Social Justice and the Gospel: 7 – Justice Is Based On God’s Law

To date we have not attempted to look at the broad topic of Biblical justice. We have focused on examining Social Justice, and have observed that a chief goal, both inside and outside of the church, is to eradicate racial inequality. But justice is more than racial equality.

So now we will attempt to define justice in accordance with the Scriptures. Here is the definition of justice we will seek to prove:

To do justice is to do the Law of God.

In other words, for a society to be just, it must be ruled by the commandments of God. This applies to both the private and public sectors. To base a definition of justice on anything other than the Law of God is to relativize justice and to have it be a matter of “might makes right”. If justice is subjectively defined by the individual or by society, then the people with the power get to define it and justice is inherently capricious (which is another way of saying justice is inherently unjust).

With this in mind, examining Biblical justice is quite simple in concept: go through the Law of God and see what He says. The more a society’s legislation matches the Law of God, the more just the society is. The more a society’s thoughts, words and deeds align with said legislation, the more just the society is. So an unjust society is therefore caused by unjust laws or by not following just laws.

The words of Christ help us start our understanding of God’s Law, for He gives us a succinct definition of what it means to be just:

But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22: 34 – 40)

Here Jesus defines the whole of the Law as “love God, love neighbor.” From this we immediately know any society that is not orienting its heart toward Jesus Christ is fundamentally unjust, for that society is fundamentally not loving God. Furthermore, we know immediately that any society not predicated upon loving one’s neighbor is fundamentally unjust, for they are breaking the second great command.

But the commands to love God and to love neighbor are overarching principles – they lack sufficient detail to allow one to assess whether a particular word, thought, or deed actually qualifies as loving God or neighbor. More detail is needed to discern whether justice is being upheld or injustice is occurring. For this next level of detail we turn to the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments provide more clarity as to what it means to love God and love neighbor. In fact, theologians have divided the Ten Commandments into two parts, recognizing that one part correlates with loving God and the other part correlates with loving neighbor.

Commandment	How to Love	Description
1	God	You shall have no other gods
2	God	You shall not make for yourself an idol
3	God	You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain
4	God	Remember the Sabbath
5	Neighbor	Honor your father and your mother
6	Neighbor	You shall not murder
7	Neighbor	You shall not commit adultery
8	Neighbor	You shall not steal
9	Neighbor	You shall not bear false witness
10	Neighbor	You shall not covet

Let us look now at the commandments relating to loving neighbor, and compare them to our current society:

Commandment	Public Violation
Honor your father and your mother	Scoffing at the nuclear family, denial of objective definitions of man and woman, father and mother
You shall not murder	Legalized murder via abortion, unjust wars
You shall not commit adultery	Sexual Immorality of all varieties
You shall not steal	Overreaching governmental taxation and fees, corporate fraud / insurance fraud, unjust weights and measures in the marketplace
You shall not bear false witness	Mass media, social media
You shall not covet	Social ideologies justifying those with less to be angry at those with more

American society regularly breaks every commandment related to loving neighbor. This is not to say each and every individual does, but it is to say that, so far as man is able to discern without divine revelation, God can charge America with corporate sin for complete and utter profanation of the Ten Commandments. We infer that since America regularly breaks all the commandments related to loving neighbor, it also inherently breaks all the commandments related to loving God. After all, does not James tell us this?

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all. (James 2: 10)

America has stumbled at more than one point, so how much more is America guilty of all.

But convicting America at large of injustice is different than convicting the body of Christ in America of injustice. This series on Social Justice is focused on the body of Christ, for we know that secular society is unjust, whether along the lines of racial issues or otherwise. But is the American church unjust, as Social Justice Advocates say? If we are to be consistent, we need to remind ourselves of what was said in a prior post: only God can truly charge a corporate body with sin. And only God truly knows the boundary and population of a corporate body. We previously concluded, based on a study of the seven churches in Revelation, that it is not proper to put all of the American church into one large corporate body. A church from the Deep South is going to be different than a church from the Pacific Northwest. And the history of racial injustice is far greater in the Deep South than the Pacific Northwest.

From our mortal perspective, corporate analysis of justice must occur on a localized basis. The starting point is obviously an individual congregation. The corporate body you should have most familiarity with is your local church body. Compare what you know of your church body to the Ten Commandments. Does injustice reign? Is your congregation led by, or full of, adulterers, coveters, liars, thieves, people speaking false things in God’s name, people denying that Christ is the only way to God? Or is it led by, and full of, people who were those things before they came to Christ, and who are now redeemed and living godly lives?

