GP Wagenfuhr: Systemic Evil or Personal Sin?

Systemic Evil or Personal Sin? Understanding the Complexities of Wrongdoing-Talk in Christianity and American Politics

Rev. Dr. GP Wagenfuhr

Theology Coordinator

Disclaimer: The views herein are my own and not representative of official ECO theological positions. This is intended to be a resource that helps engage the present disconnect between the political categories of “systematic injustice” and the Christian notion of “sin.”

Sin is one of the hardest concepts for Christians to talk about in our time. But, what we believe about sin determines what we believe about the good news of Jesus Christ. If we don’t precisely define the bad news, then the good news becomes unhitched from reality, and so ceases to be truly good news, turning into a fairy story. The problem is, much of Christian theology has oversimplified the Bible’s vocabulary of sin, as well as the place in the whole story of the Bible it takes. That oversimplification feeds into a common division we see across the spectrum of churches.

America is a politically divided and polarized nation, and one of the great ways this polarization has played out is in our understanding of why evil or injustice exists. For those on the political left, injustice will often be described as systemic and environmental. Those on the political right will highlight that individuals always have a choice whether or not to act justly or unjustly, and that notions of systemic injustice tend to let individuals off the hook.

In Christian circles this same debate takes place among similarly polarized groups, but in slightly different terms. Progressive Christians talk about systemic evil or sin, where conservative Christians talk about individual sin. This isn’t a total either/or, of course, but a general observation. And this has deep roots in how we share the gospel. The reality is, most theologians think about Jesus as coming to solve a problem, and because the solution has to fit the problem, our understanding of Jesus is nearly determined by our understanding of sin.

And yet, few Christians study sin in depth as a field. Hamartiology, the study of sin, is a field that you won’t find in nearly any systematic theology! And yet, this is one of the most defining questions of the faith: what is wrong with the world and what is wrong with me?

To answer such a question, we must turn to Scripture. Sola scriptura means that we give the greatest authority to the Bible. It doesn’t mean that we can, or should, imagine that we can simply read the Bible by itself! We are within the body of Christ, the holy, catholic church. This means we need to listen to other parts of the body. Theology is a project we do together, lifting one another up and edifying one another as we all submit to God’s revealed word in the Bible.

Sin Vocabulary in the Bible

In the Bible we find that “sin” is a lot more complex than simply individual or corporate evil or injustice. For example, within the Ten Commandments, God specifies that he “visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me…” (Ex. 20:5). This, by itself, goes against every philosophical ground that America was founded upon. What about personal evil? Why does God punish children for their parents’ crimes?

The Bible itself asks these questions too! In Jeremiah 31:29–30 and Ezekiel 18:2 a proverb is recorded, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” This was a reaction against this notion of generational sin, and God promises to make a new covenant where this is not true, where everyone dies for his or her own iniquity. In that sense, God is promising a new covenant in which generational iniquity will be broken, and this is indeed what Jesus Christ does.

Also, the Bible has a number of different concepts that we have tended to reduce to a single category of sin, taking a few minutes to review these will reveal that what is broken with humans is rather complex:

Iniquity (Hebrew: avon)

Crookedness. Iniquity is brokenness. It is not simply related to personal responsibility, but to a long-term deformation caused by the cumulative effects of individual moral choices. Each evil action we take forms us more and more into the image of evil. In Genesis 3–6, we see this progression of iniquity through violence grow to the point that the whole of God’s creation suffers. Each successive generation after Cain perfects the sin of Cain: violence, rejection of God, and building to replace God. In the seventh (perfected) generation, Lamech boasts of his mighty feat of violence that far surpasses Cain’s. After the great flood, this generational sin returns and is brought even more to completion in the city and tower of Babel.[1]

Iniquity is a kind of discipleship into crookedness. This is why the iniquity of the parents is visited to the third and fourth generation. We become like our parents, we are discipled by our contexts, and, if we are formed in crookedness, we too will be crooked. The iniquity of previous generations has lasting effects that do not go away with time, but fester within us until combated with a new discipleship in a new direction. Throughout Scripture, iniquity is both personal and corporate.

Evil, Wicked (Hebrew: rah, ra’ah, reshah. Greek: kakos, ponēros)

In English we distinguish between “evil” and “bad,” such that something we don’t like is “bad” but something that is wicked is “evil.” In the biblical languages, these concepts are not usually distinguished from one another. Doing evil to someone in the Old Testament simply meant doing things that were bad for them. Cursing someone is wishing bad things to happen to them, thus desiring evil. A bad place, a badland, where there is no water or food is seen as “evil.”[2] Indeed, in the broader ancient Near Eastern culture, the desert was filled with evil or bad spirits who worked trickery or misfortune on someone. [3]

Thus, evil is also something that can reside in a people, as though they are possessed. Such a people are corrupted by their evil. Judas Iscariot, for example, becomes possessed by Satan after deciding to betray Jesus,[4] thus becoming fixed on a purpose of falsely accusing Jesus (as Satan is the accuser).[5] But spirits, as in the New Testament, are not always hell-bent on world domination and the most transgressive of sins, as modern popular culture images of demons show. Possession was also understood with people who commit self-harm or are insane (literally “of unclean mind”). Indeed, we need to distinguish between types of spirits. In the New Testament, “unclean spirits” (penuma akatharton) are those that make a person mentally ill, where Satan/the devil/the Evil One intends upon rebellion against God (see “unclean” below).

