Week 2 · Scripture as a Long Resistance Story1 / 38
Fairfax Presbyterian Church · Faith & Resistance
Week Two
Scripture as a Long Resistance Story
The Claim of This Week
"The Bible is God's sustained refusal to accept the domination of the weak by the strong."
This is not a minor theme. It is the arc of the whole canon — from Genesis's image of God to Revelation's vision of a healed world. This week we trace that arc.
From Week One
The Seven Tensions — Where We Landed
The temptation
Governing authorities are established by God
If the world is as it is, perhaps God wills it so
Who are we to judge? Examine our own sins first
Christian community depends on tolerance of difference
Unlimited empathy is paralyzing — care for our own first
Turn the other cheek — nonviolence means not resisting
God will redeem all things — social transformation is a distraction
The resolution
A gift — but never absolute. Obedience to harm is complicity.
The world as it is reflects human sin — not divine endorsement.
Humility guards against self-righteousness — not against action.
We tolerate conviction. We do not tolerate harm.
Empathy is not toxic. Indifference is. Tribal loyalty is not Christian loyalty.
Nonviolence shapes our methods — not our passivity.
Christian hope is the ground of resistance, not a reason to disengage.
From Week One
The Discernment Framework
1
Who is suffering?
2
What is authority doing?
3
What does Scripture prioritize?
4
What do we discern together?
5
What form aligns with Christ?
then ask again
Click to step through the framework.
1 — The anchor question
Who is suffering?
Every act of discernment starts here. God's attention in Scripture is drawn first and always to those who are being harmed. This question keeps the framework from becoming an abstraction.
2 — Evaluate the institution
What is authority doing?
Authority has a vocation: protect the vulnerable, restrain evil, promote justice. Scripture evaluates authority by what it does, not by the mere fact of its existence. When it inverts that vocation, its claim to obedience weakens.
3 — Read the whole story
What does Scripture consistently prioritize?
Not isolated verses — the arc. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture consistently moves toward the liberation of the oppressed and the inclusion of the outsider. Single verses can be marshaled for almost anything. The arc cannot.
4 — Don't go alone
What do we discern together?
Individual certainty is not enough. The history of the Church is full of people who were privately certain and publicly catastrophic. Discernment is a community practice — it requires correction, wisdom, and courage we cannot generate alone.
5 — The model
What form of resistance aligns with Christ?
Nonviolent, truthful, compassionate — and costly. The form of resistance matters theologically, not just strategically. Which leads us to the person who demonstrated all five questions in practice.
Click to begin
From Week One
Jesus didn't just teach resistance. He enacted it — specifically, repeatedly, at great personal cost.
Mark 1:40–41
Purity systems that exclude
Touching the untouchable — the leper, the bleeding woman, the dead girl.
Matthew 23
Religious leaders who burden
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees" — seven times. No diplomatic softening.
Luke 13:31–32
Political power that intimidates
"Go tell that fox…" — naming Herod directly, continuing anyway.
Luke 10; John 4
Tribal limits on compassion
The Good Samaritan. The woman at the well. The enemy as neighbor.
Mark 11:15–17 · Quoting Isaiah 56:7
Economic exploitation sanctioned by religion
Overturning tables — and quoting Isaiah's vision of a house for all peoples. The passage that names this community.
Before We Dive In
The Church Has to Be Uncomfortable
Speaker
Josh Johnson
Listen for
What does Johnson say the church has to risk in order to be faithful? How does that connect to what we studied last week?
Three Floors
Why Do We Read Scripture?
1
To know God
To pray, to trust, to surrender, to be known. The personal interior life of faith.
2
To love one another
To forgive, to serve, to bear with, to belong. The ethics of life together in community.
3
To act in the world
To resist, to protect, to confront the powers. Our posture toward the structures we live inside — and where the risk is.
c. 30 CE · Luke 4:18–19 · Mark 2–3 · Mark 11 · Luke 13:32
6Acts & Paul
A community whose life is the witness
50–65 CE · Acts 5:29; Gal 3:28; Philemon
7Revelation
Empire named, unmasked, and ended
c. 95 CE · Rev 13; 18; 21–22
Era One · Before the Nation
Genesis: Image of God
Before law, covenant, or prophecy — a declaration about every human being that made domination theologically impossible.
