This is a sample chapter from my Systematic Theology project "Theology for Thriving". 📎MORE TO THE STORY notes are not part of the main text of the book, but additional resources, charts, or other materials from Biblical Theology class resources.
Isaiah 11.1-9 [1] A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. [2] The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. [3] His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; [4] but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. [5] Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. [6] The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. [7] The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. [8] The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. [9] They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
📖 Scriptural Reflection: Isaiah 11:1-9
What is the ultimate goal of the Christian life? Is it just about securing a spot in heaven after we die? Is it about following a set of moral rules to be a “good person”? Or is it something more dynamic, more creative, and more world-changing? The biblical story is not one of escaping a fallen world, but of God’s relentless mission to heal, restore, and perfect it. And the most breathtaking part of this story is that God invites us, his human children, to be God's partners and co-workers in this grand project.
The prophet Isaiah lived in a time of political turmoil, violence, and social injustice. Yet, in the midst of this darkness, he cast a stunning vision of a world made whole, a world restored to the peace and harmony for which it was created. This vision is not a pipe dream, but a promise of what God will accomplish through his anointed one, the Messiah. Isaiah’s vision is a portrait of total healing, a restoration that touches every dimension of a broken world.
Economic and Relational Healing: The Messianic king will not judge by outward appearances but will establish true justice for the poor and the humble. The systems of exploitation and oppression that benefit the powerful at the expense of the vulnerable will be overturned.
Cultural and Political Healing: In the ancient world, animals were often used as symbols for warring nations and empires (think of the Babylonian lion or the Persian bear). Isaiah’s image of predator and prey— wolf and lamb, leopard and goat— living together in peace is a powerful metaphor for a world where national, ethnic, and cultural conflicts have ceased. It is a vision of global reconciliation.
Ecological Healing: The peace of God’s kingdom extends to the entire natural order. The very nature of predator and prey is transformed, pointing to a healed creation where there is no more violence or destruction. The final line reveals the source of this healing: The whole earth will be filled with the knowledge, the presence, and the Love of God.
For centuries, this was understood as a vision of what God would do for us. But the coming of Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God in a human body, reveals a crucial shift. God’s plan is not just to heal the world for us, but to heal the world through us. As members of the Body of Christ, we are now the instruments, the hands and feet, through which God is accomplishing this mission of cosmic restoration.
🗝️ Key Concept: Tikkun Olam
This divine mission has a name in the Jewish tradition: Tikkun Olam. The Hebrew phrase literally means “repairing the cosmos” or “mending the universe” or simply "healing the world". In Jewish thought, it refers to the shared responsibility of humanity to heal, repair, and transform the world in partnership with God. Jewish thinkers have long taught that while God created the world, it was left unfinished. Now humans are called to be co-creators with God, bringing the world to its perfected state through acts of justice, compassion, and social action.
The Christian equivalent of this concept is stewardship. A steward is not an owner, but a trusted manager who is put in charge of the owner’s property. The Bible teaches that this world, and everything in it, belongs to God. The Apostle Peter writes, “Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received” (1 Peter 4:10). Paul echoes this, saying we are “servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries,” and adds, “stewards must be found trustworthy” (1 Corinthians 4:1-2).
Our mission of Tikkun Olam is our stewardship in action. It is our joyful and solemn responsibility to take the gifts, resources, and opportunities God has given us and use them to participate in his work of mending the brokenness of our environment, our economies, and our cultures.
🔎 How can we practice Tikkun Olam in our environment?
The Bible is clear that the health of the environment is directly connected to the spiritual and moral health of humanity. The prophets warned that human sin— our greed, violence, and injustice— leads to the desolation of the land itself. “The earth dries up and withers... The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant” (Isaiah 24:4-5). These ancient warnings feel more urgent now than ever before, as we witness the devastating effects of pollution, climate change, and habitat destruction.
