I heard a fine sermon Sunday (9/22/24) about the subtle dangers of hypocrisy and the temptation to judge others by standards we cannot meet (Matthew 7:1-5). With our x-ray moral vision, we can detect microscopic faults in others but are blind to the huge train of sins we drag behind us! Ouch! It was a time for self-examination! I was struck with how comprehensive Jesus’s demand for individual conversion is; each of us must change from head to toe, inside and out, body and soul, act, being, and affections!
My Search for the Progressive Jesus
Now, don’t tell the preacher, but after reading Matthew 7:1-5, I turned back to Matthew 5 & 6 and forward all the way to the end of the Gospel of Matthew, looking for the social-justice Jesus progressive and liberal Christians keep talking about. I kept thinking: could it be that looking for systemic injustices perpetrated by “society” instead of examining our own lives is another way of evading Jesus’s demand for personal repentance? Is our obsession with systemic sins a modern form of the hypocrisy against which Jesus warned?
When I got home after church, I looked through the Gospels of Mark and Luke also. Still, no sign of a first-century Che Guevara, Angela Davis, or Ibram Kendi. Nor did I find a Democrat or Republican or Libertarian Jesus. He’s not American or Brazilian or Chinese or Indian. He’s not even Jewish in the political sense.
The Politics of Heaven
In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, Jesus’s first public words were, “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matt 4:17; cf. Mark 1:15). There is not a single place where Jesus addresses impersonal “systems of privilege and oppression.” Not even one! Impersonal systems cannot repent or believe. In every case in which Jesus addresses the “poor,” “rich,” “self-righteous, “powerful,” “outcasts,” or the “oppressed” he speaks directly to individuals. Jesus proclaimed something much more radical, much more comprehensive than political reform or revolution. He proclaimed that the Kingdom of God is just around the corner. His requirements for entry to the Kingdom and his demands for life within the Kingdom are completely unrealistic for any worldly political order. His is a heavenly politics, and in that sense stands in judgment on every earthly kingdom. Read the Sermon on the Mount! Very few people in any nation would even try to live up to it. And even fewer would come close to success.
The Mustard Seed Kingdom
What, then, was Jesus up to? In reading the Gospel of Matthew it becomes clear that Jesus never expected the entire nation to respond favorably to the gospel of the Kingdom:
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it (7:13-14).
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven (7:21).
Think about the parables of the Kingdom in Matthew 13: The Sower, The Weeds, The Hidden Treasure, and The Net. Each of these parables assumes that the Kingdom will be much smaller than the whole people. The Kingdom message will sort (13:1-58) and divide people, even families (10:34-39).
The Church and the Kingdom
Again, what is Jesus up to? In response to Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus said,
Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Matt 16:17-18).
Jesus plans to set up his own community within the world, and this community will be made up of serious disciples of Jesus. In their way of life as individuals and together in community they will be “salt” and “light” in the world (Matt 5:13-16). They will shine into the world a ray of light that anticipates the bright dawn of God’s comprehensive reign over his creation. They will honor God in humility, faith and obedience and love each other from the heart. They will do justice to all people and even love their enemies. As need arises, just as Jesus did, they will do good to everyone. They will feed the hungry, visit the sick and those in prison, befriend the abandoned, and they will speak up for those suffering injustice. They will establish hospitals and educational institutions. The Spirit of Jesus will drive them to do all sorts of good works…in his name!
But will they do all these things without abandoning the message Jesus preached, “Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is near.” For they know that reforming systems apart from reforming hearts will simply substitute one system of injustice, greed and envy for another! They know that “man shall not live by bread alone,” that loaves and fishes will not by themselves satisfy but merely anesthetize the soul.
My search failed!
There is no social-justice Jesus in the New Testament. He is a figment of progressive and liberal Christians’ imaginations, a composite character constructed of elements drawn from Amos, Spartacus, and Che Guevara. Back to Matthew 7:1-5. It is much easier for the modern social justice Christian to curse the injustices of the world than to do justice in their own families and to their neighbors and enemies. As long as we focus on the sins of others or systems of privilege, we do not have to repent and prepare ourselves for the Kingdom of heaven.
Next Time: We will examine this progressive assertion. “In the Bible, God is always on the side of the oppressed.”
ifaqtheology 
I can’t believe (or maybe I should!) how “Timely’ this message is. Our church has a sign outside with the rainbow colors, ‘A Just World For All”. In no way can I see why a representative Body of Christ (“The Church”) should be making that it’s message to the ‘world outside’, which says nothing about what the True Gospel is, it doesn’t even require God nor His Work in Christ to make such an attempt that is literall impossible in a world of Sin and Darkness and contradicts everything He himself said about the nature of the inward person, for God knows that ‘every thought of the imagination, the inclination of the heart, was only continuously evil”, and ‘for He entrusted Himself to know one for He knew what was within man.”. So it’s been driving me nuts having to look at that banner. Ironically, some hoodlums came around and ripped the thing down, which everyone gasped out, “How Horrid!”, but I couldn’t have been gladder. (since then a new one is up). But just yesterday I found a way to make “A Just world for all’ tolerable. “Judge not lest you be judged, for he measure by which you judge shall you be judged”. “Do not judge others until you are prepared to be judged by the same standard. And then, when you exercise judgment toward others, do it with humility” and “We must first be willing to look honestly at our own lives and exercise the same judgment toward ourselves. When we do this, we judge from a position of humility.” and that Humility is in Fear of the LORD, knowing what we are apart from Christ. Judge with Righteous judgement.
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Thanks for your thoughts. Humility and courage…may the Lord supply these to you (and me) in abundance. Blessings. rch
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Mmnh.
We most of us know the words of Jesus from Matt 13:13.
The context of this thread is mentioned in the ‘synoptic’ gospels but in different places!
In Matt13 above the narrator draws our attention to the quote from Isaiah. And Jesus is teaching about parables, and how christians have access to a different (other-) worldly viewpoint.
The mystery of the Kingdom. But how many among us can quote the words of Jesus in the two lines immediately prior to Matt 13:13? Without looking them up contextually?
I myself remember these because i feel (my view is) that “social justice” was often in Jesus’ mind and heart, particularly where he saw so many wanting, in need and having nothing tangible in this world. An awareness of social injustices if you like. See the Beautitudes.
And this could be why the gospel writers varied this quotation’s position. Because social justice is a hard nut to crack, let alone to properly deal with (though of course Jesus tells us that “whenever we help the sick, the young, the elderly, the poor then we are helping Him”).
A hard thing to comprehend. When you might unwittingly, unconsciously judge the person you find who is “down on their luck”, and perhaps not as near to your own perception of ‘social status’ that makes you comfortable in their presence? Even your enemy. Several of my favourite parables touch upon this very thing. Nonetheless, Our Lord’s important teaching is in the lines of Matt 13: 11-12. As i have said above.
I leave this for folks to interpret and read for themselves. But i want to be honest, my own belief has always frightened me a little, because there is a dichotomy here- Jesus is constantly with those in need, a comforter, a helper, a friend but at the same time He has the power to take.
“For those who have nothing [but do not have me], i will take even more from them [their spirit, soul].”
God has helped me to overcome my fears in this respect, and to see everyone unaware of the mystery, as simply a christian-in-waiting. What’s to judge?
For the love of God.
JS
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