The undisciplined sin or iniquity of a people brings the presence of evil upon them. Evil people bring badness to their communities. Indeed, God is clear in the Torah, in a phrase echoed by Paul about the church in Corinth, that it is the responsibility of the people of God to purge the evil in our communities.[6] In Corinth, Paul is talking about allowing a person living in egregious sexual sin to go undisciplined by the church. That will bring sickness and death upon the community due to the presence of evil, and so it must be purged through proper discipline proceedings, including excommunication. Indeed, Paul even says that it is our responsibility to judge our own church communities, but not the world outside. [7] The presence of a person enslaved to sin in our midst is similar to the body of Christ being possessed by an evil spirit!

In the New Testament, evil is sometimes personified as “The Evil One” (ponēros), as in the Lord’s Prayer. This aligns with the personification of sin as a lion in Genesis 4:7. Both of these show that, in the Bible, sin is understood as far more than an individual’s moral choices or personal responsibility. Evil is a power of rebellion against God. It can gain mastery and enslave. Jesus tells us to pray to be rescued from the evil one. Indeed, in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus links the possibility of personal moral failing “lead us not into trial/temptation” with the personified power of evil in “but deliver us from the evil one.”

Unrighteousness (Hebrew avol/avolah, Greek adikia)

This word is far more common in Greek than Hebrew. In Greek, as in English, it is a word defined by privation. It is the lack of righteousness. Jesus talks about an unrighteous or unjust judge (Luke 18). Those who are unrighteous are those who do not live according to the standards of God’s character, who is the just judge. This is the notion of sin that primarily interests Paul who defines sin by relation to Torah throughout the book of Romans. It is a form of disobedience from God’s intention. But this is not precisely the same as “evil” as above. Note that in Romans 1:18–32 as Paul is describing the origin of Gentiles, evil and unclean behavior results from unrighteousness. Here Paul defines it as not honoring God, not giving thanks to him (1:12), and not acknowledging God (1:28). Unrighteousness is the heart of rebellion against God. Iniquity, evil, sin, and uncleanness result from unrighteousness.

Uncleanness (Hebrew: tamē Greek: akathartos):

This is the most confusing category for modern people to understand because it belongs to a totally different worldview from the modern scientific perspective. Uncleanness is not an idea unique to the Bible or Jewish tradition, but extends through most human religions globally through similar ideas of “taboo.” Uncleanness is contagious like a disease, but as a category it includes a lot of normal aspects of life. Most scholars of religion think that taboos like the ones found in Leviticus are related to how ancient people understood power to operate. Ancient peoples understood that power could be for good or for ill. It can cause disease and death, or can also be the source of life. But whatever the case, it had to be treated with respect, fear, and a lot of tactics for properly controlling its spread. When it comes to diseases and plagues, there is a lot of sense in this way of thinking. Avoiding people with disease through quarantine is obviously still practiced today, but for a different reason. Disease is communicated through specific types of viruses, bacteria, or fungi, not through a unified notion of power. And similarly for moderns, this unified idea of power does not give life through sexual reproduction (although some scientists do talk about ecology as energy transmission). To be impure was to be under the power of a force outside of yours or your community’s control. It was playing with fire, and so needed to be segregated. Again, we scoff or are offended at Levitical descriptions of menstruation as a source of uncleanness, but this represents the way the vast majority of human history has understood the world.

Normal creaturely (profane) life was understood in the ancient world to incur a type of dirtiness that was not tolerable to the gods. To enter the presence of a god, people had to engage in ceremonial washing. Uncleanness is not generally a moral category. It is not something necessarily evil. And although it seems like an ancient and no-longer useful category it is actually vital to hold onto as Christians in an age that is becoming increasingly Gnostic.[8] Uncleanness grounds us in our creatureliness, and God in Jesus addresses very clearly this issue of uncleanness.

Uncleanness is seen especially in skin disease in both Old and New Testaments.[9] It is a whole category of created animals that Israel was not to eat.[10] Uncleanness comes through the dead bodies of people or other animals. Any communication with the dead through touch,[11] or even through spiritual mediums[12] spreads uncleanness.

At the same time, the notion of uncleanness is specially linked to human sexuality and covenant unfaithfulness as understood as idolatry/adultery. Not only does normal human sexual and reproductive life involve a kind of uncleanness in the Old Testament,[13] sexual deviancy is especially a source of uncleanness.

