The Justice of Jesus – A Book Review

Much of the Western church has been shaped by a theology that prioritizes saving souls while overlooking the dignity and liberation of human bodies. That is the unsettling challenge at the heart of Joash P. Thomas’ forthcoming book, The Justice of Jesus.

I encountered Joash Thomas following the US election in 2024. A video of his comments regarding the “next four years’ popped up in my Instagram feed. Thomas’ thoughts were empowering and optimistic as he referenced Jeremiah chapter 29 to encourage American Christians to seek the shalom of their country. I like hopeful leaders so I subscribed to his Substack page. I also like writers, so when he presented the opportunity to join a launch team for his first book, I signed up and purchased an advance copy so I could review it for REVwords readers.

Reading the Justice of Jesus felt like a bucket of ice water poured over me—a bracing but necessary shock.

Thomas admits early on that his words might make readers uncomfortable, but he insists that this discomfort is where we begin to identify with the marginalized. I agree with him.

Joash Thomas

His own story bears this out. He is a descendent of St. Thomas Christians from Southern India, people who had been colonized by the Portugese. Joash brings a rich perspective on issues of faith and justice in the United States and Canada, where he lives. Once a Washington-based political consultant aligned with the Republicans, Thomas shares how an Emmaus-road type encounter with Christ turned him toward justice, mercy, and humility.

Part testimony, part theology, and wholly disruptive, The Justice of Jesus is structured in three parts. The first examines why Western Christians resist linking faith with justice. The second—its most provocative section—calls for the decolonization of the local church. The third offers a vision of how believers and congregations can re-prioritize systemic justice as an essential expression of the gospel.

Colonizer

I wrestled with some of Thomas’ language, particularly his use of “colonizer” to describe white, Western Christians. Labels can trigger defensiveness and shut down dialogue. Yet Thomas argues persuasively that naming colonization is essential to confronting racism, which is inseparable from it. For him, dismantling racism without acknowledging its colonial roots is simply impossible. The gospel of Jesus, he reminds us, is not either/or—it saves souls and restores the dignity of bodies.

Thomas is calling Canadian churches to an uphill journey. Social justice has rarely been the disposition of evangelical institutions. I remember being a student at Eastern Pentecostal Bible College when Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated in 1980. To us, Romero’s liberation theology was held up as something to avoid. Likewise, the “social gospel” was dismissed with Richard Niebuhr’s famous critique: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

That suspicion towards justice work still lingers in many Canadian churches.

Exceptions to The Rule

And yet, Thomas highlights hopeful exceptions—pastors like David Harvey at Westside King’s in Calgary and Jonathan Smith at OneChurch in Toronto—who are integrating faith and social justice in meaningful ways. His stories reframed even Jocelyn’s and my work in Ukraine. Though we cannot stop Russian terror attacks, our advocacy and support for oppressed Ukrainians is, at its core, social justice.

One of the most powerful insights in the book comes from Thomas’ re-reading of the Good Samaritan. I’ve preached on that parable many times, focusing on the compassion of the Samaritan versus the indifference of the religious leaders. Thomas, however, takes us deeper. He reminds us that the Samaritan could only rescue one victim, while Jesus is the one who calls us to work together with him to repair the systems that allow the Jericho Road to remain violent.

Here he echoes Martin Luther King Jr.: “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar… It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

A Prophetic Call

That is Thomas’ prophetic call: not merely to bind wounds, but to transform the road itself—to confront the broken systems that perpetuate injustice.

The Justice of Jesus is not an easy read, but it is a necessary one. It unsettles, disrupts, and provokes precisely because Thomas is convinced the church must recover the justice of Jesus if it is to embody the gospel fully.

The book would make a powerful conversation starter for a young adult small group or provide seeds for a sermon series on The Jericho Road.

Purchase a copy of the book on Amazon. You can also register for a 5-week live, online cohort on Decolonizing the Western Church taught by Joash here.

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