb. That’s at least a couple of thousand deaths each day in the United States.

Contrast that with 108,754 firearms that were purchased each day in the United States during 2020 (which was obviously a higher rate of purchase than in previous years due to people’s fear during that tumultuous year). Despite the record sales, it’s impossible that every firearm purchase resulted in the intentional killing of an innocent human being. We know 108,754 people were not killed by guns each day in 2020.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 124 gun-related deaths a day in 2020. That’s total deaths, though. You would have to subtract all the deaths resulting from accidents, law enforcement, self-defense, and illegally acquired firearms before you’d see a number that represents how many innocent human beings were intentionally killed as a result of lawful purchases. The exact number is irrelevant for my purpose here, but it stands in stark contrast to the nearly 1:1 abortion to death ratio.

The point is that the social media post attempts to compare procuring an abortion to purchasing a firearm. But while nearly every abortion kills an innocent human being, the vast majority of gun purchasers never kill anyone. If our society wants to impede behaviors that intentionally kill innocent human beings, then impeding abortion would save far more people.

Third, this comparison describes abortion as merely “health care,” a deceptive euphemism. Even if you’re an abortion-choice advocate, you must admit that abortion kills whatever living organism resides in a woman’s uterus. If “health care” is provided in an abortion, it’s safe to say it’s not directed at the living being in the womb.

The science of embryology demonstrates that a pregnant woman’s uterus contains a living, distinct, human being. We know it’s living because it grows, responds to stimuli, and converts nutrients to energy. We know it’s distinct because its DNA is different from the rest of the mother’s body. We know it’s human because of the basic and commonsense principle that living beings reproduce after their own kind. Since two humans mated to produce the unborn, we can be confident that what they reproduced was also human. The bottom line is that what is killed in abortion is scientifically known to be a living, distinct, human being. It’s also the mother’s offspring—either a son or daughter. You can call abortion “health care,” but you can’t deny that it kills an innocent human being.

Perhaps the most tragic part of this post is its final question: “I mean, no woman getting an abortion has killed a room full of people in seconds, right?” That’s right. She hasn’t. The tragedy is that she’s been deceived to believe that to serve the interests of her own health care, her best choice is to kill an innocent human being. It may not be a “room full of people,” but the person she authorizes to kill in the medical room is her own son or daughter.

The Biblical Structure of History

The Biblical Structure of History is written by Gary North and is available here:

https://www.garynorth.com/TheBiblicalStructureOfHistory.pdf

From the preface:

Why should you start reading this book? Why should you finish reading it? Because you are the heir to a great gift: Christian civilization. It began on the day Adam was created (Genesis 1:26). It will not end on the day of judgment (Matthew 25). It will extend into eternity (Revelation 21, 22). You owe God thanks. The more you know about the history of Christian civilization, the more thanks you will owe. 

More than any other religion except Judaism, Christianity is a religion based on history. Yet Christians are remarkably ignorant about the history of the church. They are even more ignorant about the culture-transforming effects of the church. Even if they know a little about a few key figures in the history of the church, they cannot explain exactly why these people were important in the history of Western civilization. They cannot tell you what difference these people made outside of the institutional church. They have no understanding of the relationship between the church’s teachings and historical progress. One of the reasons for this ignorance is that humanistic historians ever since the Renaissance have dominated the profession of historical storytellers. They have written stories about the history of the church prior to 1500. These stories have been almost universally negative. There has been some recent improvement in the accuracy of the humanists’ accounts of the history of Christianity, but not enough. Humanists have written the history textbooks. Textbooks on the history of Western civilization have focused on the historical impact of the rediscovery of Greek and Roman historical documents and sculpture that took place after about 1350, and especially after the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, when Greek refugees came west with copies of ancient Greek documents and the ability to teach. Humanist historians labeled the early history of the church “the dark ages.” They also labeled the history of the West up to about 1350 as “the Middle Ages.” The middle of what? The middle of civilization between the fall of Rome in 476 A.D. and the advent of the Renaissance. 