Consider the famous calling passage in Isaiah 6. Here Isaiah does not confess to be unrighteous or in iniquity, but a “man of unclean lips, from a people of unclean lips.” What are “unclean lips?” Does it relate to eating forbidden foods? Probably it refers to the idolatry of Israel in which Isaiah is implicating himself. Confessing the name of another God is like kissing a prostitute to the Hebrew imagination, it is a type of marital unfaithfulness that leads to sexual uncleanness/impurity, one that is highly contagious. This impurity has led to iniquity and sin, so that purifying his lips with the burning coal his iniquity is taken away, and his sin is covered over.

Thus, there is a connection between uncleanness/impurity, sin, and iniquity, but they are not the same thing. As we saw with Romans 1, it is unfaithfulness to God (often conceived of sexual impurity by adultery in the Bible) that leads to the iniquities and sins, so that the process of reversing this comes first by ritual purification, which we will see resurface in the New Testament with the notion of baptism. Even the Holy Spirit’s baptism of fire should be compared here to the burning coal of Isaiah 6. It’s not simply a sign of possession by God’s Spirit, but a sign of purification that enables God’s Spirit to enter the temple of his people.

The opposite of uncleanness, then, is not righteousness, but holiness, which are not the same things. Holiness is attained by purification, and it is not a moral category. Holiness or sanctification is how one becomes able to enter the presence of God by removing any other source of competing power (which was understood like a communicable disease). Thus, the connection between washing and ritual purity makes sense. You can wash a communicable, non-Yahweh power off before entering Yahweh’s presence. This is why ritual impurity is so offensive to God in the Old Testament, it is like a rival power (though neither good nor evil in itself).

Sin: (Hebrew chatat, Greek hamartia)

The most common word Christians have fixated on for wrongdoing is, of course, sin, and we have tended to boil everything down to this one word. Chatat in Hebrew generally refers to wrongdoing. It is a violation of God’s instruction or Torah. And it is sometimes, or often, unintentional! The Torah recognizes that many times, people sin without knowing they do. Sin does not have to be a conscious choice. When a sin becomes known, even if committed unintentionally, the sinner must make atonement or restitution for that sin.[14] This is different to our modern understanding of sin in which we tend to think that we cannot be held guilty for things we didn’t know that we did, or didn’t know were wrong. This is a key point of the Bible’s message: we are all sinners, whether we know it or not. Paul, in Romans, says that Jew and Gentile alike are guilty of lawbreaking, Jews with knowledge of the law, Gentiles without. Gentiles are not let off the hook because of not having revealed Torah. This is a concept that does not generally accord with modern legal codes that require some form of intent for many crimes (mens rea). Thus, the Bible’s conception of guilt is more strict than modern legal expectations.

Sin is both personal and corporate throughout the Bible. The Day of Atonement, with its sin-sacrifices, is about acknowledging the collective guilt of the people. Throughout the Old Testament, God punishes the whole people for the sins of a few. Again, this is why it is vital to purge the evil from our midst. This is why Paul demands that the church judge its own cases.

Guilt:

Iniquity and sin cause guilt. Guilt is a legal concept in the Bible, not a feeling. Guilt is a kind of moral “debt.” Those who are guilty of killing, whether in murder or accidental manslaughter, become guilty with “bloodguilt.” Such bloodguilt is even assigned or “imputed” to those who slaughter animals without first presenting them at the temple. This type of guilt requires exile from the people. [15] The guilt of sin is what is punishable, and it is this that must be dealt with in the act of atonement.

Notably, not all sins or iniquities lead to the same kind of guilt in the Bible. It is a common misunderstanding in Evangelical culture to say that “all sin is equal” or “sin is sin” because Evangelicalism has so prioritized the “Roman Road” form of simplified gospel communication which highlights “the wages of sin is death.”[16] But this is a misunderstanding of guilt. Likewise, the Westminster Catechisms recognize that not all sins are equally heinous.[17] Although disobedience and rebellion against God results in the death that Paul describes in Romans 6, the individual acts of sin themselves incur different guilt. Thus, the universality of sin and its general wages of death cannot be used to justify the existence of lesser sins, nor magnify the gravity of lesser sins.

Original Sin:

This is not a concept outlined, as such, in Scripture, but is a systematic theology developed from Paul’s theology. In precisely biblical terms, sin is passed on from generation to generation, such that David can say “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps 51:5). This generational transmission of sin was not understood as part of a corrupt human nature,[18] but a corruption learned at the mother’s breast (i.e through participation in a community life and identity). We see this kind of generational sin in the books of Kings with the “Sin of Jeroboam,” a type of idolatry that successive kings of the northern kingdom of Israel learn and against which any reformers have to rebel. Later medieval discussions of method of transmission of original sin are often focused on the transmission of legal guilt in a biological or spiritual manner, rather than on the transmission of habit/family practices of iniquity. Different peoples have been enslaved in different ways to different sin-masters.[19] These are not systemic sins, but inherited guilt and inherited and unique patterns of iniquity. That is, they belong to a family/people/tribal tradition rather than to systems, which, of course, is a modern concept.

