Righteousness and Wickedness

I’ve been listening to some sermons by Dr. Timothy Keller recently. I was introduced to Keller in my Apologetics class this semester. One of our class texts is his book, The Reason for God, which is a fantastic apologetic work similar to the style and approach of C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Keller is the senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.

In a sermon about justice, Keller talks about what social justice should look like if we were to take the Biblical approach. If you are interested in listening to it, I’d encourage you to do so. His sermons are available through his podcast. Just look for the one titled Justice.

One of the things that stood out for me was when he mentions Bruce Waltke‘s commentary on the words righteous and wicked:

The righteous person is the person who disadvantages him or herself for the community, and the wicked person is the person who sees his or her resources as belonging just to them.

He then goes on to talk about justice as an active attempt at repairing the areas in society where the social fabric is falling apart. To me, this is revolutionary. I’ve always thought of justice as protecting individual human rights, but what Keller is suggesting is that biblical justice goes much farther than that.

There is much more to this sermon, and Keller is a remarkable preacher. If you are looking for a good podcast to play on your iPod, I’d recommend you download this and a few other sermons from Keller.