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The Great Ends of the Church:

the Promotion of Social Righteousness

by Parrish W. Jones, Ph.D.

©2005 all rights reserved.

 

Isaiah 58:1-9b            Psalm 11

Romans 13:1-7        Luke 4:16-19

 

We come today to consider the fifth of the The Great Ends of the Church, namely, the Promotion of Social Righteousness. This Great End causes perhaps more consternation in the church than almost anything else because there are those who say, "The church is about the soul not about politics." Others say, "One cannot care about justice and ignore politics." We tend to focus on the role of the church in the political arena. But, before we get into that too far, we must make some distinctions and understand the meaning of this aspect of the church's mission better.

Social righteousness does not begin with political advocacy and action nor does it begin with the social. That is why it is in the place it is in the Great Ends. We recognize that one must begin with fostering a relationship of personal righteousness prior to becoming socially righteous. Thus we bring people into the community of faith to be nurtured and educated in the faith. Just as we teach our children the virtues of honesty, respect for oneself and others, honor, generosity, patience, kindness, self-control and the like, we nurture faithfulness in Christians through all of life and into death.

We also teach in the church that one can never be righteous on one's own. In the end the only way we can be righteous is through God's grace. Achieving personal righteousness is beyond human capacity for "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23), God being the only fully righteous being.

But what does it mean to be righteous? English translations of the biblical words sort of muddy the waters. For example, the Revised Standard translation of the Older Testament translates the Hebrew word "Tsedack"--vindication, deliverance, saving deeds, saving help, righteous help, salvation, equity, as well as, righteous, justice, just, and so forth. How can one word mean so many things?

According to a number of references, the Hebrew word is about relationships, so how we translate it into English differs in the context of  the relationship. When one tells someone about something that happens, one is righteous or just if one tells the truth. If one makes a promise with another, one is righteous or just if one keeps the promise. You can get the picture.

The word is how one person or a group of people relate to others in differing contexts: person to person, within the family, with one's working associates, with one's clients or customers or employees or employer, as a corporation to society, as a governing official in carrying out one's governing authority, governments in relation to those they govern and other governments, and so on and so forth. Thus righteousness is both personal and social.

The same can be said for the words usually translated just and righteous in the Newer Testament. The Greek word "diakosune" is translated in numerous ways but most commonly as righteous, justice, just, and justness. Given that the Newer Testament focuses on covenantal relationships since Christ came to reclaim the covenant of God with the world, we must understand the word as reflecting the Older Testament notion of relationships all of which are understood within the sphere of covenants.

An example: When I counsel couples about marriage, I talk about the covenant they are about to make with one another and with their families and society. Indeed, they make promises that they will carry out between themselves. However, they also make promises to their families and community. Marriage is a covenant in which the bride and groom promise to be faithful to one another and remain within the boundaries circumscribed by marriage which is also a promise to all other persons to remain within those bounds. Likewise those present by their presence promise to respect those boundaries and never cross them. Thus we have what we have grown to recognize as a primary covenant of community stability. Personal righteousness extends to social righteousness.

So we need to break out of the tradition that leads us to think that righteousness is purely personal. The scriptures teach clearly that we are part of a community. Whether or not the larger community recognizes our covenants our covenantal obligations to the community still extend to it by virtue of our divine call. This covenant applies to our interaction with governments.

We have all too readily adopted what appears to be a very positive attitude of Paul from our Romans text without noticing some very important qualifications. Governments are creations of God with a purpose. That purpose is to uphold the covenantal relationships that God has ordained: public order and safety, justice, peace, security for vulnerable persons especially the poor, and so forth. These are all a part of the Older and Newer Testament understanding of government. At the time Paul wrote, the world lived under Roman domination, and that domination was often cruel and inhuman. Rome exacted oppressive and impoverishing taxes on its subjects, something which Paul could not have possibly endorsed. Rome executed Jesus for sedition. Certainly, Paul could not have endorsed that. Rome's policies led to religious persecution. Certainly, Paul could not have endorsed that.

Overall the Older and Newer Testaments are filled with the constant criticism of the governing authorities in Israel and in the Greek and Roman Empires. The book of Revelation is a narrative of God's judgement of the governing powers of Rome for their gross failures and injustices. The prophets of the Older Testament preach constantly against the behavior of their political, economic, cultural and religious leaders for their injustice as our text from Isaiah tells us. Jesus takes on the prophetic mantra when he adopts as his sermon text for his first sermon in Nazareth verses from Isaiah. If we read the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke, we discover that these two gospels place Jesus squarely within the tradition of the prophets. In fact, the Gospels do not place Jesus in the royal tradition of kings but the prophetic tradition. The scriptures view governments, economic powers, cultures, communities, and religious institutions as creations of God that can do good or do evil.

Given that the church is always situated within such contexts under these "powers", as the scriptures lump them together, the church can either be passive and assume no prophetic role or it can take on a prophetic role. The black hole in the soul of the church is that it has failed to be prophetic in the world. It has done so to avoid internal conflict over issues. Yet, that avoidance simply has led us to quiescent evil and, I believe, led us to honor a Bible that is full of holes.

Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners , an evangelical publication that deals with social justice, tells the story of the time he was in seminary when he and others were feeling discouraged about the church's response to the social needs of our culture. They decided to take a Bible and read it and cut out the verses that speak of justice, the responsibility of the culture to the poor, the oppressed, widow and orphans. When they had finished they had almost no Bible. They called it the Bible full of holes.

In essence Jim asks the question, "How can people in positions of power in this country and every country who claim to read the Bible miss the biblical message regarding social justice? Is their Bible full of holes? How can Christians who go to church weekly continue to only support the church's ministry to people with food banks and clothing closets? How can we send people on mission trips and hear about the oppression of people and not respond with substantial work to end their oppression? Is their Bible full of holes?"

Jim does not question the importance of the clothing closet, the food bank, or the short term mission trip. What he questions is why we do not call the "powers" of the world to account and use our political clout to transform our world to care for the poor, the oppressed, the widow, the orphan? Those are hard questions the American church substantially ignores to its spiritual peril.

I am aware that for many of you, this whole idea may seem strange because ministers have been reluctant to talk about it. Yet, I am called and ordained as a minister to preach to you the whole word of God. I do not expect you to completely grasp nor to understand the full thrust of this now, however, a part of our mission is the promotion of social righteousness. We are called to seek a better understanding of that for us as the body of Christ.