Paul is clear in all of this, however, that despite the diversity of expressions of generational sin, all have sinned. No one is righteous. He makes clear in Romans 1 that sin has its origin separation from God. In Romans 5 he explains that Adam initiated generational sin that is only broken by obtaining a new parentage in Jesus Christ. Adam’s sin created the reign of the power of sin, which is death.

Knowledge of Good and Evil and Judgment:

This evocative phrase that is used in the temptation and failing of Eve and Adam is important to interpret rightly. It does not refer to a catalogue of good and evil personal moral actions of which they were otherwise ignorant. What this refers to is the power of a king to determine law, to judge. Note that in the Old Testament, political leaders were often understood primarily as judges and lawgivers. This is how God is portrayed, as well as the figures in the book of Judges. Solomon’s divinely-given wisdom is best displayed in his exercise of judgment in court cases.[20] Thus, in the ancient world, “knowledge of good and evil” is about the capacity to make judgments for oneself. This is the taking on of full responsibility of the judge-king. Thus, the temptation to become like God was the temptation to attain the faculty of judgment. The best rulers display a wisdom not their own, but the wisdom of God in them. What Adam and Eve refused to do, as have we all thenceforth, is to accept the responsibility that goes along with making these judgments. They wanted to be like God in having the wisdom to discern, to rightly divide, to ascertain difference, but they lacked the will to be responsible for the results of those divisions. Such is one way to summarize the whole story of the Bible. Humans try to be like God and succeed in some power (through violence) but fail miserably in responsibility.

The sin of Adam and Eve is precisely counteracted by Jesus, who “did not come to judge the world”[21] and teaches “Do not judge.”[22] Jesus refused to decide for others the good, and even refused to be called “good”[23] thus showing “something greater than Solomon.”[24]

Biblical Solutions to Sin-Categories

So, if the Bible has a variety of words and perspectives on the broad field of human wrongdoing, what is the solution to each of these? How is Jesus the good news of God?

From Uncleanness to Holiness/Sanctification by the Water and Blood of the Lamb, and the Fire of the Holy Spirit:

In Christ we see that God has entered into the profanity or dirtiness of daily human existence, showing that God does not despise his creation. First of all, Jesus is born. This in itself was offensive to Jewish notions, because he and Mary would have incurred uncleanness in the very act of giving birth. God could not be in the presence of uncleanness, and yet God himself was incarnate in an unclean infant’s body.

God gets his feet dirty and allows himself to be washed by John the Baptist. This ritual purification before symbolically entering the promised land as the new Joshua[25] is not an indication that he is a sinner, but that he is to take on the communicable uncleanness of his people as their representative and purge it. Jesus is taking on all rogue power and submitting it to himself.

Jesus also has his feet washed by a prostitute’s tears. The prostitute is the clearest sign of the uncleanness that represents Israel’s past of idolatry.[26] Thus, the prostitute symbolizes the demand of Jesus, that Israel repent.[27] Jesus can thus remove the sins and the uncleanness at once.

In Christ, nothing God has made is unclean. And, by being washed with Christ, all uncleanness is taken away. What fits us for the kingdom of God is this washing, which is understood as a kind of death and rebirth. No longer are we dirty people who keep getting dirty, but clean people whose feet get dirty by living in and among the uncleanness of the world, as Jesus explains to Peter in John 13.

The New Testament focuses quite a lot of attention on this point, because this is a key fact of separation between Jew and Gentile. Gentiles were viewed as unclean and therefore not to be associated with. In order for the church to include both Jew and Gentile as one in Christ, both had to be washed in Christ. The union of Jew and Gentile comes through baptism in Christ (Gal 3:27–28), and in no other way. This means that both Jew and Gentile are regarded as unclean until washed in Christ, the living water. The Jew is unclean because of idolatry/adultery. The Gentile is unclean because of ancient unrighteousness, as Paul explains in Romans.

This notion of uncleanness being solved by Jesus is also seen in the story of the woman with the issue of blood, in the healing of lepers, and others who were excluded from communion with the people of God due to no fault of their own. Uncleanness does not incur guilt, but it separates us from the presence of God. Therefore, God in Christ came to take our uncleanness upon himself and purify us in the process. John, throughout his gospel and letters, makes a big deal about “water and blood” together.[28] They go together, because Jesus is the solution to both uncleanness (water) and sin-guilt (blood).

