NT Wright, "How do you answer someone who says...that there is no point trying to bring justice to the world?"

Related to my last post on the Christian expectation of resurrection, final judgment and new creation (link), below is an excerpt from Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, by NT Wright (page 221-222, Google Preview) on why Christians should try to bring justice to our world today:

The paradigm I have set out in this book tells heavily against both sides. This is the point where a genuine biblical theology can come out of the forest and startle both those who thought that the Bible was irrelevant or dangerous for political ethics and those who thought that taking the Bible seriously meant being conservative politically as well as theologically. The truth is very different—as we should have guessed from Jesus’s own preaching of the kingdom, not to mention his death as a would-be rebel king. His resurrection, and the promise of God’s new world that comes with it, creates a program for change and offers to empower it. Those who believe the gospel have no choice but to follow. 

And if people tell you that after all there isn’t very much they can do, remember what the answer is. What would you say to someone who said, rightly, that God would make them completely holy in the resurrection and that they would never reach this state of complete holiness until then—and who then went on to say, wrongly, that therefore there was no point in even trying to live a holy life until that time? You would press for some form of inaugurated eschatology. You would insist that the new life of the Spirit, in obedience to the lordship of Jesus Christ, should produce radical transformation of behavior in the present life, anticipating the life to come even though we know we shall never be complete and whole until then. That is, actually, the lesson of Romans 6. Well, apply the same to Romans 8! How do you answer someone who says, rightly, that the world will not be completely just and right until the new creation and who deduces, wrongly, that there is no point trying to bring justice to the world (or for that matter ecological health, another topic for which there is no space here) until that time? Answer, from everything I have said so far: insist on inaugurated eschatology, on a radical transformation of the way we behave as a worldwide community, anticipating the eventual time when God will be all in all even though we all agree things won’t be complete until then. There is the challenge. The resurrection of Jesus points us to it and gives us the energy for it. Let us overcome our surprise that such a hope should be set before us and go to the task with prayer and wisdom.

Also see (external links):

• Vimeo: NT Wright on The Justice Conference (2014).
• NT Wright, Jesus Is Coming – Plant a Tree!.

Related posts:

• Dr David Gooding and Dr John Lennox, "God's Program for the Restoration of Creation".
• Ronald Stone, "Wesley’s demand for mercy and justice in the economic world".
• NT Wright on Predestination, Election and Romans 9.

Dr David Gooding and Dr John Lennox, "God's Program for the Restoration of Creation"

Below is an excerpt on resurrection, final judgment and the restored creation from Christianity: Opium or Truth by Dr David Gooding and Dr John Lennox (free ebook, Link):

GOD’S PROGRAM FOR THE RESTORATION OF CREATION

But there is hope! Real solidly based hope! The Bible affirms that creation’s subjection to frustration is only temporary: one day creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption (Rom. 8:21).

Indeed, the restoration has already begun. For when man in his blindness murdered Jesus Christ, the Author of Life, the Son of God himself, God raised Jesus Christ bodily from the dead. That resurrection carries implications for the whole of creation.

The risen Christ, says the Bible, is the firstfruits of them that have fallen asleep (that is, have died). The harvest will comprise all the redeemed of every century from the beginning of time (1 Cor. 15:20-28). Creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption (Rom. 8:21). There shall eventually be a new heaven and a new earth (2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:1). And who knows how many further projects the God of All Ingenuity and Creative Power will embark on thereafter?

“But why do we have to wait so many centuries for this promised restoration to happen?” says someone. “Isn’t the real reason that the promise was never any thing more than the wishful thinking of religious people?”

Well, that’s certainly not the reason which the Bible itself gives for the delay. It says that what the restoration of creation is waiting for is the manifestation of the sons of God (Rom. 8:19). What use would it be for God to restore creation and then put it back into the hands of the same kind of weak and sinful human beings as before? In other words, creation is waiting for the completion of what we have earlier called Stage 2 of God’s project: for the production of children of God, and then their development into fully-grown up sons of God (Col. 1:28; 1 Jn. 3:1-2), fit to take over and run the administration of the new heavens and the new earth as Christ’s executive Body (Col. 1:13-20; Eph. 1:9-10; 19-23).

The first step in this process is, as we earlier saw, that human beings having been created by God, should then become children of God. When that happens it does not mean that they are thereafter exempt from the suffering that those who are not children of God normally experience. Ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:23), says the Bible. They may, in fact, find that becoming children of God additionally involves them in suffering persecution and even death for Christ’s sake (Jn. 15:18-16:4; 1 Jn. 3:13-16), as has happened so very often to Christians all down the centuries in totalitarian countries.

[...]

When it comes to the unjust suffering inflicted on them by evil men, they [believers] dare to rely on God’s promise, guaranteed by his character and affirmed by the resurrection of Christ, that there is going to be a Final Judgment where all wrongs shall be put right. Like the writer of Psalm 73 they consider the final end of evil men, and, in spite of the believers’ sufferings and the apparent prosperity of the wicked, believers would not even now change places with them for anything (Ps. 73:17ff).

Moreover Christians are not surprised when they find themselves suffering at the hands of evil men enormously more than ordinary citizens do—as happened in the USSR in the bad old days now happily gone by, and in many other countries still. For Christians know it from the start that they are called upon to follow the example left them by Christ who did no sin neither was guile found in his mouth; who when he was reviled, reviled not again, when he suffered he did not threaten, but committed himself to him who judges righteously (1 Pet. 2:21- 23).

Confident that at the Final Judgment God would see to it that justice was done, Christ accepted suffering from evil men: and more than that: he prayed for his executioners and suffered the penalty of sin at the hands of God for them that all might be saved, if they would.

Christians are therefore called in their turn to suffer for Christ their Saviour’s sake as they declare boldly their faith in him, and to suffer for their fellow men’s sake as they take God’s offer of peace and forgiveness to a world that at heart is hostile to God. But Christians do not find such suffering a cause for doubting God’s love or his justice: they find it a confirmation of Christ’s forewarning (Jn. 15:18-16:4) and an honour (Mt. 5:10-12; Acts 5:40-42; 1 Pet. 4:12-14).

Read or download the full book here FREE.  

Further Reading:

• For more on the hope of the resurrection and new creation, I recommend: NT Wright, Surprised by Hope.

Related Posts:

• Dr David Gooding on the Hebrews Warning Passages and a Link to a Free eBook
• NT Wright, "How do you answer someone who says...that there is no point trying to bring justice to the world?".