As the climax of the Hebrew prophetic tradition, Jesus did not merely testify against symptomatic sin—in fact, he spent very little time doing this. Rather, Jesus struck at the heart of the systemic evil that has provided the foundation for human civilization. Jesus didn’t seem very interested in exposing symptomatic sinners—tax collectors, drunkards, prostitutes, etc. Instead Jesus challenged the guardians of systemic sin—the power brokers of religion and politics. Jesus knew that tax collectors were greedy and violent, but he was more interested in focusing his prophetic critique on the
...more
