The Hebrew Bible, the teaching of Jesus, the ethics of the apostles, and the social vision of the church fathers are saturated with concerns about the poor, oppression, injustice and God’s radical reordering of power in the hereafter.
Jesus and the Powers, N.T. Wright and Michael Bird
Social justice would have never crossed Jesus’ mind.
Jesus understood social and political theory, but he was not animated or guided by them. His teachings and deeds of power were motivated by concepts much stronger, wiser, and holistic than modern, politicized understandings of social justice.
Jesus was conscious of being anointed from a source that transcends the classrooms of sociology or the halls of congress. Jesus knew he was chosen, set apart for a role, and given a vocation in the world from his Father. He heard this calling in very personal terms. Think of his Baptism and The Transfiguration:
This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased…listen to him.
(Matthew 3:17; 17:5)
When Jesus said I am anointed, he was not bragging or claiming special privilege. He was naming a distinct responsibility. He was making a claim to divinely directed ministry, to being set apart or dedicated to divine service. This is the very definition of Messiah and Christos. The Spirit anointed him to. The little word to implies motion in a direction. In Jesus, it meant motion focused on obedience to his Father for the salvation and healing of all creation.
Jesus described the specific goals of this anointing:
To proclaim good news to the poor.
To proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18-19)
This is salvation in its most holistic sense.
Righteousness as Habit
The apostle Paul frequently talked about salvation and Christian spirituality as being in Christ. This is important for our life because being in Christ means that we participate in Jesus’ special anointing. In our followership of Jesus, as we seek to align our life to his, we are pursuing righteousness. Righteousness in the New Testament is both personal and social.
In conveying biblical thought…[justice and righteousness] are inseparable in that it is God’s will to which a person conforms, whether that is in social or religious categories.
For Jesus the pursuit of righteousness is obeying God’s will in all its aspects (personal, social, and communal) and is to be the first priority of his followers.
Righteousness is not a theological concept, something to memorize to pass a test. It is meant to be actionable, livable. Righteousness is “the habit of doing God’s will.”
It is moral behavior which includes the establishment of justice…submitting to God’s reign and seeking to realize it in this world.
Living, Life-giving Justice
Seeking justice must begin with God—not social theories, not political campaigns, not partisan platforms, not governmental definitions and goals, and not polls and studies. Seeking justice must begin with the story and purposes of God.
In his classic book, Streams of Living Water, Richard Foster shares a timeline demonstrating that the justice tradition was expressed in a largely unbroken line in the Church since the time of Jesus, the apostles, and the first deacons, and up to modern-day icons like Mother Teresa and Bryan Stevenson.
The Bible memorably describes this stream:
Jesus said: Rivers of living water will flow from those who believe in me. By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive (John 7:37-39).
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as a crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. (Revelation 22:1-2)
Living and life-giving point to the quality of the water. It contains and distributes the powerful loving nature of God and the Lamb. It heals, saves, delivers, and brings justice—finally God’s justice to our sin-sick, broken world.
As we plunge into this stream, we get saturated with the anointing and favor of God. Of such people Jesus said,
Great blessings belong to those who want to do right more than anything else. God will fully satisfy them. (Matthew 5:6, ERV)