In the early pages of your Bible there is a war brewing. It is an ideological war. Meaning that you would not see this war play out necessarily with guns(as if the ancient world had them) or through fists. Rather there was a bit of poetical warfare taking place within the first chapter of Genesis.
Have you ever read Genesis 1:26?
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion…
What we have historically and accurately taken this passage to communicate within Christian theology is that every man, woman and child, regardless of who they or where they come from are imbedded with worth from the Divine. The God of the Bible when creating mankind creates them in His image. In one thrust of a line all of mankind is deemed worthy of respect, created for more, and intrinsically valuable.
That may sound at first glance as merely nice. You may question if some people should be worthy of respect because of how they conduct themselves but regardless you probably still stand by the basic point of that line: mankind is equally valuable because of who created them.
What you may miss though as you read that line is the cultural context. This is where the war began.
The author of Genesis is using language known in that day to communicate an alternative truth about the world that directly opposes the very fabric of society in their day.
The phrase “image of god” was a line we can trace back to the world of the ancient Middle East. It is not suggesting that mankind is better than the animals because animals are not made in the image of God. Rather, “image of God” and “dominion” is the language of royalty.
Pete Enns says:
“It refers to humanity’s role of ruling God’s creation as God’s representative. We see this played out in the ancient Near Eastern world, where kings were divine image bearers, appointed representatives of God on earth.”1
In the Ancient near East Kings and Pharaohs were the ones with the title “image of God” and all the rest of humanity were merely slaves created to serve the image of God in whatever way these rulers seen fit.
So you can imagine the blow Genesis 1 is taking to the social fabric of their society when it is literally flipping on its head the order of humanity.
No longer are the Kings the only ones worthy of dignity and respect. No longer are the Pharaohs the only ones who are deemed rulers over creation. In the Biblical storyline, humanity is given the kingship role over creation.
I say this to set us up for the fact that I believe the Bible is a very political book. It goes nuclear on the political philosophies of the day but not in the way so many of us in the church have believed.
Charlie Dates Pastor of Progressive Baptist Church in Chicago regularly has preached this message that “the Bible has always been political.” What he means when he continuously says this line is to communicate that the Bible has something to say about the social order of our day. As Christians we cannot step back out of the political world because our Bibles will regularly pull us back in. It will force us to speak up, even when we do not want to. Apathy cannot be an option. Ignorance cannot be our baseline.
For me personally, my political stance has confused many even closest to me. Because regularly I have said the line “I’m not really political.” And then next thing my friends see from me on social media is me sharing an article about why the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement was necessary, or a New York Times documentary documenting the failure of the war on Terror. I have spoken over the years consistently about very politically charged topics from police brutality, to immigration, to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Each time I have found myself taken out of context or had intentions assumed that were not true.
I guess what I can say is though I do not claim a political party and you could not find my allegiance to a political party by going through my voting records, what I hope you will see as we move forward is that I cannot help but to speak into politics. I cannot help but to speak into politics because I believe the good news of Jesus is very political.
So let’s begin.
Who is the ‘Son of God’?
“Twice within a hundred years, on different shores of that cruel and beautiful Mediterranean Sea, a man was acclaimed son of god when alive and, more simply, god when dead. Octavius, however, stood at the height of the Roman aristocracy, Jesus near the bottom of the Jewish peasantry.”2
John Dominic Crossan
Have you ever wondered why Jesus was so hated?
Specifically at his birth.
I mean, the kid came into this world with a bounty on his head. He was a baby and at most two years old yet the powerful Herod the Great wanted him dead.
If you do not know Herod, he is quite the character. He is specifically the ruler of Israel and Judah during the time of 37-4 B.C. and his tagline that you may find familiar was ‘King of the Jews”. Now this kingship was granted by Rome who was the ultimate King in charge, but for context purposes this is the information you need to know.
Herod was known for both great and terrible acts. Some of the greats being that he restored the temple in Jerusalem. He was a builder in the sense that theaters and fortresses would be brought up under his watch. But like all great innovators who push society forward there was the shadow side. The side that led him to strangle his wife for an alleged adultery that turned out did not happen or his sons who were murdered for plotting against him(also proved false) and we cannot forget how he drowned his brother-in-law who was lets just say more well loved by the general audience. Herod was not afraid to shed blood if you can imagine. And his loyalty was ultimately to Octavion(Augustus) Caesar which resulted in temples and cities dedicated to the man in power.
