Social Justice: Liberalism, Biblical or not that Simple? (Pt 3)

This is the third part of the blog series on social justice and the gospel.

The Call of the Church Is to Suffer Injustice in a Way That Adorns the Sufferings of Christ Rather than Simply to Abolish Injustice

One of the issues I often see in the social justice conversation in the church is the failure to embrace the call to intentionally and Christo-centrically suffer for the sake of the gospel. The book of 1 Peter is instructive on the matter as Peter's focus for the church in the face of the Roman emperor's oppression is the church trusting the power of the gospel to suffer in a compelling and winsome way (1 Peter 2:21-25). The idea is that the power and glory of a crucified redeemer is put on display when the people of God experience societal injustice and weakness in the security and empowerment of the gospel. Peter's concern for and to the church is not that the church abolish injustice (though we can and should seek to alleviate it as citizens of two kingdoms) but that they would primarily seek to trust Christ as sinners in a way that the reality of a crucified Savior would be imperfectly but yet truthfully be relayed and displayed to the watching world. I am not saying that Christians opposing matters of injustice is inappropriate, however I am saying that it seems like God is more concerned with how we adorn the gospel in the face of injustice rather than being agents to abolish it (I am not speaking of either/or but both and with suffering being the emphasis). In the social justice conversation, it appears there is often a failure to embrace this call to suffer and suffer well and to see elements of oppression to be venues for the glory of a crucified Savior to shine. The cross of Christ tells us that our King conquered His oppressors (us) by suffering in a redemptively affectionate and substitutional way. And since the Christian life is a cruciform life that is shaped by the cross as both an object to trust and consequentially a pattern to imitate, it would seem to be most biblically appropriate that we seek to overcome oppressors in the same manner our crucified captain did. Peter teaches us to see the powers that weaken us as opportunities to be sustained by the cruci-centric weakness of Christ in an evangelistically inclined way. The church advances through cross-adorning suffering not the obliteration and of institutional injustice. The idea that Christ would be most adorned by obliterating weakness reeks of the triumphalistic “theology of glory” complex that Americans often have. The church has a theological paradigm of the cross which sees God-sustained weakness as the very essence of its invincibility and evangelistic attractions. The church is most mighty in Christ-centered lamb-like weakness not the intolerance and total removal of weakness. God's ways of turning the world upside down are counterintuitive and should affect the way we think (if we are to think wisely) as to how we are going to truly engage and provide alleviation of injustice while embracing the call to transform through Christ-centered suffering in the continuation of injustice.

The Prophets Were Primarily Bringing down Covenant Sanctions and Purposes, Not Ethical Reform

The prophets, often cited in the social justice conversation, were not primarily reformers of justice (though is some ways they were), they were enforcers of covenantal demands for covenantal purposes according to the covenant administration they represented. The prophetic office had a function consistent with the Mosaic covenant's essential and ultimate purposes. From the very beginning, the prophetic office was to enforce the law covenant's stipulations and curses (Deuteronomy 18:15-19; 28:1-69). Paul explains the function of the Mosaic law covenant on multiple occasions. In Galatians 3, he tells us that the law was to imprison us under sin's power (Ga 3:22) and function as a tutor to lead us to Christ's unilateral unconditional covenant of grace to be justified by faith (Ga 3:24-25). The prophets are not the ethics police calling for change, they are the trumpets of Sinai calling for our death, our stoning and need for a word of pardon and redemptive new creation in their soul by the Prophet named Christ who is our vicarious Priest and our triumphant conquering King.In Romans 3, Paul tells us that the law covenant was to bring all under divine judgment and need for redemption (Ro 3:20), and in Romans 7, Paul tells us that the law covenant of Moses comes to kill us and make (bring out) sin in us sinful beyond measure (Ro 7:7-12). Why am I saying all this while speaking of the prophets? Because if we cite the prophetic rebukes against injustice as said to be essentially about justice reform, the very purpose and essence of the prophetic office and covenant administration in which they operated is overlooked. If Paul says that the Mosaic law was to condemn our morality and crush it and make way for another covenant (new) that gifted the sinner with imputed righteousness and covered the sinner's unrighteousness with a substitutionary atonement (Hebrews 8), then we must cite the prophets' ethical rebukes with that same primary intention in mind. The point of Amos and Micah renouncing the injustice of the people of God was not primarily about motivating them to justice (even though we can see the third use of law in them), it was to enforce the chief cause of the law covenant. The prophetic rebuke of injustice was to condemn, kill, and obliterate any personal, intrinsic righteousness and hope for moral reform that the guilty had and to bring the sinner to repentance and refuge in a gracious covenant that meets all the terms for the sinner outside of them and creates lawful conformity inside of them (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Galatians 3:19-26). The prophets were not catalysts to morality, they were enforcers of the covenant of works which sentenced us to our utter death and damnation and exile (2 Corinthians 3:1-15; Romans 4:13-14). The Mosaic covenant was never about creating that which it required but rather creating the conviction and hopelessness for requirements to be provided in another covenant administration and mediator (Romans 7:4-6). If we are going to cite the prophets, let's do so in a manner consistent with their covenantal call and use their judgments on social ills as tools to condemn and kill sinners in their presumptuous self-righteousness in order to bring them to seek a righteousness from and through Christ rather than seeing them as simply justice advocates and societal reformers. The prophets are not a plea for moral change in their utmost sense, but they are executioners coming to usher in the funeral of our morality in order that we would be raised in a covenant mediator who is greater than Moses. Do you know what happens to sinners who are judged as guilty and stripped of their morality through the prophetic rebuke of injustice in the law covenant framework? They see their need for unilateral mercy and grace having been crushed by their moral, ethnic and social righteousness and in receiving that necessary one-way grace, they are impelled to be merciful people. To make the social rebuke of the prophets to be simply about motivating us to social action in the institutional sphere guts them of their power to transform us to be socially conscious people. To make the social rebuke of the prophets to be simply about motivating us to social action in the institutional sphere guts them of their power to transform us to be socially conscious people. Let's get to social ethics by using the prophets rightly. Let's bring the condemnation and death of the law as we cite the prophets and let us let them kill sinners of their personal and ethical self-righteousness and bury their morality and raise it anew in Christ so that the power of death and resurrection would make them love their neighbors as themselves. The prophets are not the ethics police calling for change, they are the trumpets of Sinai calling for our death, our stoning and need for a word of pardon and redemptive new creation in their soul by the Prophet named Christ who is our vicarious Priest and our triumphant conquering King.