In summary:

Justice is based on God’s Law.
God’s law at the highest level is love God, love neighbor.
The next level down is the Ten Commandments.

Let us look for justice, or injustice, in our local congregations first. If the church family we are a part of does not live according to God’s Law, then we are in no position to deal with other congregations likewise failing in that endeavor. For Jesus says, after all:

Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7: 3 – 5)

Social Justice and the Gospel: 6 – The Generational Sin of Racism

Generational Sin is the deus ex machina of Christian Social Justice.

For those not familiar with the term, it means “god from the machine” and was a plot device of the ancient Greek theater. If the storyline of a Greek play contained a difficult, seemingly unresolvable problem, resolution would occur by lowering an actor (playing the role of a god) onto the stage via a crane (the machine). The god would use his supernatural ability to resolve the situation that was otherwise unresolvable by ordinary human means.

If we think of Christian Social Justice as a Greek tragedy, the seemingly unresolvable problem is making white American Christians today culpable for the sins of prior generations. There is so much in the Bible about individuals being responsible for their own sins, and for corporate bodies being localized and responsible for their own corporate sin, that it would seem virtually impossible to make all white American Christians today responsible for the sins of many white American Christians of yesterday. As we look up into the air of this tragedy wondering how this problem of blame will be resolved, we see descending from on high the doctrine of Generational Sin. Let us define the doctrine as follows:

The Bible teaches that you can be cursed by the sins of your ancestors. It is a curse so powerful that it cannot be lifted by the blood of Christ. The way to lift the curse is to peer into your genealogical history and discover what your ancestral sins were, and then to actively do deeds of repentance that correspond to the sins committed by your ancestors.

In the best-selling book Be The Bridge, which allegedly deals with racial reconciliation from a Christian perspective, author Latasha Morrison tells us about Deanna. Her grandfather was in the KKK and he was the son of racists. He committed many evil deeds against black people, including murder. On his deathbed he confessed to the murder he committed and it brought shame to Deanna. She lived with this shame for years. And it was not her identity in Christ that helped her get rid of the shame of her family’s history, once she came to Christ. It was only after becoming a Christian and then participating in reconciliation activities where she was able to finally rid herself of the guilt and shame of her grandfather’s sin.

Deanna shared the story, telling how she carried the shame and embarrassment of her family’s racist past for years. It wasn’t until after Deanna placed her faith in Christ that she began to come to terms with the truth. It was an uphill battle because the shame was so deep and the familial division even deeper. She felt alone until she became a part of a community that shared her heart for racial healing, a group that listened to her without judgment…Deanna will tell you that the process of acknowledgment and lament has been worth every step. It’s freed her from a family legacy of racism and allowed her to enter into the work of bridge building with a clean conscience…If we follow her example, we’ll find ourselves drawn out of complacency and complicit behavior and into the hard work and sorrow that lead us to repentance. If we join her in walking through acknowledgment and lament, we can move into the deep healing of true racial reconciliation.¹

Not once in this anecdote did Deanna or the author implicate Deanna as being a racist herself. All the guilt, all the shame, all the steps of repentance, were necessary because of what Deanna’s grandfather had done. And Deanna can only be held responsible for her grandfather’s sins because of the doctrine of Generational Sin.

This doctrine also finds itself being promoted by The Gospel Coalition, an influential Christian web site. In an article titled “A Burden Removed: A Biblical Path for Removing the Racism of Our Forefathers” ², the pastor offers advice for breaking the curse of the generational sin of racism. This pastor took over a church, they experienced some initial growth, and then membership declined. At some point he and the elders believed they were under a curse from God and so they sought to understand the reason for the decline in membership. It turns out that the church kept meticulous records and the elders were able to review the history of the church and learn that over the course of the church’s history it had actively participated in discrimination against blacks. Even though the current church was no longer racist, they came to the conclusion that they were under a generational curse.

This was the context for the debatable practice of repenting of our forefather’s sins. It sure looked like we were experiencing the fruits of past sins, even though we were no longer racist. It certainly looked like God was “walking contrary” to us. Was repenting for our past sins, sins that no one in the existing congregation participated in, God’s path to restoring the ministry of the gospel among us?

Long story short, they repented of the prior generation’s sins and the curse was removed.

These two examples of Generational Sin were not discovered in the nether regions of Christian publishing. Be the Bridge is a best-selling book and The Gospel Coalition is a very popular web site. Generational Sin is being taught as a legitimate doctrine by influential outlets of Christian discourse, and it is the theological glue being used to attach yesterday’s sins to today’s people.