Herod was a jealous man though. He wanted the power and if there was the slightest threat to his royalty you could be sure death was on the way. No one can claim the status of the “king of the Jews” besides Herod.
Well, until little baby Jesus pops on to the scene. See, in Matthew we are given this telling:
Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, 2 saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” 3 When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him3
Now, these “wise men” are the philosophers, the astrologers and the dream-interpreters of the day. Their noticing of the cosmic signs led them to worship baby King Jesus. But in their pursuit to find this new line of royalty they let Herod know there is a potential threat to his throne. This leads Herod to call the Sanhedrin to search for this supposed “king of the Jews”. The Sanhedrin were Jewish religious leaders, the problem was that these specific Sanhedrin were the replacements for the ones Herod had executed before. The new line-up were men who were loyal to Herod.
That’s dangerous because these were men with religious authority. They spoke often in people’s minds and hearts as the voice of God. Yet, their loyalty was to someone other than God. It was to Herod. A political authority whose actions directly opposed the God these religious men claimed to worship.
But if it wasn’t enough to have Herod the king of the Jews wanting you dead; what about the other name Jesus came into this world being called?
The son of God.
See, we may in our ignorance to history believe that Jesus was the only one who had this title; but the truth is there was one other person called the son of god.
This was the title given to Caesar Augustus or the man who is also formally known as Octavian. Octavian was born September 23rd 63 B.C.E and was the adopted heir of Julius Caesar. On January 1st 42 B.C.E., two years after his assasination Julius Caesar was deified. This deification was championed by his son Octavian who would also take on the title ‘divi filius‘ which means ‘son of god’.
Now if you step back and remember, Herod was loyal to one man. That one man was Casear (Octavian) Augustus. Herod’s title has already been threatened by this baby Jesus. Now, we also have Herod’s boss also having his title threatened. Two men, one called the son of god and the other the King of the Jews both have their respective titles threatened by one man who has been given both titles. This could very well be a problem.
A problem much bigger than merely someone claiming what is already yours. The Kings of this day, were jealous men. Men who ruled with an iron fist. And what they had to offer was being threatened by some mere Jewish peasant that claimed he could offer something a little more true.
Peace
Now let’s take a little diversion down the path of most resistance. Have you ever heard something that you knew was not the reality you were experiencing?
A common example specifically in America we all can relate to is the feeling we have when we hear words from a politician that claim one thing to be true but we know from felt experience that what they said was not true.
An example of this is when the politician claims the economy has never been better yet the price of eggs and gas are through the roof. What this politician is claiming is not true and you do not have to know any statistic to prove them wrong, you can just look at the receipts as prices have went up. You feel in the day to day what is actually true.
What may have been lost on us though as we read our Bibles is that this political maneuver is not new. Politicians have always spoken lies to convince people under them that their experience is not reality.
We may call this a mis-information campaign or a political scandal that needs to be uncovered. Regardless, what we feel now-they felt then.
See, there was this phrase “pax-romana”. Pax Romana means “peace through victory” and it is a part of Roman imperial theology. Meaning this was a political campaign by the Roman elites to convince the people that Rome just wanted peace. Rome was not the bad guy. Rome was for you. Rome was here to be great. To create a culture that prized the peace and prosperity of its people.
But the way by which Rome would bring peace to its people was through oppression, through warfare. Rome was an expert in killing. They did not invent the crucifixion, they perfected it. Rome was a super-power and they did not become that by way of gentleness.
This is why Paul when he steps onto the scene and he starts teaching about the peace Jesus offers us, it is very striking to hear. Because the cultural way to bring about peace, was through bloodshed. You want peace? Wipe out your enemy, your problem. That would bring you peace.
But Jesus’ Kingdom brought peace through a different way. It required introspection. It necessitated humility.
Early followers of Jesus were called “peace-makers.”
