Getting Personal With Societal Sin

The good news of Jesus Christ is that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes on Him should not perish, but shall have everlasting life.

This message’s premise is that sin - separation from God’s righteousness – has a built-in penalty of everlasting punishment. The Gospel story consists wholly in God’s solution of redemptive sacrifice as a remedy for sin.

In this era of personal empowerment religion, the pivotal issue of sin often becomes obscured by well-intentioned messages that emphasize overcoming obstacles. These messages often emphasize dedication and determination as essential elements in reaching one’s person objectives, while occasionally deemphasizing spiritual forces that hinder one’s individual progress.

The backdrop of evil and demonic strongholds – frequently calling to mind an otherworldly context that extends beyond factors that one ordinarily considers to be controllable – is increasingly dismissed almost as if it were a naïve superstition. Even though the scriptures continually describe a cause-and-effect relationship between these strongholds and humanity’s rebellion against God, modern emphasis tends to focus on sinfulness in some kind of cosmic vacuum.

As a result, public descriptions of sin tend to be focused on individualistic habits, often apart from a general societal acquiescence to wickedness in high places. Even some gospel proclamations reflect an assumption that the sin that Jesus came to save the world from is somehow more individualistic than societal.

The effect of this assumption is that the individual phenomenon of accepting the gospel is expanded into characterizing sin’s impact in isolation from an overall societal context. Consequently, introducing the person of Christ as an entire society’s resurrection and life can be perceived erroneously as importing worldly baggage into a spiritual deliverance.

God’s word does not support that perception. Any attempt to divest God’s kingdom of its significance in everyday matters is in opposition to any notion that God is sovereign over both earthly and heavenly realms. In particular, to suggest that societal injustice is too trivial for Christ’s attention is not only expressly counter to the Gospel’s accounts of Jesus’ earthly ministry, but also opposite to most prophetic themes throughout scripture.

The Messiah’s prophetic identity is grounded in ending societal oppression both among and against God’s covenant people. Immediately upon emerging from his wilderness temptation, Jesus at a Nazareth synagogue declared that he fulfills that prophetic identity.

When Jesus then challenged Nazarenes with the prophecy’s relevance to their immediate environment, their hostility was no less than with today’s gospel preachers who similarly contextualize the gospel, as they drove Jesus out of town. Sadly, not much has changed.