Transforming Social Justice Into God's Justice

Transforming Social Justice Into God’s Justice

Please stand with me as we go over our current memory Scripture:

Matthew 5:9-12

“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.

“Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for they persecuted the prophets who were before you in the same way.”

And our memory Scripture “refresher” verse(s) is(are):

Galatians 5:22-23

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

Today we will be reading from Leviticus 19:1-19

Last Sunday we took a look at Micah 6 where we saw that the people of Israel were mistreating each other by acting unjustly and being unmerciful. This of course was accompanied by arrogance and self pride.

In the end, Yahweh admonished them to, “… act justly … love mercy and walk humbly with (their) God.”

This prescription was used as we compared the world’s version of justice which is found in the modern social justice movement and the Biblical version of justice which, oddly enough, is found in the Bible.

The reason we looked at that comparison is because the world’s non-Biblical vision for social justice is making its way into the church, even into individual Churches of The Nazarene and that vision flows toward Bible believing churches from Bible rejecting churches.

We have an old VHS tape of the Petra Christian band and on this tape they interview members of the group about the song they have just sung or are about to sing. At the end of the video the guitarist makes a statement that goes something like this, “We need to watch and see how much the world is affecting the church when it is the church that should be affecting the world.”

So, who is affecting who? Is the world affecting us as the body of Christ or are we affecting the world for the cause of Christ?

When the world’s concept of social justice comes into the church what comes with it?

When the Bible’s concept of social justice comes into the world what comes with it?

Please join me in your Bibles as we read: Leviticus 19:1-19

(Prayer for help)

As I was researching the movement of the world’s ideas of social justice I came across a definition of an older form of the same thing; it was called the “social gospel”.

Listen to this definition of the social gospel.

“The phrase “social gospel” is usually used to describe a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that came to prominence in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Those who adhered to a social gospel sought to apply Christian ethics to social problems such as poverty, slums, poor nutrition and education, alcoholism, crime, and war.”

(sounds good so far, right?)

“These things were emphasized while the doctrines of sin, salvation, heaven and hell, and the future kingdom of God were downplayed. Theologically, the social gospel leaders … (asserted) that Christ’s Second Coming could not happen until (humanity) had rid itself of social evils BY HUMAN EFFORT.” (emphasis mine)

The social justice movement that is now creeping into the church places an emphasis on humanitarian efforts while sidelining or rejecting the authority of the Bible and what it has to say about sin, salvation through Christ alone and each person’s eternal destiny.

Here is the greatest difference between worldly social justice and Biblical social justice. Worldly social justice is driven by the government and is funded by taking the earnings of those who have been able to work and using those funds that others have earned to attempt to solve injustice and poverty.

While the Biblical idea of social justice is God working in and through the hearts of believers to meet the needs of those who are oppressed and impoverished on an individual basis. In other words, we are to be the hands and feet of Jesus with two overarching goals.

And these goals are:

1) Leading the lost to salvation through Jesus Christ. This is always the primary goal of the born again believer.

2) And, the second is like it, helping to bear the burdens of those who are our brothers and sisters in Christ in order to strengthen them in the faith.

Now, let’s look at a couple of verses from the Scripture we read earlier to see what we can see …

Leviticus 19:9-10 says,

“When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I Am Yahweh your God.”