Our mission to repair the world begins with honoring the world God made. Scripture is filled with passages that speak to God's Love and value for nature. God delights in the wild donkey and the ostrich (Job 39), sustains all creatures with his Spirit and providence (Psalm 104), and knows every bird in the mountains (Psalm 50). The created world is not just a backdrop for human drama. It is a beloved masterpiece of the Great Artist of Creation, which declares the glory of God (Psalm 19).
Our role as stewards of creation is rooted in the very first chapters of Genesis, where we are entrusted with the care and management of God's creation. Humans are placed in the garden “to till it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). These Hebrew verbs mean to cultivate and to protect. We are called to be gardeners, not strip miners. This ethic of care extends throughout the Torah, which includes laws for letting fields lie fallow, for protecting fruit trees during wartime, and for caring for domestic animals. Our work of Tikkun Olam involves honoring these principles through sustainable living, advocating for environmental justice, and working to restore the health of our planet, looking forward to the day when the river of the water of life flows from God’s throne, and on its banks grows “the tree of life... and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2).
🔎 How can we practice Tikkun Olam in our economy?
God’s mission of healing extends deeply into our economic lives. The foundational principle of biblical economics is stewardship: We are blessed in order to be a blessing to others (Genesis 12:2). We are not the owners of our wealth. We are the managers of God’s resources which are "on loan" to us. We will be judged by how we use them to promote the thriving of all. The Apostle Paul beautifully captures this by describing how Jesus, though he was rich, “for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9).
We are called to invest our time, talent, and treasure in our communities. The return on this investment is not financial profit, but human flourishing. The true wealth of an economy is the health of its people. This is why the mission of Jesus, and therefore our mission, is so focused on economic justice. When Jesus announced his mission in his hometown synagogue, he read from the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor... to let the oppressed go free” (Luke 4:18, quoting Isaiah 61). Isaiah 58 defines true religion not as empty ritual, but as the work of "releasing the bonds of injustice... sharing our bread with the hungry, and bringing the homeless poor into our house."
Paul gives practical instructions for this work to his student Timothy: “As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be prideful... They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life” (1 Timothy 6:17-19).
Jesus gives the ultimate and most sobering vision of economic Tikkun Olam in his parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25:31-46). In the final judgment, the defining question is not what we believed, but how we treated the most vulnerable among us. Christ tells the righteous, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” When they ask when they did these things for him, he replies, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.” Our economic activity is never neutral. What we buy and sell, consume and produce, is either participating in the healing of the world or contributing to its brokenness.
🔎How can we practice Tikkun Olam in our culture?
Not only are we called to steward the environment and the economy. We are called to be God's agents of healing and renewal in our culture as well. Culture includes all the ideas, ideals, stories, arts, and norms that shapes our communities and how we relate to each other. As followers of Christ, we are called to love people and to influence the culture toward God’s vision of love, justice, and peace. We are called to be builders of the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom has three dimensions:
It is already here, inaugurated by the life, death, and resurrection of King Jesus.
It is not yet here in its fullness, which we await at the final restoration of all things in Christ.
It is within us, a present reality in our hearts and in any community that practices the radical, loving way of Jesus (Luke 17:21).
For people who have God's Kingdom at work within us, Paul describes our role in this cultural mission as being “ambassadors for Christ, as God makes his appeal through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20). Our job is to represent the values of God’s Kingdom within the cultures of this world, calling people into the great project of reconciliation. A powerful modern example of this is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu after the fall of apartheid. The goal was not simply to punish perpetrators, but to heal a deeply divided nation by confessing horrific deeds, making amends to heal wounds, and seeking common ground to rebuild society.
At the very heart of this work is the mission of peacemaking. This is not merely the absence of conflict, but the active presence of Shalom: wholeness, harmony, healing and justice for all. In this vision of the "Peaceable Kingdom" (Isaiah 11), we follow Jesus as the Prince of Peace, who embodied this reality. In his life, ministry, and sacrificial death, Christ shows us how to overcome violence with love, and division with reconciliation. His call is our command: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God" (Matthew 5:9) as we "seek peace and pursue it" (Psalm 34:14). This is echoed in the prayer of St. Francis that God would make us instruments of peace in a broken and hurting world.