In this book, I explain the nature of the intellectual warfare between two irreconcilable theories of history and two traditions of writing about history. The first is the Christian concept of history. The second is humanism’s concept of history. Both groups have adopted similar organizational categories for understanding history, but their presuppositions are radically opposed. I discuss this conflict of visions in terms of the rivalry between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. I show why you and generations of Christians before you have been deliberately misinformed about the history of Western civilization. 

This book will take time to read. You will have to pay attention to some of the details. I have done my best to structure the book to make it readable, but there is no substitute for paying attention. 

Man’s mind comprehends his environment—not perfectly, but adequately for a creature responsible before God to exercise dominion in God’s name. It is only because mankind has this interpretive ability that science can exist. Even more crucial, it is only because God created and actively, providentially sustains this universe that science can exist. Few Christians have been told that without three key doctrines that stem directly from Christian theology, modern science could not have been developed: first, the creation of the universe by a totally transcendent God out of nothing; second, the sustaining providence of God; third, linear (straight line) history. The pagan world, including Greece and Rome, did not believe these doctrines, and it did not develop theoretical science. Similarly, both Chinese and Islamic science failed to carry through on their hopeful beginnings in science because they rejected a Christian worldview. Because the West believed in these three doctrines, modern science became possible. Because modern man has abandoned all three of these doctrines, modern science has become increasingly irrational, despite its tremendous advancement. As the experiments become more precise, physicists have lost faith in the coherence of the universe. The twentieth century has abandoned the stable, rational worldview of late-nineteenth-century physical science (pp. 13–14). As I explain in Part 2, the spread of subjectivism has steadily undermined humanistic historians’ trust in the meaningfulness of their research and the research of their peers. This subjectivism is an inescapable result of the academic world’s rejection of biblical creationism. It assumes a rival view of origins: impersonal, purposeless, meaningless cosmic evolution. 

I have learned after six decades of experience in teaching, primarily on the printed page and the computer screen, that it is more effective to start with a presentation of what is correct before launching into detailed criticisms of what is incorrect. The old saying is true: you can’t beat something with nothing. It is best to begin with something, and especially something true. 

This is why I devote Part 1 to a presentation of the biblical foundations of history and also historiography. These five covenantal categories are foundational to the study of society: sovereignty, authority, law, sanctions, and succession. The Bible identifies the content of these five categories in the realm of history: creationism, the image of God in man, biblical law, God’s imputation of meaning, and cultural inheritance over time. 

In Part 2, I survey humanism’s rival construct. Humanist historians rely on the same five categories in their pursuit of an understanding of the past—sovereignty, authority, law, sanctions, and succession—but they substitute different content in four of the five: evolution, autonomy, relativism, and nominalism,. On the fifth point, succession, they remain silent. It is too depressing: entropy—the heat death of the again purposeless universe. (See Chapter 10.) 

In Part 3, I discuss how and why Christian historians must reconstruct the epistemological foundations of their field from the bottom up, and then begin to produce historical studies that are consistent with the Christian worldview regarding the structure of history. There is such a worldview. The fact that Christian historians have ignored it for so long has undermined their understanding of historical development. They have adopted too much of the humanists’ covenant model, which is implicit in the history profession’s university screening system that certifies professional competence. But there is no formal university course in presuppositions in any academic discipline. At most, there is are courses in methodology, which never mention the presuppositions that undergird the professors’ worldview. But the humanists’ presuppositions exist, and they shape the thinking of most professional historians.

Secular vs. Religious Upbringing (Jewish Or Christian)

 https://www.dailywire.com/news/prager-differences-between-a-secular-and-a-religious-jewish-or-christian-upbringing

Differences Between A Secular And A Religious – Jewish Or Christian – Upbringing

By  Dennis Prager

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Dec 18, 2021   DailyWire.com

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Nazar Abbas Photography via Getty Images

Anyone who thinks about the current civil war in America comes to realize that it is, in large measure, a war between the religious and the anti-religious. The Left has contempt for evangelical Protestants, traditional Catholics and Orthodox Jews for good reason: They represent everything the Left loathes; and while there are, of course, secular conservatives who fight the Left, the largest and most effective opposition comes from conservative Christians and Jews.