Uncleanness is solved with purification or sanctification. This point has been missed by many Christian theologians who have confused sanctification with moral transformation. The two are connected, but are not the same thing. Sanctification is the act of making something holy. Holiness is a quality of ritual purity and separation from common (profane) life. It does not mean moral perfection. Uncleanness cannot be in God’s presence, neither can sin. But Jesus cannot simply deal with unrighteousness, iniquity, or sin to prepare his people for the kingdom of God. He must wash them clean. So, as 1 John says, God is “faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” There is the union of ritual purification and atonement for sin in the work of Jesus. Paul links sanctification particularly with sexual purity.[29] And the work of the Holy Spirit is linked, in particular, with this act of sanctification or ritual purification, again, through purgation by fire. The baptism of the Spirit is “by fire”[30] just as Isaiah was touched with the burning coal. It is through fire that Sodom and Gommorah, the cities impure particularly for their sexual deviancy, are purged/cleansed. God’s presence on Sinai was seen in fire, a fire that could not be approached without death because of the uncleanness of the people.[31] God is a consuming fire, meaning that all who approach him will be purged by burning, even unto their deaths.[32] Many modern praise songs have deeply misunderstood the notion of the consuming fire, as though that referred to an emotional experience. This is a fire that purifies and makes holy, as in the burning bush. That which passes through the fire without being consumed is worthy to enter God’s presence.[33] Jesus himself declares that his mission is to “cast a fire on the earth”[34]

So, the opposite of uncleanness is holiness. Rather than being possessed or under the influence of a different power than God, holiness is to be set apart and used only by God for God’s purposes. Ritual purity is still a vital concept in the New Testament, because it demonstrates how Christ is conquering all the powers at work in the world.

Hence, the casting out of spirits by Jesus and the disciples is nearly always unclean spirits which are linked to particularly debilitating forms of sickness or mental illness. The healings of skin disease, lameness, or blindness are accompanied by the casting out of demons/unclean spirits. In the ancient world before the invention of Gnosticism, Zoroastrianism, and Manicheism, religions/philosophies invented around the time of Jesus, the world was not divided into binary good/evil, black/white, heaven/hell parings. Both Old and New Testament have a worldview of ambiguous power. When God becomes king over all things, he will submit all these powers to himself when all creation is reconciled.[35] For God to become king of an individual requires that the individual be purified of all other powers, and this happens through baptism in water and in the Holy Spirit. This also means that ritual purity is still a vital concept for the church today, because powers beyond us still attempt to control us, and the power of theses things, like money, social power, political powers and authorities, all try to get us to submit to them rather than to God.[36] Sexual impurity retains all of its former powers as it had in the Old Testament as a symbol of being under the power of idols and committing adultery against God in Christ, as we see Paul explicitly say in 1 Corinthians 6:12–20.

Sanctification is the casting out of all other powers in a person’s life to be opened to the unique and total rule of God who is reconciling all things to himself. Justification, on the other hand, deals with the legal guilt of sin. It is only by dealing with the source of corruption in sanctification that God puts an end to the cause of sin. He then deals with the guilt through atonement.[37]

Justification: from Iniquity to Righteousness, Sin to Justice, by the Kingdom of God:

Jesus is the solution to sin and iniquity through bringing about his kingdom rule, which is righteousness. The solution to iniquity is to defeat the power of generational evil and the unclean and evil powers at work in the world. Those sins that build upon one another and construct an edifice of evil handed down as a corrupt inheritance, and spread as the dominion of human empires spread, can only be defeated by the coming of the right and righteous king to dethrone all human authorities and expose them to shame.[38] God has “delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.”[39]

It is only through the notion of the Kingdom of God that iniquity is defeated in the New Testament. The New Testament is united in its understanding that the world is ruled by evil powers now. 1 John 5:19 says, “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” Paul calls the now-time “the present evil age” and he says “the days are evil.”[40] Jesus acknowledges the truth of the temptation offered by the Devil that he indeed has the power to give Jesus the dominion over the kingdoms of the world, because he actually rules them!

We have to get this right in our theology of the sovereignty of God. God does not currently exercise his rule over the world,[41] even though he is fully capable of it. The Kingdom of God is invading the world ruled by false authorities and powers who are all unclean, unjust, sinful, unrighteous, and full of iniquity.

It is the victory of Jesus over the powers that rule the world of sin that is able to deliver us from the power of sin. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not simply God’s tools for personal moral transformation, or social moral renewal. Those are massively oversimplified understandings of sin in the Bible that only comes with the beginnings of the philosophical revolution in Europe that led to “disembedding” and transforming the “porous self” into the “buffered self.”[42] Only by defeating the powers that control us can we be freed to even begin a life of righteousness, and a theology that only looks at personal moral decision making has within it the seeds of Pelagianism. If we are not slaves to sin, then we are able to defeat sin by moral effort, and thus Christ is nothing but a leader and helper, not a savior.