Era 1 of 7 · Genesis
Genesis 1:26–27 · The Image of God
The Text
Genesis 1:26–27
“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.’ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
Context & Claim
Why This Was Revolutionary
In the ancient Near East, only kings were called the “image of God” — language of divine right and absolute authority. Genesis tears that claim from the palace and gives it to every human being. No person can claim to be more “in God’s image” than another. No hierarchy, no system, no empire can treat some humans as less than fully human without colliding with this text.
Male and Female Together
The divine image is not carried by one gender, one tribe, or one class — it is carried by the species, and by both genders together. This is a direct counter to every patriarchal and hierarchical claim of the ancient world. Before law. Before covenant. Before prophecy. The resistance arc begins here.
Era Two · c. 1250 BCE
Exodus: God Hears
The paradigmatic act. God does not observe suffering from a safe distance. And the first resistance comes from two women with nothing but conscience.
Era 2 of 7 · Exodus
Exodus 1:15–21 · Shiphrah and Puah
The Text
Exodus 1:15–17
“The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah… ‘When you see that the baby is a boy, kill him.’ The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do.”
Exodus 1:20–21
“So God was kind to the midwives… and because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.”
Context & Claim
The Text Knows Where Power Lies
Shiphrah and Puah are given names. The most powerful ruler in the ancient world is referred to only by his title. Scripture already knows whose story this is. When human authority commands what God forbids, there is only one allegiance.
The First Civil Disobedience in Scripture
This is Acts 5:29 — “we must obey God rather than human beings” — written a thousand years earlier by two women with no power except their conscience. Before Moses. Before the plagues. Before the sea parts. Resistance comes first, and God blesses it.
Era 2 of 7 · Exodus
Exodus 2:23–25 · 3:7–8 · The Grammar of Divine Action
The Text
Exodus 2:23–25
“The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant… God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.”
Exodus 3:7–8
“I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out… and I have come down to rescue them.”
Context & Claim
The Sequence Matters
They groaned → they cried out → God heard → God remembered → God looked → God acted. This is the grammar of divine response to human suffering, established here and repeated across the entire canon. God’s liberating action is triggered by the cry of the oppressed. It is not incidental — it is the pattern.
God Comes Down
God sees. God hears. God comes down. Not to observe. Not to comfort from a distance. To intervene — in history, against a power. The first question of our discernment framework — Who is suffering? — is not a human invention. It is the question God asks first, here in Exodus 2.
Era Three · 1050–587 BCE
The Kings: A Warning Fulfilled
Israel asked for a king. God warned them what kings do. They got a king. The warning proved accurate in full. The prophets are the response.
Era 3 of 7 · The Kings
1 Samuel 8 · 1 Kings 11–12 · Power Acquired and Corrupted
The Text
1 Samuel 8:10–18 — God’s Warning
“He will take your sons… He will take your daughters… He will take the best of your fields and vineyards… You yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you.”
1 Kings 12:4 — The People’s Verdict
“Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but now lighten the harsh labor and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you.” — The people to Rehoboam, after Solomon’s death
Context & Claim
Solomon’s Fulfillment
Solomon began with wisdom and ended with forced labor, heavy taxation, and foreign gods. Rehoboam hardened the yoke. The kingdom split. Every item on Samuel’s list, checked off. God’s warning had come true in full — conscripted sons, taken fields, enslaved people.
Why This Matters for the Arc
The temptation to stop at floors one and two — to be faithful personally and communally but to make peace with the powers — is not a modern problem. It is what Israel did. The prophets spend two centuries responding to what the monarchy became. God sent people to call Israel back to floor three. That calling is what we inherit.
Era Four · 760–540 BCE
The Prophets: Justice as Worship
Five voices across two centuries. A shepherd, a courtier, a rural farmer, a prisoner, an exile. One message.
Era 4 of 7 · Prophets 1 of 5 · Amos · c. 760 BCE
Northern Israel at peak prosperity — a shepherd arrives from the south
The Text
Amos 5:21–24
“I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them… Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”
Amos 2:6–7
“They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground.”
Context & Claim
The Moment
Jeroboam II’s Israel is at its wealthiest. The sanctuaries are full, the festivals elaborate. The gap between wealthy landowners and displaced peasants has never been wider. Amos is a shepherd from Tekoa — an outsider, sent north to speak to the comfortable about the people they have stopped seeing.
