In Christianity, the cross is the ultimate symbol of forgiveness, love, and grace. Yet, however much we would like the Christian faith to be viewed as contributing to a more peaceful and hospitable society this is by no means always the case. Quite to the contrary. Christianity is often viewed as a source of violence and discord rather than a beacon of justice.[1] Our natural reaction is to become defensive. To some extent, this is justified. There are, to be sure, those with a secularist bias who refuse to acknowledge the positive contributions of Christianity to Western civilization.[2] But perhaps this is also a time for honest self-examination and serious reflection on how we as Christians may be compromising the gospel of forgiveness through the cross.
The Cross and Power
In the first three centuries of the church, the fish, not the cross, was the primary Christian symbol. Since the Greeks, Romans and other pagans commonly used the fish symbol before Christians did, unlike the cross it attracted little suspicion. Thus, it was a perfect secret symbol for persecuted believers. It was not until the fourth century—when Christianity was recognized as the “official religion” of the Roman Empire under Constantine and crucifixion was abolished as a form of punishment —that the cross became the dominant symbol of the Christian faith.
This historical fact that the cross became the primary symbol of Christianity at a time when the church rose to power raises what the noted evangelical historian Mark Noll has described as the “cross-power conundrum.” He observes how the church’s exercise of power (or the lack thereof) in society has historically influenced the meanings it has attached to the cross. Once in power, Christians have often set aside Jesus’ suffering love, humility, self-abasement, and forgiveness in favor of triumphalism, self-righteous control, and duty.[3] Chris Rocke and Joel Van Dyke likewise state: “We must be willing to admit that some of the most cherished theological ways of seeing the cross were formed in the context of power.” They warn of the tendency by the dominant religious culture to use the cross as a “transactional tool” to “keep power in the hands of the powerful and God on the side of the status quo.”[4]
One way in which white evangelicalism has historically used its theological, political, and cultural dominance to rationalize oppression is by spiritualizing the gospel of forgiveness and separating it from the biblical concept of restorative justice. Consider, for example, the institution of slavery. Race is a social construct. There is no biological basis for the superiority or inferiority of any human being based on the color of their skin that would justify the enslavement of one group of people by another. Slavery gradually developed in the American colonies through a series of immoral choices because it was economically profitable. As reliance on slave labor increased, this raised sticky questions over race, bondage, and evangelization. Jemar Tisby frames the issue in this way: “Christianity had inherent ideas of human equality embedded in its teachings. If slaves converted to Christianity, would they not begin to demand their freedom and social equality? How could missionaries preach to the slaves when their owners feared the loss of their unpaid slave labor?”[5] White Christians adopted various ways of compromising the gospel message. But foundational was the view that the gospel involves the salvation of “souls” but has no bearing on the slave’s physical bondage. Missionaries maintained strict separation between spiritual and physical freedom. The Scriptural teaching of the “equality of believers” was similarly restricted to a “spiritual equality” that did not translate into social equality.[6]
We certainly cannot discount the importance of William Wilberforce, John Wesley and other white Christian evangelists and social reformers who preached justice and joined the ranks of the abolitionists in opposing slavery. This has been documented by studies such as Timothy Smith’s ground-breaking book Revivalism and Social Reform in Mid-Nineteenth Century America (1957). But neither can we deny the complicity of the church (including many white evangelicals) in supporting and perpetuating this evil and the racist institutions and policies that followed. The historical record is clear, as Jemar Tisby documents in The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism. It was the renowned evangelical evangelist George Whitfield who successfully lobbied for the legalization of slavery in Georgia. It was white evangelicals who supported legislation promoting white supremacy in the Jim Crow era. Tellingly, most of the confederate monuments which today are the source of so much controversy were erected after the Civil War during a time when white supremacists resisted political rights for black citizens.[7] It was white evangelicals who refused to support or participate in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Billy Graham, the most well-known and influential evangelist of the twentieth-century, was reticent to ally himself with the civil rights movement because “the evangelist is not primarily a social reformer . . . He is simply . . . a proclaimer of the good news.” He made it clear that his primary goal was evangelism and he assiduously avoided any prophetic or countercultural stances that would alienate his largely white audiences.[8]
Even today, according to some noted black evangelical leaders, white evangelicalism continues to use its theological dominance to normalize the status quo and prop up its position of religious, cultural, and political power. Many white evangelicals bristle at such accusations. They argue that such a criticism of the evangelical church is a “liberal” effort to subvert the gospel in the name of “social justice.” However, these black leaders are not objecting to the gospel as such but to its distortions. They maintain that we must distinguish between a true evangelicalism which is committed to the gospel and the authority of Scripture and an oppressive “white evangelicalism” which is a “cultural agenda defined by whiteness.”[9]
To cite one example, in Insider Outsider Bryan Loritts discusses how the modern church-planting movement and gentrification are “kissing cousins.” The process of gentrification in many inner-city neighborhoods forces minority populations to move out in search of affordable housing. What were once large minority churches are decimated. As gentrification transforms ghettos into white-only neighborhoods, church planters have followed, taking aim at their target demographic—white urban hipsters. The result is a sort of “spiritual colonization.” Says Loritts: “Never once does it come across their minds that there are already some good churches there, and that they might be able to help support, strengthen, and revitalize existing ministries, not by taking over and leading, but by showing up and learning.”[10] Loritts encourages white evangelicals to become modern-day Zacchaeus’s by adopting a practice of gospel-centered restitution. “Gospel restitution is the Spirit-induced response to any vestige of culpability when it comes to matters of injustice. . . . [It] is not just a feeling . . . it involves a tangible giving back as a necessary act of repentance.”[11]
This is not to create “white guilt” which absolves people of color from personal responsibility and accountability. Sin is colorblind. True repentance based upon a humble acknowledgment that we are all sinners in need of God’s forgiveness produces lasting change. Wallowing in feelings of guilt without addressing real underlying problems of race in America does not. That said, the bare fact is that we as white evangelicals must be open to the ways in which our position as the “theological home team” has caused us to compromise and brunt the demands of the gospel and the cross.