Before we turn to Scripture to examine the key texts on this issue, let us briefly bring this Social Justice concept of Generational Sin to the point of absurdity. If Generational Sin was true, one of the primary duties of Christian obedience would be historical and genealogical in nature. We would all be obligated to dig into our past and find out what our ancestors may have done (for surely the curse of Generational Sin is not limited to the sin of racism) and then we would be obligated to perform the requisite deeds of repentance. Otherwise, we would be living under a curse and bearing the guilt and shame of our forefathers until the day we die. And I dare not think about orphans or people whose family history is undocumented. Surely, they are destined to be cursed with no possibility of relief.

Surely God has not established such a doctrine, with logical implications so absurd. But we must go to the Scripture to prove the case, and not rely on an argument of absurdity. The proof-text for Generational Sin is found in the words of Moses:

Then the LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” (Exodus 34: 6 – 7)

Purveyors of Generational Sin point to this passage and say “See, God visits the sins of the fathers onto the children.” And then to prove that the children need to repent for their forefathers’ sins, they use more words from Moses:

If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their forefathers, in their unfaithfulness which they committed against Me, and also in their acting with hostility against Me…then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and I will remember also My covenant with Isaac, and My covenant with Abraham as well, and I will remember the land. (Leviticus 26: 40, 42)

With these verses as their foundation, the Social Justice Advocates build the edifice of trans-generational guilt. There is only one problem. Their understanding of Moses’ words is the same understanding as that of ancient Israel, which was an incorrect understanding that God corrected through the prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah. Israel had this proverb as part of their collective consciousness:

The fathers eat the sour grapes, but the children’s teeth are set on edge. (Ezekiel 18: 2)

The gist of the proverb is that the forefathers sinned (ate sour grapes) but the contemporary generation bore the punishment (teeth set on edge). This proverb is rooted in a false interpretation of Moses. God corrects their misinterpretation in Ezekiel 18. Here is a portion of what Ezekiel said:

As for his father, because he practiced extortion, robbed his brother and did what was not good among his people, behold, he will die for his iniquity. Yet you say, ‘Why should the son not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity? When the son has practiced justice and righteousness and has observed all My statutes and done them, he shall surely live. The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself. (Ezekiel 18: 18 – 20)

As if Ezekiel 18 weren’t enough to shed light on what Generational Sin is not, we also have the words of Jeremiah:

In those days they will not say again, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ But everyone will die for his own iniquity; each man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth will be set on edge. (Jeremiah 31: 29 – 30)

These two passages from Ezekiel and Jeremiah are the death knell of the Social Justice teaching on Generational Sin. They are a direct refutation of the claim that a group of people are responsible for sins that came before them. To believe in Generational Sin as promoted by Social Justice will require a refutation of Ezekiel and Jeremiah. And until that refutation is made, there is no Biblical basis for Generational Sin. And the words of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, it must be pointed out, are in complete harmony with Moses himself. For he wrote:

Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his own sin. (Deuteronomy 24: 16)

We know that Moses is not contradicting himself. We know that the prophets are not contradicting Moses. So how are all the passages quoted harmonized? When Moses writes of God visiting the sins of fathers on the children, and of the children needing to repent of their iniquity, those words are spoken to the covenant community of Israel. The children who are visited by their father’s sins are themselves participants in those sins – they are not innocent. God is operating at a covenantal curse level – something we are unable to do as humans. The covenantal curse is enacted after God charges the covenant community with sin and after they have exhausted His patience with their lack of repentance. Sin and punishment at an individual level does not function in the same way. An individual is not held accountable for the sins of his father, and a father is not held accountable for the sins of his son.

The illegitimacy of Generational Sin is important to comprehend, because Generational Sin is the linchpin of the entire framework. The only Biblical reasoning offered for blaming today’s Christians for yesterday’s sins is Generational Sin. If the doctrine is false, there is no Biblical basis, and yesterday’s sins require no repentance from today’s Christians.

This is not to say that the contemporary church is without sin. This is not to say that the contemporary church is to refrain from promoting justice in the social realm. This is not to say that contemporary Christians need to gloss over the historical realities of prior generations participating in wicked deeds. It is only to say that the false premises and false conclusions of Christian Social Justice ought not to bind our consciences and manipulate us into thoughts and behaviors not prescribed in Scripture. We are either responsible for our own sins or we are not. We are either obligated to become historians and genealogists and uncover past hidden sins of our ancestors and lift curses off of ourselves or we are not.

On this matter Moses and the prophets have spoken. But do we believe them?