What God Is Rejecting
God is not rejecting worship. God is rejecting worship that substitutes for justice. The religious activity has increased. The justice has dried up. The question is not whether we go to church. The question is who is suffering while we do.
Era 4 of 7 · Prophets 2 of 5 · Isaiah of Jerusalem · c. 740–700 BCE
Assyria is rising — Isaiah speaks from inside the court
The Text
Isaiah 10:1–3
“Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar?”
Isaiah 1:17
“Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”
Context & Claim
The Moment
Assyria has destroyed Damascus. The northern kingdom is next. Isaiah is a courtier with access to the king — not a peasant prophet. He speaks to the ruling class from the inside, which makes his indictment more pointed, not less. He ties the Assyrian military crisis directly to the moral failure.
Unjust Laws as Theological Emergency
Legislation that systematically harms the poor is not merely bad policy. It is an offense against the God who heard the cry in Egypt. The day of reckoning is not rhetorical — Assyria came. The northern kingdom fell in 722 BCE. The prophets read this as judgment on justice, not military strategy.
Era 4 of 7 · Prophets 3 of 5 · Micah · c. 735–700 BCE
The same era as Isaiah — but from the village, not the court
The Text
Micah 6:6–8
“With what shall I come before the Lord?… Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression?… He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Micah 2:1–2
“Woe to those who plan iniquity… they covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them. They defraud people of their homes.”
Context & Claim
The Moment
Micah is from Moresheth — a small farming town in the lowlands. He watches elites consolidate land, displacing subsistence farmers. Not metaphor. He sees it happen to his neighbors. The worshiper escalates the offerings; Micah’s answer cuts through entirely: God does not want more ritual. The question is how to treat your neighbor.
Three Words That Hold It All
Act justly — structural, external, social. Love mercy — relational, compassionate, personal. Walk humbly — oriented toward God, not self-righteousness. All three. None optional. The prophet from the court and the prophet from the village say the same thing.
Era 4 of 7 · Prophets 4 of 5 · Jeremiah · c. 627–580 BCE
Babylon is rising — Jeremiah watches the last doors close
The Text
Jeremiah 22:13–16
“Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness… making his own people work for nothing… Did not your father do what was right and just? He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me? declares the Lord.”
Jeremiah 22:3
“Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.”
Context & Claim
The Moment
Judah has roughly forty years left. Jeremiah prophesies across five kings, watching chance after chance for reform disappear. He is arrested, beaten, thrown in a cistern for counseling surrender. His witness costs him everything. Two kings: Josiah, who defended the poor — and his son Jehoiakim, who built his palace with unpaid labor.
To Know God Is to Do Justice
Knowing God and doing justice are not two separate things. They are the same thing. This is Jeremiah’s most radical claim. To know God — in the full covenantal sense — is to defend the poor. A theology that separates them has lost something essential.
Era 4 of 7 · Prophets 5 of 5 · Second Isaiah · c. 550–540 BCE
Jerusalem has fallen. The temple is rubble. The people are in Babylon.
The Text
Isaiah 56:3, 6–7
“Let no foreigner who is bound to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely exclude me’… And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord… these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer… for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”
Isaiah 40:1
“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.”
Context & Claim
The Moment
587 BCE: Jerusalem falls. The temple is destroyed. The leadership is deported. The theological question is existential: did Babylon’s gods win? Second Isaiah’s answer: God is not the god of a small defeated nation. God is the creator of the ends of the earth. Written from defeat, in exile — and the vision expands outward.
Our Motto — and Why It Matters
The people excluded by law — foreigners, eunuchs — are welcomed into God’s house. Not despite the catastrophe, but through it. Jesus quotes this in the temple. Revelation ends with it. Five prophets, five crises, two hundred years, one word: God’s people cannot be smaller than God’s love.
Era Five · c. 28–30 CE
Jesus: The Arc Embodied
He does not announce a new agenda. He embodies the arc Scripture has been tracing since Genesis — in a single human life, under occupation, at mortal cost.
Era 5 of 7 · Jesus · Luke 4:16–21
The Nazareth Manifesto — His First Public Words
The Text
Luke 4:18–21
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” He rolled up the scroll… and said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Isaiah 61:1 — The Source
“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor… to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives.”