The differences begin in childhood. Most religious kids — especially those who attend traditional Christian and Jewish schools — are raised with different values than most secular kids.

Here are some examples:

No. 1:
Religious upbringing: Fight yourself.
Secular upbringing: Fight society.

I studied in yeshiva (Orthodox Jewish school, where half the day I studied Bible and other religious subjects in Hebrew, and half the day I studied secular subjects in English) from kindergarten to 12th grade. I learned early on that the biggest problem in Dennis Prager’s life was Dennis Prager. In nearly all secular schools and in liberal religious schools, kids learn that the biggest problem in their lives is American society — in fact, everything other than themselves.

Which do you think produces a more self-critical, more self-controlled and overall better human being?

Which do you think produces an angrier and less happy human being?

No. 2:
Religious Upbringing: Learn wisdom.
Secular Upbringing: No body of wisdom conveyed.

I have no doubt that most kids raised with the Bible and other Jewish or Christian works have more wisdom than almost any secular professor or other secular intellectual. Yes, there are secular individuals who have wisdom (the Judeo-Christian body of wisdom sometimes continues to have influence for a generation or two), but I cannot think of a single secular institution with wisdom. That is why the institutions with the least wisdom and that believe and teach the most nonsense are universities — they are, after all, the most secular institutions in our society.

No. 3: 

Religious Upbringing: People are not basically good. 

Secular Upbringing: People are basically good.

“Wisdom begins,” both Psalms and Proverbs teach, “with fear of God.” In other words, no God, no wisdom. But there is another way of asserting how and where wisdom begins. Wisdom begins with acknowledging how flawed human nature is. Or, to put it as succinctly as possible, you cannot be wise if you think people are basically good. You can be a sweet, kind and well-intentioned person if you believe people are basically good, but you cannot be wise. Indeed, you are more likely to be a naive fool.

The belief that people are basically good, a belief that neither Judaism nor Christianity has ever held, is a major obstacle to making a good society. For one thing, parents who believe this will not discipline their children as much as they need to. They will assume, as three generations of American parents now have, that all a child needs is love. And for another, people who believe human nature is good are much less inclined to punish criminals because they will blame murder, theft, rape and other evils on economic circumstances, parents and society — on anything but the criminal’s failure to control his flawed nature.

No. 4:
Religious Upbringing: Holy days.
Secular Upbringing: No holy days.

Religious children celebrate holy days — the Sabbath each week and other holy days in their respective religious calendars. Regular times devoted to the Transcendent have a major impact on the development of a child. The secular child has secular holidays, but they mean little to most American young people. July Fourth is a day off with a barbecue. Meaningless Halloween has come to have more significance than meaningful Christmas. Presidents’ Day means nothing. And Thanksgiving is increasingly declared Indigenous Peoples’ Genocide Day.

There’s a lot more that distinguishes religious and secular upbringings. But one stands out: Religious kids are generally happier.

Is one upbringing better than the other? You decide.

The Legend of the Social Justice Jesus

from here: https://www.str.org/w/the-legend-of-the-social-justice-jesus

I want to tell you a story of an ancient sage who changed the world.

This wise man fought for justice, championing the cause of the poor and the oppressed. He rejected organized religion, showing tolerance—not judgment—for the outcast and the socially marginalized. He promoted universal love and the brotherhood of man. His unflinching commitment to speak truth to power cost him his life, but his legacy lives on. He is a model for us today of love, acceptance, and inclusion. His name is Jesus of Nazareth.

