If you could describe God in one tweet, how would you describe him?
The Bible’s Tweets About God
According to Deuteronomy 10:18, Moses tweets that God is the one who “executes justice for the fatherless and the widow" and who not only loves abstractly, but clothes and feeds the foreigner concretely. God loves those who have not. The fatherless has no father, the widow has no spouse, the outsider has no food or clothing. God becomes father to the fatherless, spouse to the widow, provider to the outsider—you get the picture.
Think about it this way: God identifies himself as the defender of the powerless. He is the provider for the outcast. If you oppose or oppress the lowly, well, God stands on the side of the lowly and poor and you now stand against him in opposition. But that seems so backwards, right?
When I go places and meet people, one of the first questions asked is usually, “What is it that you do for a living?” And if a friend is introducing me to someone else, can you guess how I’m usually introduced? It’s typically something like, “This is Nick, he’s a pastor in San Diego.” Even though I do a lot of other things in life—I’m a husband, a father, a son, a brother, an uncle, a friend—people tend to describe me as being a pastor because it’s the most important or credible thing about me in the eyes of others. Me being a pastor sounds more significant than me just being a dad, or whatever else I am. (Even though Scripture places the calling of being a dad as higher than being a pastor—for example, if I’m not a good dad I shouldn’t be able to pastor. But that’s for another blog post.)
Do you know what God does for a living? (Other than uphold the universe, y’know, in his spare time what does he do?) God identifies with what he thinks is most important and credible and he says, I am the God of the poor. I am Father of the fatherless, as God says in Psalm 41:1-2 and Psalm 68:5 and a host of other places in Scripture.
Let that sink in.
Little Christ’s
I believe it was C.S. Lewis who once called Christians, “little Christ’s.” Christians are to be God’s ambassadors to the watching world. If God identifies himself with the poor, the question we should be asking is, who do we identify with?
Are we a people who are known for representing, advocating for, and defending the poor? If our God is a God of the poor, is that what people say about us? Are we known for not just our charity, but our advocacy for and relief and love of the poor?
I’m sure someone will throw this out, saying well, this now relates to those who are “poor in spirit” only. That’s fine, you can live like that, but that’s Gnosticism, Patrick! Early commentators knew better. Something can be both/and not simply either/or. To become a Christian, absolutely it’s about being someone who is poor spiritually—who knows that we are poor and we need the riches of Christ’s righteousness. But once we’re a Christian, the moral imperatives apply to our lives, which includes helping those who are poor and helpless. Will we pass by a neighbor who is in need on the Jericho road, like others did? Alright, not going down this rabbit trail, nuff said.
It’s fun to read about Christians in the first few centuries after the Bible was written. They were viewed by the Roman Empire as a cult and as super weird. But they loved lepers and fed the poor and showed hospitality to complete strangers. They risked their own health for their neighbors. And it made the gods of Rome look bad.
People started to respect Christians and believe they believed what they said because it was backed up by the testimony of their lives. They were charitable, giving, sacrificial—risking everything for the sake of others because they believed the gospel. What would it look like if the 21st century American church looked like this in a post-Christian world? I pray in the future it will look more like the 2nd century church, and less like the current church.
But there’s more than one word for justice in the Bible, and what I want to highlight is what just-living looks like in the Old Testament.
Defining “Justice”
So what is “justice” according to the Old Testament? Justice is about balance and equilibrium. It’s recognizing that not every part of society is exactly the same. There are the have and the have-nots. Everywhere, in any given society, this happens. Remember Jesus’s words to the disciples in John? “You’ll always have the poor with you.” Until the new heavens and new earth, sadly this problem is never going to truly go away everywhere. The issue is not getting rid of all poverty forever. That won't happen yet, but God will do that definitively in the new creation. The real issue is, who is going to take care of the have-nots in the meantime? Who is called to right now, love the poor who we see and know among us, within our spheres of influence? Who will care for the marginalized people right now? Who will take responsibility today? How are the have-nots going to get justice when they are treated unfairly? Will the haves do what’s right or will they ignore the plight of the poor?
In the Old Testament, God says to those who have something and all those who are in power to take care of the orphan, widow, and sojourner. He says, if you are strong, powerful, or influential, you should be using your high status to help the lowly. (Read Philippians 2, study the Christ Hymn there and look at how Jesus himself is the exemplar of humility and is the highest of high’s descending down into the lowest of lows for the sake of others. It’s a beautiful picture of God’s heart.)
Deuteronomy 10:19, says “Love the sojourner…for you were sojourners in…Egypt.” God freed you from Egypt, and gave you land, now you do the same for others who find themselves in the situation you used to be in. Sure, this is Deuteronomy and it’s a theocracy, we live in America so we can’t apply it directly to our lives, but the principle is simple: God forgives so we forgive. God gives, so we give. God provides for us, so we provide for others.