Jesus in his collection of famous teachings called the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ says: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”4
Craig Keener in his commentary on Matthew 5:9 says this:
Some Judeans and Galileans believed that God would help them wage war against the Romans to establish God’s Kingdom, but Jesus assigns the Kingdom instead to the meek(v.5), those who show mercy(v.7), those who are persecuted(v.10), and those who make peace(v.9).5
See, where Rome gave an illusion of peace, Jesus’ Kingdom actually prioritized peace as a way of life. The way Jesus fixates his Kingdom that He is building is by establishing not with people wielding swords and ready to shed blood but rather by giving the power to the people who have no power to wield. Rome was built by men who knew how to conquer. Jesus’ Kingdom would be built by men and women who had been conquered.
This is revolutionary. Literally, this is how the revolution of Jesus took place.
I love this descriptive comparison Eugene Peterson makes in his book. ‘Reversing Thunder’:
It is difficult to recapture by an act of imagination the incongruity of a person self-designated as the Son of Man, hanging pierced and bleeding on a cross. The incongruity is less dramatic but ever more offensive when this Son of Man has dinner with a prostitute, stops off for lunch with a tax-collector, wastes time blessing children when there were Roman legions to be chased from the land, heals unimportant losers and ignores high achieving Pharisees and influential Sadducees. Jesus juxtaposed the most glorious title available to him with the most menial of life styles in the culture. He talked like a king and acted like a slave. He preached with high authority and lived like a vagabond.6
What we see in all of this is that Jesus had a theory of how to bring peace to a broken world. He lived in the midst of a society that craved peace, but went about bringing it the wrong way.
This leads us to what the expectations were of Jesus and how he juxtaposed them. So let’s now pivet and talk about Jesus’ last name.
What is Jesus’ last name?
If you asked this question above to people, what do you think their answer would be?
Most people probably assume that Jesus’ last name is Christ. What’s funny is Christ is not a name but a title. So a more accurate way of referring to Jesus would be by saying “Jesus the Christ”.
The word Christ simply means Messiah and the word Messiah refers to this type of savior/king figure who the Jews believed would rise up and redeem(save) Israel from their oppressors(Rome). The Christ is the Anointed one.
Now if you noticed, there are a few words there that we use all the time in church circles to mean very spiritual things, yet in the context of how I just used them refer back to very political statements.
We call Jesus the Christ and Messiah(savior) all the time in church and we simply are referring to this idea that Jesus saved us from the wreck of our previous way of living. Yet when the early Christians referred to Jesus as a “savior” they had a different idea in mind.
These early rag tag group of followers of Jesus believed he was this savior-king figure who would redeem them from their oppression. Not oppression from personal sin, but from physical oppression at the hands of Rome. This is radical. Because the gospel early on had a hint of what we now call the “social-gospel”. Now their conception of the totality of what Jesus saves us from develops beyond their physical reality but it does not just wipe it away as we have done in many evangelical circles.
Jemar Tisby details what led to the birth of what we now call the “social-gospel”:
In 1896, Walter Rauschenbusch graduated from Rochester Theological Seminary and accepted a pastorate in the New York City neighborhood known as Hell’s Kitchen. Stunned by the overcrowding, inhumane working conditions, pitiful wages, and chronic health issues local residents endured”…”deployed his Christian faith to challenge the structures that dehumanized his neighbors and in 1907 wrote Christianity and the Social Crisis. The book stirred many Christians to become actively engaged in politics and reform in their communities in a theological tradition known as the “social gospel.”7
The point in the social gospel for Walter was to redeem the people in his nieghborhood of Hell’s Kitchen from the physical troubles of their lives. He saw the gospel, the good news of what Jesus had done as applicable to the people in his circles everyday life. If the gospel were true, then it had something to say about the horrible working conditions and chronic health issues of the time.
Jesus also seems to point to a redemption of not just us from our personal failures but also from societies collapse.
When Jesus steps onto the scene he preaches a very distinct message that is not the same message we often preach today. Matthew’s record details this:
And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures, and paralytics, and he healed them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan. 8
How is it that Jesus’ preaching is not about being saved from personal sin but is instead about the “good news of the Kingdom”?
For Jesus, the Kingdom was the mission. Yes, he came to redeem us from our sins. I 100% believe that, but I believe that Jesus saw that as a piece of the puzzle not the entirety of it.
Eric Mason says this writing about a quote from J. Dwight Pentecost:
J. Dwight Pentecost used to speak of the kingdom as being near: “the kingdom is within your grasp.” What Jesus did was show that the good news touches every area of your life. Being transformed by the gospel means that we as the covenant community bring that newness of life wherever we go. Our desire should be for our kingdom activity to point to the need for the soul to be changed.9
Jesus was a man seeking justice. And justice is a word that has been hijacked by our culture to mean all sorts of things.