That is the story, in sum. It’s a noble tale, to be sure. But it’s a falsehood, a fiction, an urban legend. Though the story is parroted like a mantra by multitudes—even echoed reflexively by otherwise sound spiritual leaders who ought to know better—no such Jesus ever existed. Rather, taken as a whole, this version of Jesus is just another example of another Jesus bringing another gospel like the ones the apostle Paul anathematized to the Galatians.[1]

A Myriad of Myths

This is not the first legend about Jesus, of course. Paul chastised the Corinthians—somewhat sarcastically—for their own cavalier embrace of teachers fabricating a false Christ generated by a false spirit bringing a false gospel:

For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully. (2 Cor. 11:4)

The Corinthians were being led astray by the serpent’s crafty deceptions, Paul said, just as Eve was (v. 3)—abandoning simple devotion to the genuine Jesus for an alluring invention, an alternate Christ.

The trend would continue in the future, Paul warned, with the church turning their ticklish ears from truth to myths—legends—choosing man-made fictions over doctrinal facts (2 Tim. 4: 3–4). Jesus himself warned of future interlopers, imposters masquerading as messiahs who would mislead many (Matt. 24:24).

Times have changed, but the trend has not. New “Jesus legends” abound: the legend of Jesus, the (mere) itinerant moral teacher; the legend of Jesus, the prophet of Allah; the socialist Jesus legend; the legend of the Gnostic Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas; the legend of Jesus, the universal Christ; the LDS legend of Jesus, the spirit brother of Lucifer; the New Age Jesus-the-Hindu-guru legend. Et cetera, et cetera.

The remaking of the Jewish Messiah from Nazareth into a progressive advocate of social justice is just the latest example of the tendency people have to fashion Christ in their own social/spiritual/political image.

Of course, in one sense that shouldn’t surprise us. Most folks have a genuine respect for Jesus—as they should. It’s understandable, then, that on weighty matters they’d want Jesus on their side.

Here the tail wags the dog, though. The point is not for any of us to get Jesus on our side, but for us to get on Jesus’ side—hands to the plow, not looking back, fit for the kingdom.[2]

What precisely is “Jesus’ side,” though? Given the mishmash of myths, how do we separate wheat from chaff, fact from fiction, legend from history? We cannot follow Jesus if we do not have a clear idea of who the real flesh and blood Jesus of history was and which direction he was heading. But how do we know with any confidence?

Searching for Jesus

There is a reliable, uncomplicated method I employ to get an accurate, balanced, big-picture take on any topic in any section of Scripture, and it’s perfectly suited for this task.

Say, for example, I want to know everything about how God supernaturally guided the early church, or what Proverbs teaches on leadership, or what the New Testament instructs on prayer, or how the disciples of Jesus preached the gospel in the book of Acts, etc.[3] I simply read every word of the biblical material I’m interested in, isolate every passage that’s germane to my topic, then collate the passages in an orderly way to create a thorough, complete, precise portrayal of the topic. It’s a simple—if labor-intensive—technique anyone can use to get the full counsel of any section of Scripture on any topic.

This approach might be problematic for some, though—particularly the more progressive types who favor the social justice Jesus version. They simply do not trust the record. To many of them, Scripture is not an authoritative account of what God revealed to man, but simply one version of what certain ancient people believed about God. The Gospels are humanly “inspired,“ not divinely inspired—man-made, not God-breathed.

No matter. That distinction makes absolutely no difference to my assessment. Here’s why. Nothing about my case has anything to do with whether or not the Bible is divinely inspired. Though that is my view, it’s a separate issue for now.

Here’s the real issue. We have one body of detailed information about Jesus: the canonical Gospels. We can accept them as divinely inspired or not. We can accept them (as many scholars do) as non-inspired human documents that are, on the main, historically accurate. We can even accept them as error-ridden musings by primitive people about God and Jesus. What we cannot do, though, is reject the Gospel accounts out of hand and then advance our own personal opinion of the Jesus of the Gospels, since there will be no Jesus left to have a personal opinion about.

