Few thoughts on relationship btwn justice & Gospel. (HT: The Justice Calling by Hoang & Johnson)

"The NT words justice & righteousness are English translations of same Greek word, dikaiosyne... the words justice, righteousness, justification, & justify all come from same root...

"Take the words that Paul writes in Romans 3...
'righteousness is givent thru faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe' (3:22)
'all are justified freely by his grace thru the redemption that came by Jesus Christ' (3:24)
God is both 'just & the one who justifies' (3:24)

IOW, justice & righteouness are linked ideas & the call to justice & rightouesness is not in Q. Those who follow Christ will care about justice & rightouesness. They will care about whether people & communities behave as they were created to be, reflecting God's own justice.

The Q seems to be how? That's where the Q of Law vs Gospel comes into play. How are we made righteous? How are we justified? And what are we called to when we are?

This is where the convo gets messy & the categories start to slip. This is why you hear people saying things like "just preach the Gospel" as if the Gospel had nothing to say about rightly ordered (righteous, just) society & human behavior.

This is where a false construct of Law vs Gospel can scuttle the whole Q & a hyper-individualistic reading of righteousness lead to self-justification & self-rightouesness.

That God wants people & societies to behave justly toward each other is not in Q. If you doubt it, go read your Bible some more. That God justifies people thru Christ b/c they can't be sufficiently righteousness themselves is also not in Q. If you doubt it, go read your Bible.

So what are we to make of all this? Well, at the very least we must handle the Q of Law & Gospel correctly. The Law is good when it reflects God's character & we should pursue laws & practices that also reflect his character. We should work for a society that is equitable & just.

This is the assumption underneath Romans 13 that govt is given by God to reward good & punish evil. Part of what law does is structurally define good & evil. Insofar as a society's laws & practices don't reflect true definitions of good & evil, they need to be reformed.

But this is a separate Q from whether keeping the Law will justify us as individuals. Paul's whole point is Romans is not that the Law is bad but that we are bad. That the Law doesn't work to justify b/c we aren't just. The Law sets standard but we don't keep it.

Which, of course, is the point of the Gospel. The Gospel doesn't not change the standard of God's righteous justice. It makes us just. It makes us righteous so that we can pursue what we should have been pursuing all along.

The problem w/ setting social justice against the Gospel is that these are two entirely different Q & conflating them reveals either a simplistic or legalistic reading of both.

Anyway, all that to say, the real problem under the debates around social justice & the Gospel are much deeper & much more telling than they initially appear. The extent to which this convo has become another form of self-justification is more than ironic.

https://www.amazon.com/Justice-Calling-Where-Passion-Perseverance/dp/1587433990