But justice within the framework of the Bible is what Jesus is after.
Scot McKnight in his book Blue Parakeet says:
Secular or social justice is an echo of redemptive-based justice among God’s people.10
This leads us then to our next question:
What is Justice?
Whether you are the conservative, Reformed type or the egalitarian, mainline type of Christian; we all use the term justice way more than we may realize.
That’s because the word justice shows up a lot in our Bibles.
Jesus actually criticizes the pharisees in Matthew 23:23 for neglecting to care about justice:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.
Tony Evans in his commentary on this verse says:
The scribes and pharisees proudly paid a tenth of their possessions-even of tiny things like spices. However, while focusing on the minute details, they would neglect the more important matters of the law-justice, mercy, and faithfulness. They would major on the minors, and minor on the majors.11
Jesus throughout his ministry has critiqued the religious leaders of his day for not caring about justice.
And in our current cultural divide over that word it could be very easy for us to write on to the definition of that word what we have been persuaded by the culture to believe that word to mean.
For the liberal, justice is a constant fight to label everything that is uncomfortable and oppressive as an evil that needs to be charged as a crime. The problem with the liberals’ framework though is often the evil is only ever done by others. There is not evil done by ourselves. This pursuit of justice requires a degree of perfection on the person seeking justice that is just not attainable. Which is why the sad reality amongst the left is that eventually the people calling for justice eventually get called out for justice. The person who has been the judge eventually gets judged. This results in the tearing apart of the left from its own.
For the conservative though, justice is a hippe-dippie word. Justice is associated with the left’s parades and riots. It’s connected to issues of race and misogny. And so, the conservatives rightly understanding that we all have to take personal responsibility for our own crap, instead justifies the brokenness of this world and overlooks or pushes any consequences to the side. Their reaction to the left, makes them abandon something that God champions.
Before we speak anymore about justice or righteousness let’s define our terms according to the Bible.
Righteousness in Hebrew is the word ‘tsedeka’ and this term is communicating a right relationship between people. The Hebrew word for justice is ‘mishpat’ and there are two different meanings for the way the word is used in the Bible.
- Retributive: This form of justice is what we most often think of today. It’s the idea of someone committing a crime and having to pay the consequences for committing their crime.
- Restorative: This form of justice though is a way of viewing and operating within a broken world. This is the main way the word mishpat is actually used in the Bible(not the only way). It refers to a way of looking out into the world, noticing the injustices being committed and responding to these injustices by offering help. It is restoring the brokenness of this world.12
We see justice playing out in those early pages of the Bible. As I mentioned earlier on, the use of the term ‘image of God’ is one that played on restorative justice. In a world of social hierarchies that pinned some people to the top and others to the bottom and created a culture where people were wrongly treated differently, the Bible lays a foundation for everyone to be on a level playing field. It restores the brokenness of inequality amongst the people of the time.
So we see, justice and righteousness having an early start in the pages of Scripture. This also leads to the description of Yahweh as a righteous judge throughout scripture.
Paul describes the Lord as a “righteous judge” in 2 Timothy 4:8. Psalm 7:11 also describes Yahweh as a “righteous judge.” The very idea that God is a righteous judge is a play on the fact that both then in the ancient world and even now we have judges in place who are not righteous. We know all too well in this world there have been times where people have been wrongly convicted of crimes they did not commit. We have seen judges punish crimes that they themselves have gotten away with. The Bible using this imagery of God being a just or righteous judge is good news in a world of political disarray.
This leads me to the more controversial piece of this blog.
How Does the Kingdom Flip Culture Upside Down?
There is a very popular sentiment that says “keep Christ out of politics”.
There is also a popular sentiment growing right now that communicates “use Christ for politics”.
If there were a road with two ditches, these would be those ditches.
On one end you have the followers of Jesus that have believed the lie that we can compartmentalize our faith. We can live in a world on Sunday and in a different world Monday. The danger of this ditch is that it restricts God from truly transforming all of our life. We may think it will make life easier to keep these two aspects of our lives separate but in reality it holds back the good work of Jesus from having its full effect on us.
