Unity and Justice

NCF Office – June 2, 2026 4 Comments

Marty Shupack has been a gift to NCF from the earliest days when he served as pastor and has remained a faithful member of our extended family around the world as he journeyed on to pursue God’s justice in other arenas. I hope you are encouraged by his Pentecost reflection as our excitement builds to meet in person soon! -Renée

As we approach New Covenant Fellowship’s 50th Jubilee anniversary celebration we are reminded that pursuing justice has been part of NCF’s core identity since the beginning. From the original “Social Concerns” committee to today’s work on reparations and immigrant rights NCF members have sought to “love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly with God.” (Micah 6:8)

The churches’ calling to work for justice, for just relationships among people, was set in motion on the first Pentecost. When the Holy Spirit filled Jesus’ disciples the language barrier was miraculously transcended as a sign that everything that divides humankind and brings conflict will be dissolved in Christ. Humanity will one day be united as God’s family at peace with God and each other.

Yet unity is not simply a matter of being together. Unity in Christ means making changes in how we relate to each other and to the world at large. Justice is an essential element of the unity of humanity that God is bringing. The prophet Amos cries out, “Let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

Attempts at unity without justice are empty gestures. During the Apartheid era in the Republic of South Africa, some Christians said that Blacks and Whites should simply work on getting along, being reconciled personally. That may have been a good place to start but failing to work to make changes in the society left White supremacy unchallenged. That’s not Jesus’ kind of unity. Reconciled relationships are just relationships.

God empowers us as followers of Jesus to embrace justice, to seek just relationships in our families, churches, and in society at large. An example of a Christian who helped make the world more just was Samuel Jones. Samuel Jones lived from 1846 to 1904. People called him Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones because he sought to live by Jesus’ golden rule, to “act toward others as you would like others to act toward you.”

Jones owned a factory in Toledo, Ohio, and he ran it like no one else ran a business. He paid his employees 50% more than the typical worker received. He paid women and men the same wage for similar work. And he banned child labor within his factory. This was in the late 1800s, an era before labor unions when working people were badly exploited.

At a time when workers had to work 10 hour a day, 60 hours a week, Jones implemented an 8-hour workday. He provided his employees with paid vacations, subsidized meals in a company cafeteria, and free childcare for their children. Jones created a health insurance cooperative for his employees. He introduced a profit-sharing plan so that his employees could benefit financially from the company’s success.

As you might imagine, these acts of justice caused Jones to be disliked by other Toledo businessmen. But he was loved by the people of Toledo who elected him mayor four times.

As mayor, Jones instituted an 8-hour day for city employees. Throughout the city he set up free kindergartens, developed a park system, and established playgrounds for children, especially in low-income neighborhoods. He strictly enforced rules against police brutality. He sought other reforms, such as lowering streetcar fares, but these were blocked by the city council or state government. But he did all that he could to ensure better lives for the people of Toledo.

Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones acted on Jesus’ command to do justice, to seek just relationships with others. He is an example – badly needed today — of business and government leadership in the character of Christ.

We may not be in positions to do things on the scale that Samuel Jones did, but we too can act on behalf of justice in our own spheres of life.

One simple, though at times difficult action, is to graciously correct someone who makes a racist or bigoted remark, speaking the truth to them in love. If something unjust is happening in our family, our social circle, or at work, we can speak up respectfully. If our spouse or friend or co-worker talks to us about some injustice we’re committing, we can listen to them and with God’s help make the needed changes. And to the extent God gives us the opportunity, we can seek to correct the injustices that we encounter in society at large, like Samuel Jones did.

One Day God will bring his wonderful work for unity with justice to completion in his coming kingdom. We are living joyfully now in the dawn of that glorious Day, learning now to be people of love and justice, to the glory of God and the praise of the Lord Jesus Christ.

-Marty Shupack