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Justice: Identificational Repentance and the Cross
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Isaiah 1:16-17
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause.
In regards to injustice, we’ll either address things well now, or deal with the unresolved consequences later.
No matter in what camp you find yourself, we must strive to get this conversation right.
“This is a defining moment for us as churches and citizens to decide whether we want to be one nation under God or a divided nation apart from God. If we don’t answer that question right and we don’t answer it quickly, we won’t be much of a nation at all.”
-Dr. Tony Evans
Focus: We are Agents of Biblical Justice When We Walk In Identificational Repentance
From Whence Justice Comes
The source that allows you to develop a heart for true justice is God’s Word.
The very idea of justice points us to a God who is the standard for that justice.
We must note this because not everyone rallying behind the idea of justice right now has God as their motivating source.
Why is this possible?
Well, the Apostle Paul explains it this way:
Romans 2:12-16
For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.
This means that all men and women have God’s law written on their hearts, whether or not they choose to obey it.
It also means that searching for true, lasting justice without an acknowledgment of God is ideologically problematic for at least two reasons.
It leads to:
philosophical inconsistencies and
a lack of historic longevity in providing permanent solutions to societal injustices.
Philosophically it is inconsistent because as C.S. Lewis noted:
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
And if God does exist, we must look to him for the standard of exacting justice.
Looking for justice without God is historically problematic because within all of the advancement in education and technology in the twentieth century, we still found it to be one of the most bloody in recorded human history.
This was especially true in nations that found themselves intentionally separated from God.
As Timothy Keller notes in his book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism,
“The 20th century gave rise to one of the greatest and most distressing paradoxes of human history: that the greatest intolerance and violence of that century were practiced by those who believed that religion caused intolerance and violence.”
Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
As another commentator observed: “From Stalin to Mao to Pol Pot, a forced lack of religion has caused innumerable acts of violence, murder and subjugation of fellow humans.”
On the contrary, when people were not merely nominally Christian, but instead sought true Biblical justice, tremendous societal change took place.
Christian social reformers like British abolitionist William Wilberforce and American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. were advocating for justice while appealing for people to become more, not less, Christian as their answer to injustice.
“Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being 'disturbers of the peace' and 'outside agitators.' But they went on with the conviction that they were a 'colony of heaven' and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be 'astronomically intimidated.' They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest. Things are different now. The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the archsupporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.”
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
Men of God like Wilberforce and King appealed to the Bible, where God often spoke of the abuse of religion.
The Scripture contained within it God’s mechanism for self-correction even when the church lost its focus and went astray.
I recommend Dr. Timothy Keller’s classic read, The Reason for God, which gives a fantastic historic discussion around this issue.
You can also read Dr. King’s Nobel Prize winning, Why We Can’t Wait, to understand much of the Biblical impetus behind the civil rights movement.
Yet to even be moved to engage in ongoing acts of justice requires an understanding of the Biblical concept of identificational repentance.
This reminds us of the importance of where we have been so that, in Christ, we can get where we need to go.
Where We Have Been
The posture that allows you to enter into God’s heart for Biblical justice is identificational repentance.
Proverbs 14:34
Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.
When we think about the issue of justice, we’re all quick to get defensive and want to absolve ourselves of any sin.
However, we’ve all fallen short at some point and the sooner we can embrace that, the sooner we can begin helping one another get to a better place.
When you look at the Scripture above, whether you feel innocent or not in regards to injustice, God says that he looks at us not only individually, but also as a nation.
And as a nation, it is clear that many ungodly injustices abound, and not just the ones that have been highlighted in the past several weeks.
“Today I worry that we’ve forgotten our past and remain in denial about many of the challenges we face in the present. There’s a tendency to want to gloss over injustices for the sake of unity. However, any authentic attempt to pursue unity and reconciliation must start with truth. The journey to healing begins with an awakening.”
-John M. Perkins
When speaking about Biblical justice, some people have trouble conceptualizing the idea of systemic inequalities.
Yet we need to have a grasp on such injustices to obey the command given by Isaiah at the beginning of the message to “seek justice” and “correct oppression”.
As followers of Christ, we are to lead in these challenging environments when it comes to tackling difficult issues regarding justice.
Micah 6:8
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
When tackling such issues, we should follow godly:
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
Lead with the fruit of the Holy Spirit
Proverbs 15:1
A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
Proverbs 15:4
A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit.
2. Lead with information and facts, not just emotion.
Proverbs 15:2
The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouths of fools pour out folly.
Proverbs 25:15
With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone.
As a part of your starter kit, we encourage everyone to expose yourself a condensed history of the ethic economic disparities within our country by watching the link provided in your outline.
It was shared by none other than, Phil Vischer, one of the co-creators of Veggie Tales.
This has been an exposing time, for the Lord to reveal what is in our hearts so that we can deal with it.
Just because we have friends, family members or co-workers of a different ethnicity doesn’t mean that we’re untouched by the sin that surrounds us.
Our environments shape us.
Our media affects us.
Our limited experiences give us lenses through which we see the world.
The algorithms on our social feeds are literally traps that can keep us entrenched within homogenous thinking.
Our perspectives can be both skewed and limited by that on which we are feeding.
And that’s everybody.
We need to allow the Holy Spirit to do surgery, even understanding how our family history has affected our hearts.