Reject the record, and you forfeit your opinion of the man of the record. It’s that simple. Of course, if you cherry-pick verses to fashion a Jesus in your own image, then I have nothing to offer you. If that’s your project, you are welcome to your fantasy, but do not mistake the views of your make-me-up Christ for the views of Jesus of Nazareth. That legend will reflect your opinions, not his.

Jesus and “Social Justice”

Our question here is simple: What did Jesus come to do? Preach a socialistic redistribution of wealth? Introduce New Age Hinduism to Torah-observant Jews? Prophesy for Allah? Teach us how to attain personal godhood or accomplish Christ consciousness? Advocate for the poor, the marginal, and the disenfranchised in a campaign for social justice? Let’s see.

To separate the real Jesus from legendary christs of any sort, I simply employed my system. I carefully read every line of every Gospel and isolated every passage that spoke of Jesus’ purpose—references either from Jesus himself, from clues in the birth narratives, or from statements from Jesus’ forerunner, John the Baptist. I also isolated every reference to the poor.

My search regarding the poor revealed something surprising, considering the breadth of the record. It turns out that Jesus almost never spoke of the poor. He made only ten specific references to “poor” of different sorts,[4] not counting parallel passages. Even this small number overstates the issue because of an interesting pattern my search revealed, one I have noted elsewhere:[5]

In the vast majority of cases where Jesus mentions the poor, he does so not to commend the poor as such, but to make a point about something else—hypocrisy, a widow’s generosity, Zacchaeus’s repentance, the rich young ruler’s confusion, or a lesson about the afterlife.[6]

Jesus did care about the financially destitute, of course, and enjoined charity and compassion for them through kindness and voluntary giving to the disadvantaged (Lk. 12:33, 14:13–14), a point John the Baptist emphasized as well (Lk. 3:11). Campaigning for the poor, however, was not part of his project.

In one case, Jesus actually was dismissive of the poor when compared to something else that was his greater concern: “For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me” (Matt. 26:11, cf. Mk. 14:5–9, Jn. 12:8).[7]

What was it about Jesus himself that defined his mission in a way that completely eclipsed a legitimate and appropriate concern for the financially destitute? Jesus’ three remaining references to the poor answer that question.

In only two instances did Jesus identify anything about his mission with those people he considered “poor.” When preaching on the Sabbath at the synagogue in Nazareth he said:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. (Lk. 4:18–19)

When John the Baptist sent word from prison questioning in his dark moments whether or not Jesus was indeed “the Expected One,” Jesus responded to his doubts by reporting the fulfillment of his earlier claim:

Go and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. (Matt. 11:4–5, cf. Lk. 7:22)

Note two important things about the poor and oppressed from these passages. First, it is clear in both references that foundational to Jesus’ ministry of mercy—giving sight to the blind, healing the lame, cleansing the lepers, raising the dead—was preaching the gospel to the “poor.”

Second, Jesus’ sermon on that Sabbath in Nazareth is the only place he makes mention of concern for the “oppressed.” Peter, however, gives us insight into the kind of oppression Jesus had in mind:

You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how he went about doing good and healing all who are oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.… Of him all the prophets bear witness that through his name everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins. (Acts 10:38, 43)

Taken together, these passages about the poor paint a clear picture of Jesus’ intent. The poor were to receive the gospel, have their sins forgiven, and be released from the devil’s power—that last point underscored by Jesus’ consistent practice of freeing people from demon possession.

What kind of “poor” would receive this gospel message of forgiveness and thus be freed from the oppression of the devil? Not the proud, pharisaical self-righteous, but rather those who understood their spiritual poverty—which is precisely the point Jesus makes in his sole remaining reference to the poor: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3, cf. Lk. 6:20).

Clearly, contending for the financially destitute as such was not his concern, nor was campaigning on behalf of the marginalized, the disenfranchised, or the socially oppressed.

Jesus’ central concern was bringing forth a kingdom in a way that secured liberty for the captives[8] through forgiveness of sin—a fact that every one of my remaining Gospel passages about Jesus’ mission makes manifestly clear.