Forgive Us Our Debts as We Forgive Our Debtors
We can begin by taking a closer look at Jesus’ model prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, particularly his instruction to pray “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt 6:12). Some modern translators wrongly use the words “sin,” “trespass,” or “offense” instead of the word “debt” and “debtors.” Such translations obscure the fact that while the Greek word opheilema (debt) can refer to “debts of offense,” or unethical acts which violate a relationship, it also refers to monetary or economic debts. So, what is Jesus instructing his disciples to do? One might argue that since the debt we owe to God is moral not financial, Jesus is simply enjoining us to forgive “debts of offense.” But we cannot discount the very real possibility that he is also calling for his disciples to erase the debts of money that are owed to them.[12]
This becomes clearer when we observe the social circumstances of Matthew’s Gospel. Matthew most likely wrote his Gospel toward the end of the first century, when the church was more established, and the believers were beginning to imitate the values of the secular world around them. The household churches were composed of believers who were economical secure and wealthy and those who were poor. These economic disparities explain why Matthew places such a strong emphasis on justice as it relates to money, business, and wealth in his Gospel.[13]
In the time of both Jesus’ ministry and the writing of Matthew’s Gospel debt was a serious problem. Ownership of productive land became increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer proprietors who lived in the city or personal villas. Small, independent landowners gradually disappeared only to become tenants, slaves, or day laborers in the cities.[14] One of the principal means by which the rich got richer was through acquiring property, possessions, or “debt slaves” when people were unable to repay debts.[15] The poor became poorer as they lost whatever assets they had through debt (Matt 18:23-35; 21:33-46). Mosaic law stipulated the cancellation of debts every seven years (the sabbatical year) and the release of debt slaves and return of the land to the original owner every fiftieth year (Jubilee) to prevent this sort of poverty and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. But there were ways of getting around this stipulation. A reinterpretation of the law attributed to the pharisee Hillel allowed for the practice called prosboul. This involved a transfer of the loan to a court during the sabbatical year and then subsequently returning it to the original owner. This enabled the creditor to retain the debt which would otherwise be cancelled.[16]
It is instructive that Matthew begins his Gospel with the words of John the Baptist: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (3:2). The following statement— “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ’Prepare the way of the Lord’” (3:3)—is taken directly from the prophet Isaiah who is frequently alluded to by Matthew. The “way of the Lord” is the “way of justice” (40:14) which Isaiah emphasizes in calling the Israelites to repentance (1:16). Both John and Isaiah are therefore warning people to repent of their sins of injustice. Jesus himself castigated the pharisees for their greed and self-indulgence (Matt 23:25).
The clearest meaning of Jesus’ words concerning the forgiveness of debts is therefore that believers are not only to forgive each other’s sins and offenses. They are to also cancel financial debts in accordance with the Mosaic principle of Jubilee and as a tangible manifestation of true repentance and the coming of God’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.” In the words of N. T. Wright, “The Lord’s Prayer makes sense, not just in terms of individual human beings quieting their own troubled consciences, vital though that it, but also in terms of the new day when justice and peace will embrace, economically and socially as well as personally and existentially.”[17]
The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
Jesus further emphasizes the strong connection between sin and debt forgiveness in the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matt 18:21-35). In this parable, a king has a servant who owes him an enormous sum of 10,000 talents which could not possibly be repaid. The king requires justice. So, he orders the servant to be sold along with his wife and children and all that he has and payment to be made (18:25). After the servant’s plea for mercy, the king cancels the entire debt. But then the servant encounters another servant who owes him a much smaller sum of 100 denari. In anger, he grabs the debtor and begins to choke him saying, “pay what you owe!” His peer immediately drops to his knees and asks for mercy using the same words which the first servant had addressed to the king: “Have patience with me, and I will repay you” (25:26. 29). In contrast to the king, however, the servant has his fellow servant thrown into prison until the debt is paid.
When the king hears of this, he calls for the servant and says to him, “you wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not have you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I have had mercy on you?” (18:32-33). So, the king in anger has his servant receive the same punishment the latter had planned for his companion. In summary, Jesus warns: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart” (18:35).
