As part of our mission to equip the local church and Asian American Christians, we are posting sermon excerpts, devotions, and prayers from our SOLA Council members concerning racism and injustice. We hope that these words would be challenging and encouraging to believers as we fight against the sin of racism.
This video is from a sermon given by Owen Lee, senior pastor of Christ Central Presbyterian Church in Centreville, VA on May 31, 2020. You can watch the rest of the message here.
Below is an edited transcript of the video. Please note that some changes have been made for readability and clarity.
The question is not if you will meet Jesus. You will meet him. The question is: How will you meet him? Will you meet him as your Savior or you meet him as your judge? The choice is yours.
We should be angry at injustice and work for justice. [2 Peter 3] verse 11 says, “Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in the lives of holiness and godliness.
To be godly means to be like God. And because God is a God who loves justice, it is godly to love justice. Like God, we are to have a righteous anger against evil and injustice, an anger that is rooted in love for what is good and just.
We should be angry at injustice because God is angry at injustice. So let me say this again. It is godly to be righteously angry at injustice and to let that righteous anger fuel us in our pursuit of justice.
It was a clear, shocking, and disgusting case of police brutality against the Black man, and it was an evil injustice. There is no question, friends, that there is racial injustice that the Black community faces every day in America, both at the individual and systemic levels. And as Christians, when we see any kind of injustice, whether it’s abortion or human trafficking or anti-Black racism, that oppresses and brutalizes the Black community, we ought to get righteously angry — because I assure you, God is righteously angry.
And because God Himself is working for justice and will bring ultimate justice on the last day, we ought to work for justice too. To work for justice means that we work to both protect the innocent and to punish the guilty. To work for justice means that we work to both to care for the vulnerable and to confront those who would oppress the vulnerable.
As Christians, we are citizens and agents of the kingdom of Christ. That means that though we live on Earth, we live under the reign and the kingship of King Jesus. We are his subjects, we belong to his kingdom, and therefore we will obey Him as our king.
And our King Jesus commands us to love our neighbors, to care for the poor and the powerless, and to loosen the yoke of oppression, and to love mercy and to do justice wherever we are and whoever we’re with. Our first allegiance is to King Jesus and to do what He commands us to do.
Do you know what that means? It means that we ask ourselves, “What would King Jesus have me say and do right now in this situation?” You see, when you fear King Jesus that gives you the freedom to fear man no more. Let’s make this real and relevant as we apply it to the injustice of racism.
When a Christian man or woman enters the room, everyone in that room, no matter the color of their skin should feel more safe and more protected because the Christian men or women will say, “Racial injustice will not happen when I’m here! And if it does, I will check it. I will call it out. I will fight against it. And I will do everything in my power [so] that human beings created in the image of God are protected and treated with the dignity that they deserve.”
That is what a Christ-follower does. A Christ-follower seeks justice and does what is right, even at a cost to himself. Our King Jesus said that every human life is created in the image of God and therefore infinitely valuable. Therefore, we will do everything we can to protect and honor human life. We will work to protect human life in the womb, we will work to protect human life from human trafficking, and we will also work to protect Black human lives from anti-black racism, and to work to dismantle unjust and racist systems that brutalize and oppress them.
“A Christ-follower seeks justice and does what is right, even at a cost to himself.”
As Asian American Christians, so many of us have failed to love our Black neighbors when they were the victims of racial injustice and oppression. So many of us stayed silent and did nothing. We thought it didn’t involve us. We didn’t want to get involved. It wasn’t our fight. So we just stayed clear.
But we can no longer do that. Not anymore. As Christ-following Asian Americans, we must speak up for justice and work for justice. As Christ-following Asian Americans, we must love justice. We must do justice. We must love mercy and walk humbly with our God.
Friends, you see, that it is not just the right thing to do: It is the Christian thing to do. So today, I call my Asian American church and all other Asian American churches to stand in solidarity with the Black church and to work for racial justice. May God give us all the courage and the love to stand up for the oppressed and to see justice, even if it costs us as citizens and agents of the kingdom of heaven.
We are called to work for what will be. Let me say that again: We’re called to work for what is to come. And I assure you, that in the kingdom of heaven, Black bodies will not be brutalized, but they will be honored. Therefore, as citizens and agents of that kingdom, we are now to work to ensure that Black bodies are not brutalized here — that they are honored here.
Let us do justice. Let us love mercy. Let us love our neighbors, especially our Black neighbors, who are suffering and in so much pain at this time. That is what it looks like to walk humbly with our God.