On this point, I will simply let the record speak for itself.

In the Beginning

From the outset, the Gospels paint a clear picture of Christ’s purpose. The earliest reference comes from the prophet Micah:

And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the leaders of Judah; for out of you shall come forth a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. (Matt. 2:6, cf. Micah 5:2)

Zacharias weighs in next when he prophesies at the birth of his son, John the Baptist:

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare his ways; to give to his people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, with which the Sunrise from on high will visit us, to shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Lk. 1:76–79)

At the annunciation, the angel Gabriel told Mary not to be afraid, since she had found favor with God and would be given a matchless gift:

And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David; and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end. (Lk. 1:31–33)

Joseph, grieved and alarmed by the strange turn of events he faced, received counsel from an angel of the Lord in a dream. The angel said:

Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son; and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. (Matt. 1:20–21)

At Jesus’ birth, an angel appeared suddenly before shepherds in the field, saying, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Lk. 2:10–11).

When Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus to the temple soon after his birth, they encountered a righteous and devout man named Simeon and a prophetess named Anna who served continuously in the temple with fastings and prayers.

When Simeon took the infant Jesus into his arms, he said, “Now Lord, you are releasing your bond-servant to depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation” (Luke 2:26, 28–30).

Anna spoke next: “At that very moment she came up and began giving thanks to God, and continued to speak of Him to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Lk. 2:38).

At the outset of Jesus’ public ministry, the forerunner John the Baptist fulfills his father’s prophecy by giving “the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.” He points to Jesus and says: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn. 1:29). He also says that this Jesus would baptize with the Spirit and with fire, with salvation or with judgment (Matt. 3:10–12).

In these initial Gospel passages, a precise profile emerges.

A savior named Jesus, who is Christ the Lord, the Son of the Most High God, will be born in Bethlehem to shepherd Israel. As the sacrificial Lamb of God, he will bring salvation and redemption through the forgiveness of sins, baptizing some with the Holy Spirit and others with the fire of judgment. He will be given the throne of His father David and rule over an everlasting kingdom.

Something seems to be missing here, though. There is nothing in these descriptions of Jesus by any of his various forerunners that suggests a single element of the social justice Jesus described earlier. As it turns out, there is nothing like that in Jesus’ own claims about himself, either.

Jesus on Jesus

Jesus had much to say about his own mission. He said he came to preach the good news of the kingdom of God (Lk. 4:43). He made clear, though, that his kingdom was not of this world (Jn. 18:36), at least initially. It was not a physical kingdom bringing social justice, wealth redistribution, or political and cultural equity. Rather, it was a spiritual kingdom bringing forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life. Listen:

• Luke 19:10—The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.
• John 3:17—For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him[9] (cf. Lk. 9:56).
• Luke 5:32—I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (cf. Mk. 2:17, Matt. 9:12–13).
• Matthew 20:28—The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many (cf. Mk. 10:45).
• John 6:38–39—For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. This is the will of him who sent me, that of all that he has given me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.

For Jesus, salvation was not economic prosperity, equal distribution of goods, or sexual liberty without judgment or shame. Instead, salvation came through belief in him, bringing forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

• John 3:16–17—For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
• John 3:36—He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.
• Matthew 9:6 —“But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—then he said to the paralytic, “Get up, pick up your bed and go home” (cf. Mk. 2:10–11).
• Luke 5:20—Seeing their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.”
• Luke 7:47–48—“For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.” Then he said to her, “Your sins have been forgiven.”

Jesus knew that in order to accomplish this mission, he must suffer, die, and be raised again, just as Moses and the prophets had foretold.

• Luke 12:51—Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division.
• Matthew 16:21—From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day.
• John 12:27—Now my soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, “Father, save me from this hour”? But for this purpose I came to this hour.
• Matthew 26:28—For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins (cf. Mk. 14:24, Lk. 22:20).
• Luke 24:44–47—Now he said to them, “These are my words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled…. Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (cf. Lk. 24:25–27).