According to many commentators, Jesus is speaking metaphorically. He is giving us a picture of the connection between God’s forgiveness of sin and our willingness to forgive our brothers and sisters. As Robert Gundry states:
Calling the unforgiving servant ‘wicked’ exposes him as a false disciple: being forgiven by Jesus demands forgiving others as a sign that he has truly accepted forgiveness. ‘All that debt’ emphasizes both the enormity of the sinful debt owed to God and the infinitude of his grace. He cancelled the debt in response to a mere plea. The master’s anger represents divine wrath directed against false disciples . . . [Jesus] leaves no room for misunderstanding the parable, and therefore no excuse for failure to forgive.[18]
We can agree. But is Jesus saying more? S. W. Baron in his history of Israel describes how in the time of Jesus a Galilean peasant who had previously been a free property owner was gradually reduced to slavery through progressive indebtedness. Jesus’ parable thus reflects the economic system of his day in which the economically powerful were able to control and enslave other human beings.[19] As I have suggested, given the social conditions and the problem of debt slavery in the first century, Jesus is also showing the economic and social implications of forgiveness. In this parable, Matthew uses the same Greek debt terminology as in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven our debtors.” Again, the story of Zacchaeus shows how true repentance and forgiveness has monetary implications (Lk 19:1-10). And in the story of the sheep and the goats Jesus makes a direct connection between showing mercy and receiving mercy (Matt 25:31-48).
Conclusion
N. T. Wright points out that the cross is indeed the great act of liberation, of forgiveness. But because there is still sin and evil in the world, the church is to be the “advance guard,” the model, of the way of forgiveness.[20] Unfortunately, it has not always acted that way. Some Christians think that there can be forgiveness alone without justice. But as Miroslav Volf warns in his award-winning book Exclusion and Embrace, “forgiveness is not a substitute for justice.”[21] Forgiveness without justice cheapens God’s grace and causes us to compromise his forgiveness.
If the interpretation of Jesus’ teaching on debt forgiveness given in this essay is correct, what are the implications for the church particularly as it relates to the issue of racial reconciliation and justice? Given the fact that the “horizon” of Matthew is separated by over twenty centuries from our own, we cannot simply apply first-century realities to twenty-first century complexities.[22] However, there are principles of restorative justice—i.e., fairness, equity, freedom from domination by the powerful, and full participation of the weak and vulnerable in community—which give us guidance. Based on these principles, here are some practical steps that individual Christians and churches can take to promote racial justice:[23]
· Find and empower capable and well-qualified people of color to occupy leadership positions in our churches and educational institutions.
· Develop genuine inter-racial friendships and be willing to engage in honest dialogue. (A recent study by the Public Religion Research Institute found that in a one-hundred-friend scenario, white people had just one black friend, one Latinx, and one Asian friend. In that same scenario, black people had eight white friends, two Latinx friends, and zero Asian friends.[24])
· Create something to promote racial justice (blog; book, sermon, ect).
· Join an organization that advocates for racial and social justice.
· Donate money to organizations that advocate for racial and social justice.
· Declare a “year of Jubilee” for black folk (and other minorities) within your church or denomination that involves pooling resources to fund a large “debt forgiveness” plan for black and other minority families or to fund trust funds for black youth who experience disproportionate rates of poverty.
· Support the removal of confederate monuments.
· Offer full-ride educational scholarships for minorities.
· Help start a seminary or “Freedom Schools” with a diverse Board of Directors and a diverse faculty.
For a further description of these ideas and for more practical suggestions you are encouraged to read the last chapters in Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise and Insider Outsider by Bryan Loritts. Both books are “must reads” for anyone concerned about the issue of racial justice. Together, we can make a difference in ending the scourge of racism and racial injustice in our nation.
Copyright©Ronald P Hesselgrave
[1] Boersma, Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross, 235. [2] D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity, xvi. See also Stark, The Rise of Christianity; and Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. [3] Noll, Adding Cross to Crown, 25-27. [4] Rocke and Van Dyke, Geography of Grace, 180. [5] Tisby, The Color of Compromise, 27-36 [6] Ibid., 38, 45. [7] Ibid., 95. [8] Ibid., 135; 149 [9] Loritts, Insider Outsider, 22-25. [10] Ibid., 68-69. [11] Ibid., 66-67. [12] Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 66; Wright, The Lord and His Prayer, 40 [13] Grassi, Informing the Future, 133. [14] Crosby, House of Disciples, 25. [15] Grassi, Informing the Future., 109. [16] Ibid.: Yoder, Politics of Jesus, 69. [17] Wright, The Lord and His Prayer, 40. [18] Gundry, Matthew, 375. [19] Yoder, Politics of Jesus, 68 [20] Wright, The Lord and His Prayer, 41. [21] Lee, “Forgiveness and Justice: Two Keys to Reconciliation,” 3. [22] Cosby, House of Disciples, 15-16. [23] Tisby, Color of Compromise, 195-212. [24] Ibid., 197.
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