Chapter 3, excerpts from pages 48 – 50
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabiti-anyabwile/burden-removed-biblical-path-removing-racism-forefathers/

Social Justice and the Gospel: 5 – Corporate Repentance and Racial Reconciliation

It was previously stated that a primary concern of the Social Justice movement, as it manifests in the church, is ethnic or racial equality. The charge of ethnic inequality, which is synonymous with ethnic injustice, which is synonymous with racism, occurs not at an individual level but at a corporate level. This is not to say that racism does not exist at the individual level, but it is to say that there is a more pervasive version of racism corporately. Social Justice is far more concerned with corporate racism than individual racism, and therefore Social Justice is far more concerned with corporate repentance than individual repentance. The Social Justice term often used to describe corporate repentance is “racial reconciliation”.

Before we discuss corporate racial reconciliation, let us look at repentance at an individual level.

Repenting of Racist Thoughts

If a man has a racist thought and he keeps it to himself and has no racist words or deeds against anyone, then repentance would be taking such thoughts captive and not thinking such things in the future.

Repenting of Racist Words

If a man utters racist words, then repentance would be going to the person the words were spoken to and asking for forgiveness. It would be assumed that in asking for forgiveness the person is truly sorry and is not just attempting to save face. There would be an expectation of forgiveness in the event of a truly repentant apology, per the command of Christ:

Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” (Matthew 18: 21 – 22)

The gospel is demonstrated vividly in both the giving of a repentant apology and the receiving of it, for this is how God deals with us. When we come in true repentance to Christ, He truly receives it and forgives us our sins. The command to forgive up to seventy times seven is a direct attack against the natural desire of carnal man, who seeks disproportionate vengeance:

Lamech said to his wives, “Adah and Zillah, listen to my voice, you wives of Lamech, give heed to my speech, for I have killed a man for wounding me; and a boy for striking me; If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold” (Genesis 4: 23 – 24)

Repenting of Racist Deeds

Because there are so many forms a racist deed could take, it is hard to detail repentance at an individual level. But it is quite possible repentance will need to be more than words – a repentant deed may need to follow a racist deed. This pattern is seen in the ministry of John the Baptist:

And some tax collectors also came to be baptized, and they said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than what you have been ordered to.” Some soldiers were questioning him, saying, “And what about us, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not take money from anyone by force, or accuse anyone falsely, and be content with your wages.” (Luke 3: 12 – 14)

John gave the people deeds appropriate to repentance, based on their specific circumstances. The same would hold true with a racist deed – if property were defaced or stolen based on racism, it would need to be repaired or returned. If an opportunity was taken away from someone based on racism, then repentance would be providing that opportunity again. The point is, there is a close relationship between the sin committed and the deeds that may be required to fulfill repentance.

Repenting Corporately

Now that we have briefly examined repentance at an individual level, we can turn to corporate racial reconciliation. Because the Social Justice definition of racism does not require individuals to have explicitly racist words, thoughts, or deeds, racial reconciliation does not look like the individual repentance we just walked through, where there is a clear sin and a clear person being sinned against. Instead, racial reconciliation focuses on altering policies and procedures. After all, if there is no explicit racism occurring at an individual level, then the racism that exists is to be found in the policies and procedures of those who make up the corporate body of racists. And what if there are no explicitly racist policies and procedures? Then the policies and procedures are implicitly racist by what they omit rather than by what they contain.

Do not take my word for this view of racial reconciliation. Instead, consider this sample from Christian leaders:

Matt Chandler, lead pastor of the Village Church, famously said he would hire an “African American 7” over an “Anglo 8” to ensure diversity on his staff. He then said he would not hire an “African American 6” over an “Anglo 8” because he wouldn’t want to be accused of tokenism. ¹
Latasha Morrison, author of best-selling book Be The Bridge, tells the story of an affluent white lawyer who purchased a plantation so that he could give tours and run a museum that highlighted the horrors of slavery that had occurred on that plantation and elsewhere. ²
Dan Cathy, the CEO of Chick Fil A, shined the shoes of Christian hip hop artist Lecrae during a panel discussion on race. ³
Russell Moore, head of the ERLC, said that worship styles might need to change so that the music sung on a Sunday morning or the liturgy adhered to would not be as white and segregating. ⁴
Beth Moore said that one needs to add more authors of color to their personal theological library, since Jesus was not white. ⁵
Pastor Eric Mason, author of the popular Woke Church, said that all blacks should get free college tuition for the next 200 years⁶

None of what has just been detailed in regards to racial reconciliation was an individual case of someone repenting of an explicitly racist sin. What was just detailed were procedural changes to routines and habits and customs in order to promote racial reconciliation. In the examples presented, the sins were not ones of commission, but rather omission. If you don’t intentionally hire people of color to your church staff, you are racist. If you don’t actively engage in highlighting the horrors of slavery, you are racist. If your worship songs are not diverse enough in sound and style, you are racist. If all the theological books you own are written by white people, you are racist.

