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.”