Union with Christ Is the True Sphere of True Change and the True Transformational Focus of the Church

In the social justice conversation there is often this church missional emphasis on the transformation of various elements of society and institutions and those within those institutions. The idea being that as the church promotes and pushes the necessity for justice in the various spheres of life and culture that deny justice, the potential result would be a lasting, positive transformation. There is something profoundly dysfunctional about this mentality as it assumes two things. First, it assumes that transformation can occur apart from union with Christ within the Christo-centric local church administrated means of grace. Second, it assumes that the church has a divine mandate to externally and not spiritually moralize society.

Let us address the first assumption. It is clear in scripture that it is only in the person and work of Christ that true God-centered change occurs (Colossians 2:8-23). Christ is not the goal and pattern for transformation, He is the exclusive place in and through which transformation occurs (John 15:1-5; 1 Corinthians 1:30). We also know that the place where the benefits of union with Christ are made effectual is in the corporate local church with its officers and means of grace (Ephesians 4:11-16). Ephesians makes it clear that it is the institution of the church that is united to Christ redemptive work and perpetually re-experiencing the power of that redemptive work (Ephesians 1:20-22). Where am I going with all this? Things outside of union with Christ through the institution of the church where that reality is experienced are not being transformed! The true transformation that the church desires occurs in union with the benefits of Christ, and it is only things from gospel faith that are truly moral and expressive of true change (Hebrews 11:6). If people or institutions or various societal elements or systems of society are not in union with Christ, then they are not being truly transformed--they are only being externally moralized while remaining internally untransformed. If people or institutions or various societal elements or systems of society are not in union with Christ, then they are not being truly transformed--they are only being externally moralized while remaining internally untransformed. The church has not been mandated by God to missionally find triumph in moralizing societal situations and ills externally or superficially apart from union with Christ (Matthew 28:18-20; Ephesians 2:8-10); we have been commissioned by God to be agents of the most profound and comprehensive, internal, God-centered, cross produced, Spirit empowered, faith fueled transformation. It is the mandate of the institutions of the world to enforce external and superficial change for the common preservation of society, but it is the institution of the church that seeks to major on the inner transformation of the soul in and through Christ by the Spirit (Ezekiel 36:26-36; Romans 14:17). All the talk about the transformation of things that are not in union with Christ is not what the church's deep transformational mandate is about. All the discussion of transformation of societal categories and persons by the promotion of justice is implicitly diminishing the centrality and necessity of the doctrine of union with Christ. I would encourage the church to see its acts of justice not to be described as the transformation of society but rather the tangible evidences directing society to the truly transformed institution which is the church.

Redemption Is Personal, Not Institutional

In the various social justice conversations there is this ongoing catch phrase concerning the church's mandate to “redeem culture” or “redeem the city” or other institutions. I understand what is meant by such statements as it seems that they are trying to move the church out of this subtle Gnosticism (world is bad) and church-exclusive piety that is devoid of real and normal life. However again this vital concern comes at the expense of a biblical category. Society, culture and the city are not the recipients of redemption, fallen image bearers are (Colossians 1:21-22; Romans 5:6-11). Jesus became a man to reconcile and redeem His brothers who bear God's marred image in the fallen world (Hebrews 2:14-18). Jesus redemption was not for cities or cultures or any other abstract non-personal category. Jesus died for the elect not for institutions and cultural realities (Ephesians 1:4-10). The reason why cultures and societies and institutions fell originally is due to Adam's transgression and the federal connection that all humanity has in him (Romans 5:15-21). And so, while there is a societal and cultural connection to the fall (Romans 8:18-26), it is fallen man who needs to be redeemed as all the fall's effects are connected to human corruption. The world is corrupt because humans need redemption not abstract things (Philippians 3:20-21). We cannot redeem or reconcile society or culture or the such and such institution than a person can marry and be reconciled to a building or a way of cooking food. Cultures and institutions are fallen because there are unredeemed people that comprise them, not unredeemed abstractions and ideologies that run them. If God's redemption is personal and all that is culturally corrupted is due to persons, then we cannot with biblical conscious declare ourselves rescuers of things that are not persons. Some of you may say as you consider this, “what about the cosmic scope of redemption that we see in places like Colossians 1:20?” I simply say this: the world is discussed redemptively not because it needs salvation but because it is inextricably bound to fallen image bearers who need redemption. So, when sinners are the recipients of redemption the cosmos that is bound to them is consequently affected, but that does not mean that God is redeeming (either presently or ultimately) non-personal abstract things. What the church needs to focus on is this reality: when people are redeemed, their values and cultural rhythms and vocational practices are consequentially affected. If you want to affect an institution or a culture, then seek to bring individuals who make up those contexts into union with Christ. Redemption is essentially and specifically personal and therefore as we seek to apply the gospel to real life and real places, let us not see ourselves as abstract instruments of redemption of non-personal things and systems but as instruments of redemption to persons made in God's image who comprise those things.