If this whole thing seems odd to you, it should. The call to corporate repentance of all whites in the American church is a call based on no particular revelation from God, but on theological, economic, and sociological conjecture. The prescribed deeds of repentance are based on no particular revelation from God, but on the arbitrary whims of those speaking in the movement.

As one thinks about corporate repentance and racial reconciliation, one must ask, can a church in Seattle, Washington really be lumped together with a church in Montgomery, Alabama? Does God set aside all cultural relevancies and boundaries and charge all white Americans to corporately repent, for being white in America? In a country the size of America, with its diversity of cultures and ideas, it would seem hard to accuse an entire group of people with sin based on their skin color alone. Perhaps we can gain perspective by peering at the seven churches of Revelation. Christ viewed them, and named them, regionally. Jesus did not charge the “Church of Asia Minor” with sin. He spoke to seven distinct corporate bodies within Asia Minor, and charged each of them with sins relevant to themselves. Ephesus did not have to answer for Smyrna’s sins, and Smyrna did not have to answer for Pergamum’s sins. Each church was held to account for its own sin. There was no singular indictment made against the Church of Asia Minor.

To conclude, Social Justice has presented an argument for corporate repentance based on a multiplicity of conjecture. None of the key premises of the framework are proven facts. Much of the argument can be classified as a Third Commandment violation, since many of the premises could only be truthfully validated with divine revelation. Here again as reminder are the unproven facts of Christian Social Justice, which require divine revelation to be proven true:

God has charged white American Christians with racism
God uses the definition of racism that has been developed by Social Justice Advocates and Critical Race Theorists
God has given the ability to define corporate repentance to the Social Justice movement
God expects the white American Christians He has charged with racism to participate in racial reconciliation as defined by the Social Justice movement

There is one more bizarre premise undergirding corporate repentance which was not listed above. It is called generational sin and will be discussed in the next post. For now, as we think about all these things, let us focus our mind on the Third Commandment and be sure that whatever we believe about Social Justice, that we do not put words into God’s mouth. How horrible it would be to charge someone with sin that has not sinned. And how horrible would it be to mandate deeds of repentance that God has not mandated.

You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain. (Exodus 20: 7)

The third commandment requires the holy and reverent use of God’s names, titles, attributes, ordinances, Word, and works. (The Westminster Shorter Catechism)

You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God. What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not curse, swear, use satanic arts, lie, or deceive by His name, but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise and give thanks. (Luther’s Small Catechism)

This statement is excerpted from his sermon A House Divided Cannot Stand and starts around the 25:35 mark.
Chapter 4, pages 70 – 71
This starts around the 38:57 mark of the dialogue titled The Beloved Community
Let’s Crucify Our Worship Styles
This is a secondary source quotation, as the primary source is Twitter and I could not find the original conversation. The quote starts shorty after the 12:20 mark of The Dividing Line
The call for free college tuition was part of a sermon titled A Biblical Case For Reparations

Social Justice and the Gospel: 4 – The Corporate Sin of Racism

Matthew Hall, provost of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said this:

I am a racist…I’m going to struggle with racism and white supremacy until the day I die. ¹

Thabiti Anyabwile, pastor of Anacostia River Church, said this, when writing on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination:

My white neighbors and Christian brethren can start by at least saying their parents and grandparents and this country are complicit in murdering a man who only preached love and justice. ²

When you combine the statements of these two men, what you have is the provost of a leading American seminary being a self-confessed racist and white supremacist whose parents and grandparents were complicit in the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.

How can this be? And how can this man not be immediately disqualified from pastoral ministry? He is in clear violation of the requirements of an elder:

An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money. He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity… 1 Timothy 3: 2 – 4

It is possible for a man to be a self-confessed racist and not be disqualified from ministry because of the doctrine of corporate sin, which plays a major role in Social Justice. Let us define corporate sin as this:

Sin committed by a body (corporation) of people.

As we consider the quotes from Hall and Anyabwile, the corporate body being referenced is white Americans and the sins are racism, white supremacy, and murder. In other words, they are implying that white America as a group is racist and has shed innocent blood. Before we discuss the particular claims of Hall and Anyabwile, we need to look more generally at the concept of corporate sin, for it is a Biblical teaching.