The other end has become full of false teaching. It has convinced believers who have bad biblical literacy that to get ahead in the world of politics just flip open your Bibles and find a verse that endorses whatever you believe and turn it into policy.
Now to be fair, both the left and the right in our culture do this.
The left will pit Scripture against itself in order to justify not just accepting but celebrating immorality. This displays a follower of Christ as having no real backbone, nothing firm to really stand on. In the name of “love” but defined by our culture, many followers of Jesus have turned love into “accepting and celebrating” the sins of our culture. The message that is communicated is that love does not hold people accountable. It does not speak truth. It does not make people uncomfortable. This is contrary to who Jesus was as a person though. Jesus’ life was marked by being uncomfortable. He regularly was in places and positions to where he would tell people to stop living the way they were living, and begin to live life in a different way. This is Jesus’ message of repentance.
The right though has also fell victim to using Scripture to endorse whatever policy they see fit. Christian Nationalism is a big bright red example of what happens when Christians ignore the message of the Kingdom and instead begin building the world’s kingdoms in the name of Christ. There is a difference between letting your Kingdom living influence the world around you, and in you enforcing the world to bend to a lifestyle of Kingdom living that they never signed up for. Jesus did not just let anyone become a disciple. He made them count the cost. He told some to go home and that they were not ready. Yet, many Christians on the right have sought to force their version of discipleship to Jesus onto people. And they end up doing so by means of the world. Suddenly, the right is using Scripture out of context to justify going to war with Muslims in order to defend a land that is not our home. You may believe that Islam is on the rise and they will force their values on us, and that may very well be true. But that does not mean we respond by becoming like them. The call to follow Jesus is one that requires us to lay our lives down. To be willing to take up our cross daily, not put others on a cross. This is the message of the self-denial of Jesus.
Through these two messages from Jesus of repentance and self-denial Jesus begins flipping the kingdoms of this world upside down. It’s hard to punish people who can take a hit. It’s hard to hit someone when their mindset is: “to live as Christ, to die is gain”(Phil. 1:21).
What comes to mind as I think about the way of Jesus impacting the broader culture and specifically when it comes into contact with political persecution, I think about Jesus’ line to Pilate.
Let’s put this line into context before we move forward. Jesus has been arrested. His students have dispersed out of fear. Jesus has just been flogged and beaten and is on his way to be crucified. Pilate, the man in charge though seems to have some reservations. He does not view Jesus as a man worthy of being crucified, yet the crowd is yelling “crucify him.” And not only that but the crowd has an oppurtunity to release a prisoner. The top choices are Jesus or Barabbas. And after some talking with Jesus, Pilate says this:
Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.” 7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.” 8 When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. 9 He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. 10 So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” 11 Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. 13
Do you notice how Jesus talks to Pilate? Jesus is a peasant. He is a prisoner. The social power he had has all been stripped away as his students have abandoned him and the crowds are yelling for him to be crucified. Jesus has no power yet speaks as someone who does. The reason for this is because the Empires of Jesus’ day and our day only receive their authority from the Sovereign hand of God. They are no real threat.
Jesus a little earlier on with Pilate actually said the key to this whole thing. Jesus says:
“My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”14
Jesus is not threatened by the fact that his body is literally being broken. He is not threatened by the fact that soldiers came with swords and his students ran. Jesus is not shaken by the fact that in a few hours he will be hanging on a cross.
The reason why is because the work Jesus is doing is otherworldly. If Pilate were hanging on a cross, his kingdom would be over. When Jesus hangs on a cross, three days later he raises from the dead. He rises up victorious over the very things of this world that puts Kings to an end.
What this means for every follower of Jesus is that we are not called to stay in or out politics. What we are called to do, is to build the Kingdom of God on this earth. And we do that by means that make no sense to our natural sensibilities.
I see a problem right now in our current cultural moment. We have two choices. We have the way of Jesus or the way of Barabbas.
Barabbas was labeled a robber, but in the Greek there is a little bit of an idea that these robbers were also revolutionaries. The two were linked. Josephus refers to these robber/revolutionaries as “rebel bandits”.
Eric J. Hobsbawm describes this group like this:
They are peasant outlaws whom the lord and state regard as criminals, but who remain within peasant society, and are considered by their people as heroes, as champions, avengers, fighters for justice, perhaps even leaders of liberation, and in any case as men to be admired, helped and supported.15
Barabbas was looked at as a hero. As a liberator for his people. His way of liberating the people was through lies, deception, theft and murder. This is the way people chose.