Context & Claim
His Inaugural Address
This is Jesus’ opening statement in public ministry. He does not choose a passage about spiritual comfort or divine sovereignty. He chooses Isaiah 61 — a text about liberation from concrete, material oppression — and announces it is happening now, in him. Good news to the poor. Freedom for prisoners. Sight for the blind. Release for the oppressed.
“Today This Scripture Is Fulfilled”
Not a future hope. Not a spiritual metaphor. The Exodus pattern, the prophetic demand, the widening circle — all of it arriving in a body, in a synagogue, in Galilee, in 28 CE. He sits down. The room is silent. Then he says: today. This. Here. What does it mean to follow someone who said this?
Era 5 of 7 · Jesus · What He Resisted
He didn't just teach resistance. He enacted it — specifically, at great cost.
Mark 1:40–41
Purity systems that exclude
Touching the untouchable — the leper, the bleeding woman, the dead girl.
Matthew 23
Religious leaders who burden
"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees" — seven times. No diplomatic softening.
Luke 13:31–32
Political power that intimidates
"Go tell that fox…" — naming Herod directly, continuing anyway.
Luke 10; John 4
Tribal limits on compassion
The Good Samaritan. The woman at the well. The enemy as neighbor.
Mark 11:15–17 · Quoting Isaiah 56:7
Economic exploitation sanctioned by religion
Overturning tables — and quoting Isaiah's vision of a house for all peoples. The passage that names this community.
Era Six · 30–65 CE
Acts & Paul: A New Order
The early church doesn’t just preach resistance. They build a community that embodies the kingdom — and Paul writes its theology from prison.
Era 6 of 7 · Acts & Paul
Acts 5:29 · Acts 4:32–35 · Galatians 3:28 · Under Rome, building something different
The Text
Acts 5:27–29
“We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name,” the high priest said. “Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching…” Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than human beings!”
Acts 4:32–35
“All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own… there were no needy persons among them.”
Context & Claim
The Principle Restated
Three words in the Greek: peitharchein dei theo — one must obey God. Not a political manifesto. A theological statement. The question of ultimate allegiance has been settled. Everything else flows from that.
Galatians 3:28 · The Alternative Community
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Every pair Paul names is a fundamental hierarchy of the Roman social order. The church’s internal life refuses to mirror the empire around it.
Era 6 of 7 · Paul · Romans & Philemon
The contested letters — read in context, not in isolation
The Text
Philemon 15–16
“Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever — no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord.”
Philippians 3:20
“But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Context & Claim
Romans 13 in Its Actual Context
Paul writes Romans 13 to Christians in Rome — at the center of imperial power, before the Neronian persecution. His community is vulnerable and visible. The same Paul who wrote “submit to authorities” was imprisoned repeatedly for defying those exact authorities. Romans 13 is pastoral wisdom for a community trying not to get killed, not a blank check for obedience.
Written From Prison
“Our citizenship is in heaven” — written from a Roman prison. A direct counter-claim to Roman imperial citizenship, the most prized legal status in the ancient world. Romans 12:2 sits one chapter before Romans 13: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world.” Read together. The same man. The same letter.
Era Seven · c. 95 CE
Revelation: The Unmasking
Not a prediction. A diagnosis — and a promise. Written for persecuted communities, it names what empire actually is, and what comes after.
Era 7 of 7 · Revelation 13
The Beast — Empire Unmasked
The Text
Revelation 13:1–4, 17
“The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority… People worshiped the dragon… and asked, ‘Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?’… so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark.”
Revelation 18:2–3
“Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!… The merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”
Context & Claim
What the Beast Is
In its original context: Rome. The emperor who demands worship. The system that requires economic participation for survival. Written under Domitian for communities under active persecution. Revelation does not predict the future — it gives the persecuted a framework for the present: this power is not ultimate. God is.
The Act of Naming
To name the beast is itself an act of resistance. It breaks the spell of inevitability — “who can wage war against it?” The economic critique is explicit: empire is built on extraction, and those who profit from it mourn when it ends. Revelation names what prosperity built on injustice actually is.
Era 7 of 7 · Revelation 21–22
The Healed World — Not Escape, But Arrival
The Text
Revelation 21:1–5
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth… God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain… ‘I am making everything new!’”