In the New Testament, we see corporate sin in Jesus’ messages to the seven churches in Revelation. Consider the message to Sardis:

Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God. So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you. But you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their garments; and they will walk with Me in white, for they are worthy. (Revelation 3: 2 – 4)

Jesus rebukes the church of Sardis as a whole, telling it to repent. Jesus also states that there are some people in Sardis excluded from this corporate rebuke (the ones not soiled). And thus we derive from this example two fundamental principles:

Entire bodies of people can be charged by God with sin
Even if an entire body is charged with sin, there can be individuals within that body who are exempt from the charge.

We see these two principles at play in the Old Testament. The prophets of God, preaching to Israel to repent, were not individually considered transgressors of the covenant and were not individually responsible for the sins charged to the corporate body of Israel, sins which ultimately resulted in exile. When Israel was worshipping Baal instead of God, and the prophet Elijah came against them, he and others were exempt from the corporate sin of idolatry:

It shall come about, the one who escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall put to death, and the one who escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall put to death. Yet I will leave 7,000 in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal and every mouth that has not kissed him. (1 Kings 19: 17 – 18)

Biblically speaking, corporate sin does not exist without individual sin. A corporate body, or (using today’s vernacular) a system, is simply a collection of individuals; their words, their thoughts, their deeds. If there is corporate racism, then there must be individual racism. If there is not individual racism then there cannot be corporate racism. And the proof of this is that anywhere in Scripture where you find God charging a corporate body with sin, the individuals in that body have committed that sin. Nowhere does God charge an innocent man with a sin he didn’t commit or an innocent body of people with a sin they didn’t commit.

It must be pointed out this view of corporate sin is in opposition to a view of corporate sin held by Social Justice Advocates, who tell us that you can have corporate sin without individual sin. Corporations and systems in the Social Justice framework seem to exist as sentient beings with their own sins and biases. Because the self-sentient system acts as the covenantal head for all the individuals within the particular system, its sins and biases then get imputed to the individuals, whether or not an individual actually has that particular sin or bias. It is as if the system is Adam and the individuals within the system are Adam’s descendants, afflicted with original sin. And so to summarize what has just been said, we see major differences in the definition of corporate sin between the Bible and Social Justice. The Bible starts with individuals, and if enough individuals in a group have committed a sin then a charge of corporate sin can be levied. Social Justice starts with abstractly defined “systems”, and then imputes the sins of the systems to the individuals within the system.

Now that we have this understanding of corporate sin from a Biblical and Social Justice perspective, we must point out that the Bible does not provide explicit detail for making a charge of corporate sin. This is a very key point for the day in which we find ourselves. The Sardis church knew it was in sin because it received the words of Jesus from an apostle. How does your congregation know God has charged it with a corporate sin? How do you know whether your church is on the cusp of having a lampstand removed due to transgression? Does God base a charge of corporate sin on the percentage of people committing a certain sin? Is it based on who within the body commits the sin (lay person vs elder)? In the Levitical system the leaders had to offer a more expensive sacrifice than the laity, when sin was committed. If that principle carries forward, we could expect a judgment on a body of people if the leaders are especially corrupt, even though the laity may not be.

In the absence of divine revelation, the best we can do in the church is to examine ourselves. When there are clear violations of God’s commands, a body of people can charge themselves corporately with sin, and when the violations are clear it is probably safe to suppose that God agrees with the judgment. Using the topic of corporate racism as an example, let us say that a white congregation turned away black visitors because they were black. If the visitors were turned away publicly and everyone knew about it and no one stood up in the moment to defend God’s truth, then the entire body would be liable. And if the congregation realized their sin, they could corporately repent to God and ask for corporate forgiveness. This is a clear corporate violation of God’s commands.

What Matthew Hall and Thabiti Anyabwile are calling racism is not such a clear violation of God’s commands. When Matthew Hall says he is a racist and white supremacist he is not comparing words or thoughts or deeds that he has and pointing them to a law of God in Scripture and demonstrating a violation of that law. Instead, he is accepting and agreeing with the Social Justice definition of corporate sin and corporate racism – the kind espoused by the now infamous book White Fragility. In this pagan definition of racism, the powerful oppressor class is inherently racist, because it inherently oppresses the weaker classes. In America, the powerful oppressor class is made of up whites. Therefore, to be white is to be racist. Matthew Hall is white, so Matthew Hall is racist. And in regards to Thabiti’s accusation that all of the white people of yesteryear are complicit in MLK’s murder, it is made on the same basis. The whites of yesteryear were the power class and therefore inherently racist and therefore inherently complicit in the murder of MLK. These Christian leaders are making charges of corporate sin not based on a careful examination of Scripture and thoughtful application of individual sin versus corporate sin, but by accepting the premises and conclusions provided by Social Justice.