Ezra 9:3-11; 15
As soon as I heard this, I tore my garment and my cloak and pulled hair from my head and beard and sat appalled. Then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles, gathered around me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice. And at the evening sacrifice I rose from my fasting, with my garment and my cloak torn, and fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God, saying: “O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens. From the days of our fathers to this day we have been in great guilt. And for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been given into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plundering, and to utter shame, as it is today. But now for a brief moment favor has been shown by the Lord our God, to leave us a remnant and to give us a secure hold within his holy place, that our God may brighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our slavery. For we are slaves. Yet our God has not forsaken us in our slavery, but has extended to us his steadfast love before the kings of Persia, to grant us some reviving to set up the house of our God, to repair its ruins, and to give us protection in Judea and Jerusalem. “And now, O our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken your commandments, which you commanded by your servants the prophets, saying, ‘The land that you are entering, to take possession of it, is a land impure with the impurity of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations that have filled it from end to end with their uncleanness. O Lord, the God of Israel, you are just, for we are left a remnant that has escaped, as it is today.
Behold, we are before you in our guilt, for none can stand before you because of this.”
I’d like us first to notice two important subtleties seen in these Scriptures:
In Ezra 9:8, Ezra mentions:
“For a brief moment, favor has been shown”
Before God, the times that we are in are not simply meant for upheaval, but also for revival.
We are to be as fully engaged as ever in making disciples of Jesus who know the Lord and walk in his ways.
2. It is interesting in these Scriptures that Ezra is repenting on behalf of things that he did not personally do.
I used to not understand the subconscious realities of this, but now I do.
The power of identificational repentance is that you make sure whatever was passed down through word, sentiment or deed stops with you.
Understanding identificational repentance takes out the need for need for defensiveness.
It assumes the gospel truth that everyone has sinned in some manner.
Its chief aim is to humble us before God, so that we can deal with sin in our land and be a part of the solution.
It is what Jesus Christ, the only sinless one ever to walk the planet, modeled for us at the cross.
According to Ezra, to engage in Biblical Identificational repentance we must:
Identify the Sin
Acknowledge how the sin has affected our families and land
Renounce the sin as an offense to God
Commit to actively turning away from the sin to see the healing of our land
“Non-racism is not good enough. Followers of Jesus must be anti-racist.”
-Andy Stanley on Following the Law of Christ
Where does he get such a concept?
2 Corinthians 7:8-11
For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it—though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter.
Bitterness as a response to the evil we see in our days can literally try to eat us alive.
Yet this must ultimately lead us to the Savior to whom we must go.
To Whom We Must Go
The person that allows you to enter into God’s solution for Biblical justice is Jesus Christ.
To have a heart of Biblical justice, and truly understand indentificational repentance, you can look to Christ at the cross.
It is here that both injustice and justice meet.
There was justice in the fact that there was a price that was paid for the sin of humanity who broke the holy laws of God.
There was injustice in the fact that Christ, the only sinless one, died for the sins committed by other men.
He can therefore say that justice must be served while also comforting those who suffer injustice.
So what is God’s ultimate solution?
We should focus our hope for justice in the present and coming Kingdom of God
We look to usher in both.
The Kingdom of God is a now and not yet Kingdom - it has come through the first advent of Jesus Christ, but won’t be fully realized until his return.
To put your hope in anything else is unbiblical and will lead to both disillusionment and disappointment.
Jesus commanded us to do good works, including fighting for Biblical justice, preaching the gospel and making disciples until his return.
To move forward, there must be redemptive justice.
To make progress, there must be reconciliatory forgiveness.
Ephesians 2:8-9
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
We serve a God of great grace.
He gives us in Christ and the cross what we don’t deserve - an opportunity for forgiveness and redemption.
We are called to do that for one another, no matter where we’ve found ourselves during this turbulent time.
“To make it through the extraordinary crisis of a pandemic and social unrest, you need to treat yourself and other people the way God treats you: with grace, mercy, and forgiveness.
Grace means that God always gives you what you need, not what you deserve. If you got what you deserved, you wouldn’t even be here. “God gives us even more grace, as the Scripture says, ‘God is against the proud, but he gives grace to the humble’” (James 4:6 NCV).
Everybody’s having a tough time right now. To maintain your emotional health, you need to cut yourself some slack and do the same for others. Everybody’s feeling the stress, particularly the millions of people who are out of work and concerned about the future—maybe even about how they will make it to the next day. Be kind. Be gentle. Even the hardest people to love are fighting some kind of battle right now and need your grace.
This will often take a lot of humility. With tensions high, it’s easier right now to return wrong for wrong, give a sharp answer, withhold the benefit of the doubt, and speak before listening.
Your neighbor needs your grace. Your children need your grace. The person you disagree with politically needs your grace. The world is on the defense, and there is nothing that will disarm people more than being given unexpected grace.
God has given you great grace. Go and extend that grace to others so they get a glimpse of what Jesus has done for them.“
-Rick Warren
At some point, we have all been guilty of wicked mentalities, attitudes and actions.
This means that the only way we’ll be washed and made clean is through the precious blood of Jesus shed for our wrongdoing at the cross.
Yet Jesus is the giver of grace to anyone who would come to him in repentance and faith for the forgiveness of their sins.
That includes the sin of racism.
It includes the sins of drunkenness and sexual immorality.
It includes the sins of slander, hatred, murder and pride.
Let’s embrace the true source of justice through God’s word today.
And understanding our times, let’s look to God for through identificational repentance.
As we do so, may we find not only healing in our hearts, but also the healing that our land so desperately needs in Christ Jesus.
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Second City Church - Justice - Pastor Rollan Fisher 2020