But Jesus offered a different way to be liberated. Jesus never picked up a sword. He never calls to arms an army of men. He never lied, cheated or stole. Instead he willingly laid his life down.
The way to make an impact politically as a Christian is to first surrender the ways of this world that are ingrained into you, the ways that will make you do whatever it takes to get ahead politically. Jesus call’s us to lay our whole life down. That includes the way we operate when it comes to politics.
Persecution will come. The Bible takes that for granted. It assumes you will be persecuted. And the way to fight back is not to operate in a way that guards you from being labeled a “pushover”. Too many Christians(specifically men)are so scared to be labeled a pushover instead of being labeled as someone who was a Pharisee. A Pharisee was the person who claimed to know God, to be the voice of God in a pagan culture, yet they actually had been paid off by the governing culture to turn their back on the way of God.
I believe that is happening right now in our culture. Whether it is Douglas Wilson and Mark Driscoll or Pete Hegseth. There are people in positions of influence misrepresenting the way of Jesus to a generation. They use Christian language. They rile the people up with fear mongering and a bad reading of the Bible. They tell you that you need to stand up for yourself and for your family. They convince you the people they are pointing at are the enemies. They tell you we are headed down a slippery slope that will lead to our ruin. And that the only way to prevent things from getting worse is to rise up and conquer our enemies. Whether that’s through the bloodshed of innocent people in Iran16 or by labeling immigrants as “pet eaters”17.
We could go on and on. But Jesus never called us fight in order to keep the structure of our human civilization together. Kingdoms come and go. We are not called to invest into these worldly kingdoms. We are called to live in them.
Jesus says:
“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”18
The story of Jesus is the story of a Jewish peasant living life as a servant of the people in his community and the surrounding community. It’s the story of a man who laid his life down so that his enemies could live. It’s the story of a man who instructed others to put their swords down and to instead let the words of truth cut to the heart of man and set him free from his bondage to the evils of this age. That story turned Kingdoms upside down. That story is much like we started off.
It’s a story where the lowly, the disenfranchised, the one’s whose identities have been erased and wiped over with lies; are brought up. They are given a new identity. A true identity. One that cannot be stripped away.
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.19
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.20
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.21
- Pete Enns in his book ‘The Evolution of Adam’ ↩︎
- John Dominic Crossan in ‘Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography’ ↩︎
- Matthew 2:1-3 ESV ↩︎
- Matthew 5:9 ESV ↩︎
- Pg. 1618 of the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible ↩︎
- Eugene Peterson in his book ‘Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination (pg. 30) ↩︎
- Jamar Tisby in his book Color of Compromise(pg. 115), I skipped over his quoting of Paul B. Rauschenbusch’s. forward to ‘Christianity and the Social Gospel in the 21st Century’ ↩︎
- Matthew 4:23-25 ESV ↩︎
- Eric Mason in his book ‘Woke Church: An Urgent Call for Christians in America to Confront Racism and Injustice'(pg. 47) ↩︎
- Scot McKnight in his book ‘Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible'(pg. 194) ↩︎
- The Tony Evans Bible Commentary (pg.908) ↩︎
- The Bible Project has an excellent video breaking down what the word Justice means: https://youtu.be/A14THPoc4-4?si=JpnKXJAwnu4keG9U ↩︎
- John 19:6-11 ESV ↩︎
- John 18:36 NIV ↩︎
- Eric J. Hobsbawm in his book Bandits(I got this quote from ‘Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography’ by John D. Crossan ↩︎
- The New York Times covered this story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/us/politics/iran-school-missile-strike.html ↩︎
- In this article VP Vance and the President are responsible for spreading a lie about a community of immigrants eating pets, clearly trying to play on people’s heartstrings. https://www.npr.org/2024/09/15/nx-s1-5113140/vance-false-claims-haitian-migrants-pets#:~:text=In%20an%20interview%20on%20NPR’s,hard%20workers%2C%22%20DeWine%20said. ↩︎
- Matthew 20:25-28 ESV ↩︎
- Galatians 2:20 ESV ↩︎
- 1 Peter 2:9 ESV ↩︎
- 2. Corinthians 5:17 ESV ↩︎
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