LAW vs. GRACE—BRINGING THE SAME OLD ISSUE INTO THE CHURCH THROUGH ANOTHER BACK DOOR ~ Biblical Justice ~ Part 3

What is a Christian to do when he or she is being bombarded with the latest movement or cultural issue resulting in conflicts that are brought into the church? Being more in tune with social media, maybe your adult children are coming to you with what sound like very intelligent arguments for supporting another view other than what your church is teaching. Maybe you are a new believer, and you have more unbelievers influencing your life than believers. Where do we turn for answers? We turn to the only place we can trust for answers—the Word of God.

Right now, the social justice issue is exploding throughout a world that is already unstable and volatile, not fully recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic. We want to believe things will get better, and they may for a time; but we know things will get a lot worse than this before the Lord returns. 2 Timothy 3:1-5 says: But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power. Avoid such men as these. Clearly, we need to know what we believe and why we believe it.

Yesterday, I briefly wrote about man’s status born in Adam and how that status changes when God saves him. Every believer was born in Adam. Born spiritually blind, he was not able to see the truth of the Gospel. When God saves someone, he is born again in Christ and is given eyes to see the truth, ears to hear it, and a heart to receive it. As he renews his mind with truth, his thoughts change as well as his desires. Where before he did not desire to obey God, that now becomes his focus and his greatest delight. We saw God’s purpose in salvation in Ephesians 2:10 which was: For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10) Galatians 5:13-26 told us that once saved, our flesh is no longer enslaved to sin and we are free to walk in obedience to the Spirit. We also saw that the deeds of the flesh are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (vss. 19-21) Unbelievers walk in the flesh. Because they are spiritually dead, they can only walk in their flesh. Their works are the deeds of the flesh. Let me be clear. Believers are still incarcerated in a body of flesh and will continue to be sanctified until the Lord comes back or He takes them home to glory. But their character should not reflect one who lives in the flesh. Galatians 5:22-26—But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another. There should be some doubts that genuine salvation has taken place in the life of one who shows no evidence of the fruit of the Spirit.

The verses preceding these, contrasting the deeds of the flesh versus the deeds of the Spirit, talked about freedom and the law. This is very important to understand as it applies to a false premise of the argument presented to Christians regarding the social justice issue. Galatians 5:13-18—For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” But if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.

Right now, in the issue of the social justice movement, we see the church—brothers and sisters in Christ—biting and devouring one another. Paul’s warning is that we take care that we are not consumed by one another. How? We must walk by the Spirit so that we do not carry out the desire of the flesh. James speaks to this same issue. James 4:1-4—What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Look at the passage in Galatians 5:13-18 again. Christians have been called to freedom. We are no longer under the Law. We are in Christ who has fulfilled the Law. Why is this so important? Because those in support of the social justice movement are coming to Christians and saying, “You must get on board with this movement because the Scriptures say, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ This is a gospel issue.” But is it? This is the age-old problem of understanding the difference between Law and grace. Loving my neighbor as myself is part of God’s moral law. The Law showed me what God required of me, which was perfect holiness—that I would be holy as He is holy. The Law is good in that it showed me my sin. I cannot be holy as He is holy. I cannot love my neighbor as I love myself. The Law condemned me in that it required perfect obedience that I could never achieve. All our guilty of breaking God’s Law! The bar of God’s standard of righteousness is so high that only one human ever kept the Law perfectly. Jesus Christ did not come to do away with the Law but to fulfill the Law. When someone quotes, “You must love your neighbor as yourself,” as gospel, they are mistaken. This is not the gospel, but the Law.

I believe that my son and I suffered injustice in our criminal case. How absurd would it have been for me to try to go to the church and get my pound of flesh from every member somehow believing that would make amends for those injustices? What if my great grandchildren went to the church in future generations and said, “You need to make reparations for my great grandmother because you stood by and did nothing when she was being falsely accused, convicted, and imprisoned? You must do this because you are commanded to love your neighbor as yourself!” Crazy, right?

The gospel is that Christ, who lived a perfectly obedient life and never committed one single sin, gave His life as a ransom for my sin (the just for the unjust). He paid sin’s price and satisfied the wrath and the justice of God on my behalf. God, therefore, is just and justifies sinners who turn to Christ in faith. God’s Word condemns anyone who proclaims a different gospel than that (Galatians 1). To call the Law the gospel or to mingle the Law with the gospel is sin! Why is it so important to understand the difference? Because the Law condemns and, thus, cannot change hearts. The Law does not free people from the bondage of their own sinful flesh. Satan always twists and distorts the truth ever so slightly. We must watch for this age-old issue of Law versus grace or adding works to the gospel. As Ephesians 2 tells us, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

This is the problem when people try to say Paul in Romans and James in the book of James are saying two different things about salvation. In James 2:14-26, James is saying that faith without works is dead. James is not saying that a person is saved by works. He couldn’t be saying that because he has already said that salvation is the gracious gift of God in 1:17, 18. What he is saying is there are people who profess faith in Jesus Christ, but their works do not prove salvation has taken place. Mental assent to the facts about Christ is not proof of salvation. When God saves someone, evidence that genuine saving faith has taken places is seen in outward works of righteousness. Those works of righteousness don’t save, but they prove salvation has taken place.

The illustration James uses in this passage is found in vss. 15-17. Faith without works is like words of compassion with no action of compassion to back up those words. If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. Many of my brothers and sisters in Christ are intensively involved in ministry at abortion clinics. This is an honorable and truly wonderful calling. There are missionaries from different parts of the world that come to churches and present their ministry praises, challenges, and goals. I would love to be involved in prison ministry at some point in time if a door of opportunity should open to me. I could not possibly get involved in every facet of ministry in the Church universal. It is not humanly possible, nor would it be wise as I could not give my best to so many areas of ministry. As believers, we have freedom and liberty in Christ to pursue our own individual callings. Let’s say I started a movement for prison reform and prisoner’s rights based on the abuses found inside the prison system. Let’s say I then go to believers calling them to get involved with this movement saying it is their responsibility to the gospel. I use Scriptures like that found in Hebrews 13:3 to back up my claim. Remember the prisoners, as though in prison with them, and those who are ill-treated, since you yourselves also are in the body. If I said, “The Scriptures call you to do this. This is a gospel issue. You must get involved. I don’t know how you can call yourself a Christian if you don’t get involved in this.” That would be a problem. Do you see it? One question we need to be asking ourselves in this war on social justice inside the church is this: Who is calling me to put myself back under the Law when I have been set free from the Law? More tomorrow.