It’s probably at this point that if you weren’t concerned about this blog post, now you’re nervous. Doing justice, and specifically the concept of “social justice” is often used to recruit more people to hop onto another political bandwagon. Just two years ago, for example, I remember the NFL boycotting social justice and allowing no room for social commentary via kneeling and now, all season long I’ve seen social justice causes on the back of player’s helmets and spread across the endzones. “End Racism”
What About Social Justice?
Maybe it makes you uneasy because mention of justice, to you, sounds like this is a social justice campaign. Social justice has been used by people on the far Left to mean the redistribution of wealth, and so when a person on the far Right hears the term he or she reacts. Of course, someone on the far Right would be quite alright with publicly opposing abortion.
Did you know that abortion is a social justice issue? And if abortion gets a free pass because murder is a sin, shouldn’t we allow for racial injustice, sex trafficking, sexual abuse, immigration, and other social problems to be of our concern because they are clearly sins too that are affecting people? In either case, using the term social justice quickly becomes unhelpful because the conversation gets really heated and nobody ever seems to define it. So over the last two years I’ve generally tried to avoid using “social justice” and prefer to use “biblical justice” or just “justice” instead.
But it really doesn’t matter what terms we use or don’t use when we’re having this conversation because justice is always social. There is no kind of justice that isn’t social. An action that is just has to do with my neighbor. Therefore, justice is always social. It involves other people and that’s a fact, not an opinion.
What I do or don’t do every day affects other people around me. If I give to a mercy fund, or a charity or give money to someone on the street, that is always social. If I don’t do anything, that’s also a social action—although it’s anti-social because it’s choosing not to do anything (which also affects my neighbor and if he’s hurting or starving it actually harms my neighbor). That’s inherently social. And it gets political and economic and personal too.
Advocating for a particular policy or a party’s agenda is not what this is about. That is NOT what I’m doing or intending here. Just to be clear. I am, however, talking about God’s call on the life of every Christian, as well as through the God-ordained office of deacon in a local church, where God is calling every Christian to do justice wherever he has placed us in society—in our families and vocations, in our neighborhoods, in our city, in our country, and in the world.
Wherever we are able to serve, give, and love—in response to what God has done for us in Christ—God does call us to act. God is just, as he makes us more like him by his Spirit, and more like Christ. He makes us a people who want to right wrongs, give generously, engage in social issues, and help the poor and vulnerable around us. If you’re an employer, justice means giving your employees fair and adequate wages. If you’re an employee, it means respecting and working hard at your job for your employer. And so on.
Justice and the Church
The complicated part is that there are lots of ways we can go about doing this, and I think that’s usually what stops a lot of us from doing anything. “It’s not part of the mission of the church,” some will say. Okay, but it’s part of the Great Commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, so what are you up to that helps your neighborhood and city? Because if you believe in the Gospel, you also believe in the Great Commission that Jesus gave, which includes “everything” that Jesus “commanded” to Christians (See Matthew 28).
Others might say, “Just preach the gospel and be quiet about everything else.” Uh, but Jesus didn’t just keep the status quo. His message and that of his disciples radically altered life in the Mediterranean world as people knew it. Social structures changed because of more Christians living as Christians in the world. And human rights is a thing in the modern world because of Christianity. That’s a good thing too.
In America, Democrats say the government will handle it, Republicans say corporate businesses or private individuals will handle it, and the church often says let the government, individuals, and businesses handle it—and guess what? Not that many people are handling it and it’s the poor who are the ones who get neglected. The vulnerable are not defended or listened to.
Thankfully, there are lots of non-profits and orgs to provide aid, but a lot more could be done and Christians could be the group of people doing it. If the good news really is true for us, why shouldn’t we be on the front lines of some of the greatest social needs of our time? Imagine what it would look like if Christians were known again for their concern and care for the poor (like 2nd century Christians were) instead of the political bullying and badgering and power mongering and backbiting that we are currently known for?
We need to reclaim “justice” from the world and proclaim it again in the church. The church is the one place on earth where different ethnicities are recognized and welcomed as one blood in Christ, where women are valued and respected, where the hurting can find safety and healing, where the poor are cared for, everyone is a full citizen and not second class, we are our brother’s keeper and brother’s brother and sister’s sister.
This is the picture only something as powerful as the gospel can create.
God’s justice has been satisfied by Jesus, the justifier, going to the cross to pay the penalty we deserved. We are declared righteous and just through faith in Christ. So as justified people, we do justice. It’s a part of our gospel DNA.
If you profess Christ and identify as a Christian, what are some things that you regularly do that help, serve, and love the vulnerable among you? What are some practical ways that you show love to your neighbors?
As Christians, let us spur one another on to love and good deeds so that Christ would be honored and glorified not only with our lips, but also by the witness of our lives.