The Bible thus has a gospel of liberation and exodus. God is rescuing slaves from captivity to a power that oppresses. Sin enslaves us and the victory of Jesus over the power of sin and the Evil One frees us. But liberation is only part of that good news.

From Guilt to Forgiveness and Freedom:

The result of sin is guilt. Guilt, again, is a legal standing in the Bible, not a personal feeling. Obviously, the legal standing can create a personal feeling or sense of guilt.[43] The good news of Jesus Christ is that God does not visit our iniquities upon us. God does not demand payment for our moral debts. In Christ, God forgives us. Forgiveness is often deeply misunderstood in churches today. Forgiveness is a legal concept in which a debt is not repaid but released. Jesus does not pay our moral debt to God the Father. There is no biblical support for such a common misunderstanding (evident in a plethora of hymns and praise songs). Jesus “cancelled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside by nailing it to the cross.”[44] Jesus did not pay a debt, he set it aside, tore it up.

This cannot be said often or loud enough in our time: Jesus did not pay, he forgave. The two are not compatible. He didn’t rebalance some divine bank account, or some scale of justice. Jesus smashed the scales of justice, and closed out the bank account. In this way, Jesus is God’s great Jubilee (see Lev. 25). God’s justice is bigger than our sin, which means that God is “faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). God’s justice is displayed, not in the repayment of guilt, but in its forgiveness. Similarly, Paul says, “In him we have redemption/release through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace…” (Eph 1:7). It is through the blood of Jesus that the record of our trespasses has been washed away. His blood is not a payment for sin, but an erasure of it, a release from its dominion. Redemption is the act of buying someone out of slavery. If there is payment under this system, it is from a kinsman-redeemer to the slaveowner, i.e. from Jesus to Satan. But God does not pay Satan in Jesus’ blood, Jesus’ blood defeats the power of Satan by washing away the guilt that empowers him who is rightly called “the accuser.” Without guilt, the accusations of the Devil (which means divider in Greek) have no power. Without the guilt of lawbreaking, sin now has no power.[45]

So, forgiveness leads to freedom. This freedom from guilt is now a freedom from the law itself. No longer is the law condemning us, loading us down with moral guilt (not necessarily a guilty conscience like that of Luther). The righteous lawgiver, God, is fully just in releasing us from the guilt of our evildoing. But this is only part of the good news.

The Good News: Reconciliation is New Creation

The good news is not that we get to go to heaven when we die, and avoid hell. The good news is far, far bigger than that. With our intense focus on individual wrongdoing and personal moral transformation, we have missed the glorious vision that captivates Paul throughout his letters.

“…as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” (Eph 1:10).

“At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is King, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2:10–11).

“For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Col. 1:19–20).

“The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” (Rom 8:21).

“God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” (2 Cor 5:19)

God’s plan for the fullness of time is not to fill heaven with good people, but to bring the whole creation to new life under the righteous rule of Jesus, a process in which his people get to participate. But, for that a people must be prepared. Salvation from the power of sin is only the first step.

Sidebar: Two Acts of Salvation

It is important to note also that because sin is both personal wrongdoing and a power that controls us, there are two ways in which we are saved. Firstly, we are rescued or liberated from the oppression of the power of sin seen in the empires and kingdoms of this world. This is like the exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt. But that’s the beginning of the story. From there God forms a people who are worthy of his call to be ambassadors of his reign. This first liberation has been the focus of more progressive Christianity, especially in places where people are oppressed. This correction is to be celebrated. Jesus is the victor and the great liberator. But that’s not the whole gospel.

The second kind of salvation is rescue from the wrath of God. Conservatives have tended to focus here. This is equally biblical! Scripture is clear that God will judge the world, and that this “Day of the Lord” is a day of darkness and not light.[46] It is when God will finally bring the reign of sin to an end through a display of his power, rather than through his people. Each will be accountable to the judge. Those in Christ will be treated as family, however, and disciplined rather than destroyed.

The problem for the liberal-conservative divide on sin is that both of these are true. Jesus is the author of both of these acts of salvation, and he accomplishes both of these acts in the same death and resurrection. We must be saved from both the power of Satan manifest personally and through human kingdoms (liberation) and from the wrath of God (salvation). Breaking these up as though one were the gospel and the other not has led to terribly misguided fights among Christians! The atonement debate should never be about victory vs. substitution! Both are equally true and necessary to keep together in the gospel of Jesus.

The Good News: Maturity in the Image of God in Christ

In order to prepare creation for full reconciliation, God is at work through his people creating those who are worthy to inherit his kingdom as adopted heirs. We are predestined in Christ for this very purpose. Predestination is not about eternal life, but about becoming like Christ. “Those he foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom 8:29). “In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ…” (Eph 1:5).