What has been said thus far is the tip of the iceberg in regards to the Biblical doctrine of corporate sin, and how one might apply that doctrine to the American population as a whole and the American church as a subset, past and present. In the absence of divine revelation, such as the kind given to the prophet Elijah or to the seven churches of Asia in Revelation, how does a Christian speak on behalf of God and charge Christian groups with corporate sin? The Bible does not explicitly state the mind of God on the matter, and therefore any discussion of the applicability of corporate sin is inherently an argument of inference and induction.

As Christians who are required to think and act truthfully, there MUST BE grace and patience when debating charges of corporate sin that are by their nature inductive and inferential, when clear violations of God’s commands are lacking. If Matthew Hall wants to declare himself a racist and a white supremacist for simply being a white American, and if Thabiti Anyabwile wants to say all white Americans are guilty of MLK’s murder, where is the evidence to go along with the accusation? I am not going to call myself a racist simply because they or Robin DiAngelo tell me to.

Let us remember that the Bible teaches corporate racism cannot exist without individual racism. And regarding racism, which fits under the Biblical sin of partiality, James has these words for us today. And if we each follow them, we can be assured there will be no corporate charge of partiality against us:

My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court? Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called? If, however, you are fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. (James 2: 1 – 9)

¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IiKCYSevDU

² https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabiti-anyabwile/await-repentance-assassinating-dr-king/

Social Justice and the Gospel: 3 – Justice Requires Disciplined Biblical Thinking

Unlike the world, the Christian is not allowed to take shortcuts in thinking when examining issues and coming to conclusions and calls to action. We are not allowed to take justice into our own hands, like the rioters and looters we have seen in the wake of the George Floyd killing. There is no logical or justice-based connection between what happened to George Floyd and destroying privately owned business or stealing goods from privately owned companies or murdering people in the vicinity of the riots and protests. The rioting and looting and murders are complete non-sequiturs. And even if one says the rioting and looting and murders were not only in response to the George Floyd incident, but also in response to historic widespread police brutality or racist-based policing, even then destroying privately owned businesses and stealing goods from privately owned companies and murdering people are complete non-sequiturs.

But we expect such thinking and action from unbelievers, for they are operating out of darkness. As people of the light, however, such thinking and action should not exist within our churches. If there is anything true within Social Justice, then we ought to be able to find it in the Bible in some legitimate way, and the call to action ought to make sense in comparison to the sin and injustice being addressed. There are illegitimate ways to tie things to the Bible, such as stating that because Jesus turned over tables in the temple and destroyed private property that angry rioters can do the same. We do not want that type of Biblical exposition undergirding our pursuit of Social Justice. Superficial and unsound Biblical arguments are, in essence, taking God’s name in vain and making Him say things He isn’t saying.

In my prior post, I examined the doctrine of ethnic diversity in the local church body. I chose that topic intentionally to demonstrate how easy it is to think a concept is Biblical (that neighborhood demographics should dictate congregational diversity) when in fact it is not. I presented a deductive argument, which means that if the premises of the argument are true, then the conclusion is necessarily true. There is no way the conclusion can be false if the premises are true. Here is a reminder of the argument presented:

Premises

The Bible says God will save from every tribe, tongue, people and nation (Revelation 5: 9).
The Bible does not say that God will save an equal number of people from each tribe, tongue, people and nation.
The Bible does not say that God will save an equal percentage of people from each tribe, tongue, people and nation.

Conclusions

The Bible does not say how many people God will save from each tribe, tongue, people and nation.
Because the Bible does not say how many people God will save from each tribe, tongue, people and nation, we cannot say with Biblical certainty what the ethnic makeup of a particular local church body should be.

In light of this deductive argument, if someone wants to debate the ethnic makeup of a particular congregation, they are leaving the realm of deductive Biblical argumentation and are either expressing their own opinions or are inferring things from Scripture that may or may not be true.

Understanding the type of argument being presented is essential to properly responding to the various claims of Social Justice Advocates within the church. If there are explicit Biblical commands to do something or not to do something that are being ignored by the church, then indeed repentance is in order and we should thank the Social Justice movement for pointing such things out. But if Social Justice Advocates are prescribing actions based on their own opinions or inferences from Scripture that are debatable, then they ought to be recognized as such. The Christian is under no obligation to repent of a sin or injustice deriving from man’s opinion or a debatable inferential argument. We should repent of real sins based on God’s real word.

