Without a clear and compelling vision of the present and social dimensions of the kingdom of God here on earth, we will all be one-armed Christians. Instead, let's combine holiness and justice and be two-armed Christians.
James wrote, "Faith without works is dead." John Wesley said, "There is no holiness without social holiness." Lowell Noble asserts, "Holiness without social justice is spiritual self-indulgence." Derek Prince said the Holy Spirit revealed the following to him, "Do not let them make the same mistake that Pentecostals have so often made in the past by squandering My power in spiritual self-indulgence. Instead tell them to pray for the future of Kenya."
Sometimes Christians misuse the precious Holy Spirit by just enjoying his presence and blessing. God wants us to release His Spirit in ministry to the poor and oppressed.
A biblical Christian is a two-armed Christian. A two-armed Christian is a holistic, Hebrew type Christian. OT Hebrews believed in both personal righteousness and social justice. A person could not claim to be personally holy unless one was also doing justice.
Job is a perfect example of an holistic Hebrew; Job 1:1 "This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. . . . early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of his children." Job was also active in loving the poor, doing justice; read Job 29:12-17.
A religion professor I once knew was very intelligent and a good teacher. He like to teach the OT prophets and their emphasis on justice. But he said something rather strange, maybe even heretical; he said the OT emphasis on social justice disappeared when we entered the NT. The NT was only about personal salvation; nothing much was written about social justice.
Does the NT say anything about social justice, Jubilee justice, kingdom of God justice? The KJV does not have a single reference to justice. The NIV mentions justice just 16 times; but a Spanish or French NT has about 100 references to justice. The NEB does translate Mt. 6:33: "Set your mind on God's kingdom and his justice." And Romans 14:17 as, "The kingdom of God is justice. . . . "
Billy Graham (Transformation, 1989) wrote:
"I can longer proclaim the Cross and Resurrection without proclaiming the whole message of the kingdom which is justice for all."
The Cross and Resurrection is one arm of the Gospel; the kingdom of God is the other arm. See Acts 8:12; 28:23 and 31.
One of the ministries of the Holy Spirit is to empower the church to incarnate the kingdom of God; see Acts 1:1-8. But in talking with a few experts, I did not find a single person who could identify a single article or book which tied the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God together. The most tragic divorce in the history of the Christian church has been the divorce between the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God. After this divorce, in America, the church has remarried---remarried to the American trinity of individualism, materialism and ethnocentrism/racism. If you are not married to the kingdom, you will probably end up marrying a poor substitute like the American trinity.
Sometimes the devil goes about as a roaring lion, but more often he appears as a deceiver, wearing spiritual clothing. One clever way to deceive people is to overly spiritualize a biblical doctrine. For example, the OT concept of the Jubilee. The OT Sabbatical and Jubilee laws were written to provide economic justice for the poor. Release slaves every seven years. Cancel debts every seven years. Land reform every 49 years. Even in Jesus' time, Jewish theologians discussed the Jubilee. Some farmers left their land fallow every seven years. But guess what the Jewish theologians did with the Jubilee; they spiritualized and futurized it. Sometime in the distant future, God would restore the Jubilee. By futurizing and spiritualizing the Jubilee, the Jews did not have to implement the Jubilee as justice. This was a brilliant spiritual cop-out.
Much of the Christian church has done the same thing with the kingdom of God. If we futurize the kingdom, we don't have to implement it now. We are called to do justice now.
From the pen of Gerald Bates:
"The founders vision for our church, which seems to have somewhat slid away from us for a century, was not only for evangelism, but also social---free churches, concern for the oppressed, freedom for the oppressed, the year of the Jubilee. . . . It is long overdue for the Free Methodist Church to go beyond the messages of personal holiness to a full vision of social holiness after the model of Jesus."
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