Social Holiness & John the Baptist Matthew 3

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Matthew 3:1-12
John the Baptist

Social Holiness
John the Baptist appeared on the stage of history 400 years after the last prophet of Israel had spoken directly for God. He came wearing the garb worn by Elijah and fulfilling the foretold ministry of preparing the way for the coming Messiah.

John's message of repentance shows that at the beginning of the Gospel there is an inseparable connection between the coming Messiah and social holiness. John didn't just speak about the internal condition of the human heart, but about the external woes that human sin brings to society.

An individualistic, pietistic, faith is alien to Biblical Christianity. That is to say, a faith that does not have an effect on society and that does not call into judgement injustice is NOT consistent with the God we know from Scripture.

John Wesley said, "There is no holiness without social holiness." God loves the world and is working in it to right its ills and disorders.

The Root of Social Injustice
At the heart of human sinfulness is the fact that we have disordered affections. God created us to love Him with the "love of enjoyment" or as St. Augustine says, amore frui. This means that we love God as an end in Himself. To possess and be possessed by the Divine Lover is the ultimate end of this desire, this affection. We love God for God's self. On the other hand we were created to love all the other creations of God with the "love of use" or amore uti. That is, all the other good things of this world are to be rightly enjoyed when they direct our thoughts and love back to their source: God. We use them and love them not as ends in themselves, but as creatures that direct our hearts back to God.

The problem is that these affections have become disordered in all of us! We love God with the love of use and see Him as a means of getting what we really want: Money, power, pleasure, security. The creatures we know as money, power, etc., have now become ends in and of themselves. We crave these things for the very love of possessing them.

The result of this is that everything becomes a means of satisfying our appetites. People and even God himself are just a means to acquire what we crave – those things we love with the love of enjoyment. Incidentally, when we get those things we are never fulfilled or satisfied by them because our affections are disordered and thus our appetites point us in the wrong direction for fulfillment.

Being driven by appetite and disordered loves we treat people as things to be used or manipulated to get what we want rather than as creatures made in the image of God who, by their very existence, should direct our hearts in praise and adoration to and communion with the Creator.

The result of seeing creation in general and humans in particular as means to the fulfillment of our disordered appetites is every form of social ill: poverty, physical abuse, addiction, theft, murder, war, etc.

John and the Prophetic Ministry
The prophetic ministry was just as much about the forth-telling of God's judgement against the private and societal evils of the day as it was about the foretelling of future events. For an example of the Old Testament prophets' message look up Isaiah 1:16; Amos 2:5-8; Amos 5:7, 10-15, 21-24. What is the subject of these prophets' messages?

Now look at John's message in Matthew 3:1-12 and Luke 3:10-14. What does John rebuke? Who are the different groups addressed? What does John tell them they should do?

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The Hebrew word for repentance is teshubah and it comes from the verb shub, meaning ‘to turn'. It implies turning from evil towards God, a change in the direction in one's life. A rousing call to repentance is found in Ezekiel 33:11. Is this what most people think of when they consider the word repentance? If not, what is the popular view of repentance?

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Why do you think John makes the remark he does about the religious leadership's appeal to being "children of Abraham"?

What relevance does John's message have to us today? List some examples.

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This same strain of prophetic denunciation crops up again in a book closely related with Palestinian Jewish Christianity, i.e. James. Look up James 5:1-6. Why are the rich condemned in this passage?

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Is it possible to be wealthy and be a Christian? Look up Matthew 19:23-26.

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John pointed beyond himself to the coming Messiah. Look up Matthew 3:11-12. What were John's expectations of the role of the Messiah? Which parts of this prophecy have been fulfilled, which haven't?

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What does the image of winnowing imply? What happens when grain is winnowed? Who will do the winnowing in this case? What is the application to people of this analogy?

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The role of the prophet is usually to bring a sense of dis-ease into the culture. To proclaim that there is a great gulf between God's ways and the ways of God's people and the secular culture (Isaiah 55:8-9). The prophet is a burr under the saddle of society and as such usually attracts society's enmity. This is what happened to John. Look up Matthew 14:3-12.

If this is the fate of prophets why do they keep irritating the powers that be? Why not just be quiet or at least more tactful? Look up Jeremiah 20:7-9.

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Has there ever been a time when you felt this way? What was the situation? How did you respond?

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