The good news of the gospel is not simply that we are released from sin, saved from the power of Satan and from the wrath of God, but that we are being conformed to be like Christ so that we can be coheirs with him of the kingdom of God. The good news is not salvation only, but that we get to participate in the universal dominion of the good king over his creation, as was intended in Adam and Eve.

The Good News: A People

But this good news is not about individuals only. The good news is about God forming a people, a body. We are not saved simply from personal sin to a personal salvation, nor from evil power for individual liberty, but we are saved to a people. This is what the book of Romans is about! “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revelation of the sons of God” (Rom 8:19). God is bringing his kingdom and forming a people ready for it. He is not saving souls for an eternal personal paradise.

The Good News: The Reign of Justice and Shalom

The biblical vision of the end, or goal, is a vision of what happens when God becomes king of all creation again. Justice, in the Bible, is always personal, just as it was for all the ancient world. That is, justice only makes exists when people obey the king, who is the lawgiver. When everyone obeys king Jesus and his people are transformed into his image, then all of creation will rejoice and give glory to God. War will cease, predatory ways will cease,[47] oppression, greed, violence, famine, poverty will all cease. Human divisions and fighting will cease. When God is king, there is the Sabbath shalom: the all-encompassing peace of God that passes human understanding.[48] This is the final vision of the Bible, in which the kingdom of God symbolized in the city of Jerusalem transformed into the Holy of Holies descends from heaven to fill the earth, and all humans bring their tribute to God the king.[49]

Systemic Injustice or Personal Sin?

So, why do we have this politicized division of Christians into right and left, both of whom have a fraction of the truth? The answer is the political philosophy upon which America and other modern nations is built, which we have all imbibed from our birth.

The political philosophy of the Enlightenment is all about forming a collective people on the grounds of reason, in a world that has no power outside of controllable forces of “nature.” This philosophy is enshrined in the preamble to the US Constitution. The idea is that humans have come to the point where they are able to use their thinking and scientific abilities to create a new world order built on reason rather than tradition, family, or superstition. This is a belief that we are capable of replacing individual rulers (kings) with impersonal systems which might be more-or-less perfectible and protected from corruption. It is a belief that there are no supernatural powers that can transform our good intentions into evil results, or that could possess us and alter our desires. It is a belief that society is built on morality/ethics, the rational ordering of human behavior towards a common good decided by the people independently of any other authority. Remember, the US Constitution is the first national document in global history that establishes law apart from any mention of God or gods. It is the first “godless constitution.”

Enlightenment political philosophy demands that the nation be constructed from the ground up, using rational, individual citizens as the blocks. The idea is that every individual can come together and forge a common good system. This idea is engrained deeply in the fabric of our shared Western consciousness, and it provides an interpretative framework through which we process the biblical categories of sin.

So, the need for personal moral responsibility is quite high when we come together to forge a “social contract.” Early proponents of Enlightenment political philosophy believed that the success of the nation was dependent on the personal moral merit of its individual citizens. Christian churches thus played a major role in the focus on personal moral transformation for the common good of building a successful nation.

As time moved on it became evident, however, that structural evils continued, like slavery. Abolitionist Christians, working in the framework of the Enlightenment political philosophy of theirs and our time, sought to reform the system by political and legal action that banned human trafficking. The Women’s Christian Temperance movement is another example of this kind of moral-transforming through system-reforming belief. And although it is easy to point to the failure of Prohibition in the US by pointing to the rise of organized crime, black-market liquor, and its eventual repeal, other historians have pointed out that it was actually incredibly successful in transforming the way alcohol was perceived culturally, and was a great victory for lowering domestic violence by the destruction of the saloon culture. Americans, on average, drink four times less today than they did 200 years ago! [50]

The point is, some moral transformation is effective through systemic transformation, and the inverse is equally true. Corruption can be built into a system, like slavery or Jim Crow laws. Because what people on the political left throughout the last few centuries have understood is that we are not blank-slates, but are formed by the world into which we are born.

However, the moral transformation created by systemic reform is always limited because it rests on changing the plausibility structures of a context. We cannot reform sin away. We cannot create a system under which personal sin is impossible. Abolition in the United States did not heal racial inequalities and injustices. Prohibition did not end alcoholism or domestic violence. But these both changed the context, and changed what was plausible. Abolition was a step in the liberation of African Americans in the US. It changed what was plausible for them to accomplish in life.

Thus, the debate among Christians mirrors the debate among political philosophers of the right and the left as to which is more important: highlighting the need for personal virtue or systemic reform. The glaringly obvious answer is that both are equally important and that the divide-and-conquer form of binary politics practiced by America is itself a broken system that leads to an endless stream of false dichotomies.

That said, it is important to understand that neither personal moral virtue, nor systemic utopia fit the vision of the good news of the Bible. In fact, both are parasitic, secularized versions that seek to exploit the best of a “Judeo-Christian” heritage for the formation of a more united, and thus powerful, nation.