There you have it—the complete record of Jesus’ own statements about his purpose and mission. Once again, something is missing—any evidence of any kind that Jesus saw himself as an advocate for social justice. It’s not there. Not a word.

To be clear, there is no question that God in Scripture has a heart for the genuinely oppressed and destitute, and Jesus as God shared that concern as did his church.[10] When Jesus encountered deep human need, he responded with compassionate action—characteristically healing the sick, casting out demons, raising the dead, and in two instances, physically feeding multitudes.[11] Even so, Jesus’ principal purpose was redressing spiritual poverty, not rectifying social inequities.

“Who Do You Say that I Am?”

Reading through that plethora of Bible passages may have been a bit taxing, but there’s a point here.

Near the end of Jesus’ life, he asked his disciples the most important question anyone can consider: “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt. 16:15). The answer any person gives to that question seals his fate for eternity. We dare not be mistaken on this issue.

What I have tried to do here is to put Jesus in his proper place for those who have become confused by the cultural noise. I have done that by letting the record—the entire record—speak for itself.

Though I isolated every verse in the Gospels identifying Jesus’ purpose, I could not find a single sentence where Jesus championed the cause of the poor, the outsider, or the disenfranchised as such. There is not even a hint of it—in the sense that it’s commonly understood—in the entire historical account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

Did Jesus care about the poor, the downtrodden, and the marginalized? Yes. He also cared about the rich, the powerful, and the socially advantaged. Jesus cared about everyone, and he helped anyone who came to him—poor beggar or prostitute, wealthy tax collector or Pharisee.

The right answer to Jesus’ question is Jesus’ own answer, one that fits hand in glove with the message of each of his forerunners. He is the Christ, the Son of God, the Savior, the Lamb of God, the living sacrifice who secures forgiveness of sins and eternal life for anyone who bends his knee and beats his breast in penitence before him.[12]

It is the right answer because no other Jesus saves souls—and that, as it turns out, is what he came to do. Any other Jesus—Jesus the mere moral teacher, Jesus the prophet of Allah, the socialist Jesus, the Gnostic Jesus, the universal Christ Jesus, the spirit brother of Lucifer Jesus, the Hindu guru Jesus, even the social justice Jesus—is a falsehood, a fiction, an urban legend.

 

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[1] Galatians 1:8–9.

[2] Luke 9:62.

[3] These are all studies I’ve done. Find “Divine Direction and Decision Making in the Book of Acts,” “New Testament Prayer,” and the “Preaching God’s Love in Acts?” at str.org.

[4] Poor in spirit vs. poor financially, for example.

[5] Gregory Koukl, The Story of Reality (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), 114.

[6] Hypocrisy (Matt. 6:2–3), a widow’s generosity (Lk. 21:1–4), Zaccheus’s repentance (Lk. 19:8), the rich young ruler’s confusion (Matt. 19:21, Mk. 10:17–27, Lk. 18:18–27), a lesson about the afterlife (Lk. 16:20, 22).

[7] Note, by the way, that Deuteronomy 15:7–8, 11—the passage Jesus may be alluding to here—does enjoin God’s people to care about the poor. In the context, though, this was not Jesus’ point.

[8] That Jesus probably had spiritual captives in mind here is clear from his short discourse on freedom and slavery in John 8:31–36.

[9] Judgment would come, as John promised, but later, at the end (Matt. 25:31–46; cf. Jn. 9:39).

[10] The New Testament Christian community readily responded to poverty—not as an expression of justice, however, but as a voluntarily demonstration of charity (love) and mercy (cf. Acts 11:29, 24:17; Rom. 15:26; Gal. 2:10; 1 Cor 16:1–4).

[11] Notice, though, that Jesus’ largess in feeding the masses became a distraction for them. He had to rebuke them for continuing to seek physical bread from him instead of hungering for Jesus himself, the bread of life (Jn. 6:26ff.).

[12] Luke 18:9–14.