Revelation 22:2
“And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”
Context & Claim
Not Evacuation — Arrival
The holy city comes down. God comes to dwell with humanity on a renewed earth. The world is not abandoned — it is healed. “God saw everything he had made, and it was very good.” — Genesis 1:31. “I am making everything new.” — Revelation 21:5. The same creation. The arc does not abandon what God declared good. It restores it.
Why Resistance Is Hope
Christian hope is not optimism. It is the conviction that what God intends will come — which means every act of justice, every refusal of harm, every welcome of the excluded, is aligned with the direction of history. The widening circle that began with Isaiah 56 reaches its destination: all peoples. Our motto’s end.
What the Arc Reveals
The whole canon points in one direction.
From the image of God in every human face, through the midwives who defied Pharaoh, through the prophets who measured worship by justice, through Jesus who enacted the Exodus in his own body, through the early church that built the kingdom in miniature, to Revelation's vision of a healed world — Scripture is a resistance story.
The Question the Arc Raises
What Changes When You See It?
Before
Resistance feels like a departure from Scripture — political, uncomfortable, contested.
After
Resistance is what Scripture has been doing all along. The question is whether we will join the story.
Before
Isolated verses can be quoted in any direction. The Bible "says what you want it to say."
After
The arc adjudicates. When verses conflict, ask: which reading fits the whole story? Which serves the vulnerable?
Before
The discernment framework seems like a tool we invented to justify our politics.
After
The first question — Who is suffering? — is the question God has been asking since Exodus 2.
A Necessary Interruption
What About the Difficult Texts?
The Honest Question
What about "slaves, obey your masters"? What about the conquest narratives? What about passages that seem to endorse violence?
The Arc Answers This
Scripture itself is in conversation with Scripture. Earlier, narrower readings are expanded. Slavery passages were used to defend slavery — and the same canon that contains them also contains Genesis 1:27, Exodus 3, Galatians 3:28, and Philemon.
The Principle for Week 3
At every turning point in Christian history, Scripture was quoted on both sides. Next week we ask: how did faithful people discern which reading to trust?
Our Framework — Step 3
"What does Scripture consistently prioritize?"
Not: which verses can be cited?
Not: what does my tradition say?
Not: what is most comfortable?
What does the whole arc, from Genesis to Revelation, consistently point toward?
The answer Scripture gives, again and again: the vulnerable. The excluded. The suffering. The neighbor across every boundary.
What We Covered Today
The Arc of Week Two
1
Scripture is a resistance story
From Shiphrah and Puah to the healing of the nations — the arc is consistent. God takes the side of the oppressed.
2
The discernment framework is scriptural
We didn't invent it. God hears the cry in Exodus 2. The prophets demand justice, not just piety. Jesus announces good news to the poor first.
3
The arc adjudicates difficult texts
When readings conflict, ask which one fits the whole arc. Which reading has historically served the vulnerable — and which has served those in power?
→
Next week: A history of discernment
If Scripture is a resistance story, then church history is the story of how well — or poorly — we have lived it.
Before Next Week
Something to Carry With You
Read
Read Exodus 1–3 this week
Read it slowly. Notice the sequence: suffering → cry → God hears → God acts. What do you notice about how God responds to oppression?
Observe
Find the arc in a passage
Pick any passage you know well. Ask: who is vulnerable in this story? What is God or the faithful character doing about it? Does it fit the arc?
Reflect
Ask the third question
In a situation you're facing — at work, in your community, in the news — what does Scripture's arc suggest? Not which verse wins the argument, but: what direction is the whole story pointing?
Discuss
Bring a question back
What part of the arc surprised you? What text did you think about differently? What do you still want to push back on? Bring it to class.
The Bridge
"If Scripture is a resistance story, then church history is the story of how well — or poorly — we have lived it."
The same canon that condemns slavery was used to defend it. The same God who heard the cry of the Israelites was invoked to justify their oppression. Next week we ask the uncomfortable question: How did Christians go so wrong — and how did faithful Christians find their way back?
Closing
Next Week
Week 1 — Completed
How We Know When to Obey and When to Resist
Week 2 — Today
Scripture as a Long Resistance Story
Week 3
A History of Discernment
Week 4
Practicing Faithful Resistance Today
"Faithful resistance is not a political stance. It is the shape of Christian love in a world where the strong still dominate the weak."