But let us be clear: Peacemaking is not easy work. Working for forgiveness and reconciliation will draw hostility and even violence from those who are invested in division and hatred. We see this in the life of Jesus and of some of the greatest saints in the Church, such as Edith Stein, Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, and Oscar Romero. Yet in the midst of working for peace, we need to beware not to fall into the same exclusionary trap of ”us versus them” which is at the base of all hatred and violence.
We must remember that from the perspective of God who loves us, there is no “them”. There is only us. Saint Paul says that our struggles are “not against flesh and blood”, but against the dark forces of evil, and spiritual powers of hatred and fear, which hold God’s children captive (Ephesians 6). Even when people do awful things, they do it because they are sickened by Sin and enslaved to evil. Our target is never people made in God’s image, but the dark forces that work in them and through them. We may hate the sins they do to others, but we always love the sinners and work to heal them.
Jesus likens this work of building God's Peaceable Kingdom to yeast leavening a lump of dough to make it into a tasty loaf of bread (Matthew 13:33). Yeast is a small, seemingly insignificant agent, but it has the power to transform the entire loaf. We are part of Christ’s “good infection” of love and healing in the world. But for yeast to work, it has to get involved. It must be kneaded into the dough, becoming sticky and messy. Being Christ’s ambassador in culture is a sticky, messy business. It requires loving people unconditionally, engaging with them with curiosity and openness, while also gently and courageously helping to lead them out of the dysfunctions of greed, hatred, and division and into the thriving, flourishing life of God’s Kingdom.
📚 Topical Scriptures
Here are some Scripture passages which explore and elaborate on the themes of this chapter. As you look them up and study them, think about how they relate to the Key Concept and Guiding Questions.
Genesis 1:26-31
This is the foundational passage for humanity's role as stewards. God creates humans in his own image and gives them the mission to care for, manage, and cultivate the earth on his behalf.
Leviticus 25:1-7
This passage outlines the law of the Sabbath year for the land itself. It is a powerful example of an environmental ethic, showing that the land does not belong to humans to be exploited, but to God, and it too must be given rest and care.
Isaiah 58:6-12
The prophet delivers a blistering critique of empty religious ritual, defining the kind of worship God truly desires. Look for how true fasting is equated with the work of justice: freeing the oppressed, feeding the hungry, and providing for the poor, which in turn leads to the healing of the community.
Isaiah 61:1-4
This is the great messianic prophecy that Jesus would later use to define his own mission. It describes the anointed one's work as bringing good news to the poor and healing the brokenhearted, culminating in the rebuilding of ancient ruins and the restoration of devastated cities.
Luke 4:16-21
In his hometown synagogue, Jesus reads from Isaiah 61 and declares that the prophecy is fulfilled in him. This act establishes the mission of Jesus, and therefore of his followers, as a direct continuation of the prophetic call to Tikkun Olam.
Matthew 25:31-46
In his final teaching before his passion, Jesus tells the parable of the Sheep and the Goats. Notice that the ultimate standard for entering the kingdom is not correct belief, but concrete acts of compassion shown to the hungry, thirsty, homeless, sick, and imprisoned.
2 Corinthians 5:17-21
Paul describes the identity of those who are in Christ as a "new creation." He explains that this new identity comes with a new mission: we are now ambassadors for Christ, entrusted with the "ministry of reconciliation."
1 Timothy 6:17-19
This passage gives practical instructions to the wealthy on how to be good stewards of their resources. They are commanded not to trust in their riches but to be "rich in good works, generous, and ready to share," thereby taking hold of true life.
1 Peter 4:8-11
Peter gives a concise guide to stewardship within the Christian community. He instructs believers to use whatever unique gifts they have received to serve one another, so that God is glorified in all things.
Revelation 21:1-5
This is the Bible's ultimate vision of a completed Tikkun Olam. John sees a new heaven and a new earth where God dwells with a renewed humanity, and he hears a voice from the throne declare, "See, I am making all things new."
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