Sin in the Bible is always defined in relation to God first, and then to the creation or other humans. Psalm 51 demonstrates this perspective well. Although David was guilty of murder and adultery/rape, and a terrible abuse of power, and thus sinned against Uriah, Bathsheba, and the whole kingdom of Israel, he confesses “Against you, you only, have I sinned.” This is offensive to say in our time, because the injustice was clearly against the victims of his evil. But this keys us into the difference between the ancient biblical perspective and our own—God is the only source of righteousness and the only judge of iniquity.

Enlightenment political philosophy is built upon the belief that God is not necessary for discussions of political order. That is, it is built upon the belief that God’s kingdom cannot come and in its absence or non-existence, we have to construct the best possible world we can. In that sense, all modern political systems are based in a fundamental atheism (or deism) that only acknowledges religion at it is useful for its own agenda, thus instrumentalizing religion for nation-building. Secularism, as a system, necessarily leads to atheism as we replace a God outside of ourselves by trying to make humanity godlike (i.e. just as Adam and Eve were doing).[51]

What this means, then, is that Enlightenment systems of justice are inherently unjust from a biblical perspective. The demands of justice from God in the Bible may overlap with a particular political vision, which is not surprising due to the significant amount of America has exploited decontextualized biblical principles. But, the demand of the Bible, and the political vision of the Bible, is unanimously focused on the personal and present reign of God in a kingdom not constructed from this world, but arriving from heaven. The Enlightenment political vision is to construct the best possible simulation of the kingdom of God, without needing God himself to be king. It is by excluding God that we also allow ourselves to exclude Satan, believing that the thrones of this world are not ruled by the Evil One, as 1 John said. There will always be a human king, a human empire, an antichrist,[52] on the evil throne of this present evil age, no matter how we try to mask it with philosophical constructs and systems.

The fruit of this political philosophical vision has been proven over three centuries in many national experiments. The belief that humans are capable of constructing a good moral order through the right mix of personal virtue and systemic justice has had notably mixed results, including the most bloody century in human history, the 20th.[53]

Conclusion

Talk about wrongdoing is complex and is related to the worldview in which we are working. The Enlightenment worldview of modern America has dramatically simplified wrongdoing to a few binary categories of good/evil, just/unjust, black/white. In spite of the handwringing of apologists of the last few decades, the decline in influence of Christianity has not led to moral relativism, but to an even stronger moral crusade by political parties, complete with their own inquisitions, demands for rigorous orthodoxy, and demonization (or at least name-calling) of the opposition.

But the Bible’s perspective on what separates us from God is also rooted in its world and its time with categories of ritual impurity enmeshed with notions of divinely given law and human disease and reproduction. The Bible’s world is strange to ours, and it is important to not translate this strangeness into modern political categories, or we will certainly distort the message of the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

Christians must hold all the Bible’s understandings of what separates us from God together at the same time. Christ is good news for the broken and oppressed. He is the one who promises liberation and a promised land of liberty. Christ is good news for the one racked with feelings of guilt and fear of the coming wrath of God. Jesus is good news to a world living under the dominion of the Evil One. He is the one purifying us from being under the influence of any other power, including disease and death. And it is good news that God will have the final victory, that he will reconcile all things to himself, and that we are being prepared to join in this mission with him.

We are all guilty of generationally inherited sins. One example of this is an inherited white supremacy. I never sought white privilege. I never wanted to be racist and do not commit racist acts, nor hate people of other races. Nor do I want race to be a primary category through which I see others. But I have inherited a generational sin of being blind to the suffering of others, and seeking self-justification by ignoring the problem, ignoring the history, imagining laws of abolition and end of Jim Crow solved white supremacy, or pretending that it only belongs to “rednecks” or particular racists.

I am responsible for not justifying myself, nor blaming it on my ancestors or other specific white people. We cannot use the guilt of others to justify ourselves! I am responsible for trying to end this sin in the church to the extent of my ability through the power of Christ and in his kingdom ways. And we as church communities are as well. This is fully biblical. It is not “liberal,” but grounded in the pages of Scripture from Genesis through Revelation.

But, we are called by Paul to be “ambassadors of Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, ‘Be reconciled to God’” (2 Cor 5:20). As ambassadors, that means our identity must be fully and confidently in the kingdom of God. We are to enter the world with God’s call for reconciliation to him. We must believe that it is only by reconciliation with God in Christ that true justice will reign. But this means we have to re-enter the world ruled by sin, seeking to liberate the captives, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim, with Jesus, that the kingdom of God (not a divinized Enlightenment systemic utopia) is at hand. Our call is not to create a more just and perfect system, but to announce and show the world that the church is the people of God who have a new and living way to reconciliation with God in Jesus Christ. We must proclaim the kingdom of God, not the reformed kingdoms of the world, and do this by shining the light of God’s justice so brightly that all will be drawn to it.