It is no small task to control one’s mind and think in a disciplined manner that is faithful to Scripture, especially when the subject matter is difficult. The Social Justice movement is raising issues and calls to action that are of a complex nature, and the current state of the American church today has trouble dealing with issues far less complex. Private biblical illiteracy and public pulpits that provide less than robust teaching have put many people in a position to not deal well in turbulent times such as this. But whether the times are good or bad, we are always required to compare all claims to the word of God. We are to accept what comports with Scripture and to reject that which does not. We must always let Scripture speak to us, and we ought not to be the ones telling Scripture what to say.

As we continue to work our way through various Social Justice topics, let us keep this admonition close to our hearts:

Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority. (Colossians 2: 6 – 10)

Social Justice and the Gospel: 2 – Ethnic Diversity in the Local Church

To start our examination of Social Justice, I wanted to look at the doctrine of ethnic diversity in the local church. No Biblical Christian, understanding how Christ has broken down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2: 14), would oppose a diverse church congregation. A Biblical Christian would desire it and appreciate it when it can be found. So if you oppose the very idea of ethnic diversity in a local church body, you are without a doubt in sin.

In light of the real sin of opposing ethnic diversity, there are those who have contrived a sin related to this topic. Consider this quote from someone in a high position at a para-church organization:

If a church is not at least as diverse as the community that church is in, then that church is not a part of the solution to the problem, that church is part of the problem.

This brief quote illustrates one of the main concerns of Social Justice: ethnic equality. And regarding the topic at hand, it is not enough to desire an ethnically diverse congregation, a congregation must intentionally strive for diversity or it is part of the problem. In other words, congregations that are not diverse are in sin.

The problem with this viewpoint is that it assumes, but does not prove, that Scripture mandates an ethnically diverse local congregation. So we will do the yeoman’s work and go to the Scripture. The idea of a mandated ethnically diverse congregation is a misunderstanding and misapplication of Revelation 5:9:

Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

Because the eternal kingdom will be a diverse body consisting of all peoples, Social Justice Advocates infer that local church congregations should also consist of every tribe and tongue and people and nation represented in its neighborhood. In other words, if a congregation is 80% white, and the neighborhood it resides in is 50% white, 20% black, 30% Chinese, there is a fundamental problem with that church, because whites are overrepresented and non-whites are underrepresented.

Even though Revelation most definitely says that God will purchase men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and that a multi-ethnic eternity will be a glorious thing, it does not provide demographic data to inform our current milieu. Yes – all tribes and tongues and peoples and nations will be represented, but we have no idea what the representation looks like. Some groups could number in the millions while others in the hundreds or thousands. We don’t even know the list of tribes and tongues and peoples and nations that God goes by. We understand the general categories being referenced but we are not able to peer into the Divine Mind and understand the taxonomy God applies to all the peoples that have ever lived.

With that being said, even though hard data from eternity is lacking to inform our present day, we are nevertheless able to abstractly think about three ways God could populate eternity. One thing to keep in mind is that this present sinful age is not going to be able to do better than what God will have achieved in the perfected eternal age. A misunderstanding about eternity will necessarily result in a misunderstanding about the church today regarding diversity. So here are the three ways:

God will save an equal number from every tribe, tongue, people and nation.
God will save an equal percentage from every tribe, tongue, people and nation.
God will neither save an equal number nor an equal percentage from every tribe, tongue, people and nation

Regardless of the particular ethnic composition of an individual congregation at any given time, the final end-time diversity will be achieved by one of these three means – there are no other options. Now let us look a little bit at each one.

God Saves an Equal Number

Let us suppose that God saves an equal number of people from each tribe and tongue and people and nation. In doing so, the smaller groups have a higher percentage saved and the larger groups have a lower percentage saved. Additionally, the number of people saved per group is limited by the overall population of the smallest group (if God saves an equal number of people, then that number cannot exceed the total population of the smallest group).

Refer to the table below to see how this plays out:

Tribe	Total Population	People Saved	% Saved
1	10	10	100
2	20	10	50
3	30	10	33
4	100	10	10

The implication of this method of salvation is that the local church today would not be expected to match the diversity of the local community. If God is calling people at an equal number, rather than at an equal rate, then there will be under-representation of the majority of people, and over-representation of the minority of people.

Regarding this model, we know from history it is not the one God is using. Other than Uriah, how many Hittites do you think will be represented in the new earth? Is God’s ability to save from the billions alive today limited by the number of Hittites He chose to save thousands of years ago? Certainly not. There is nothing in Scripture that would allow us to assert such a thing.

God Saves an Equal Percentage

Moving on then, if God does not save an equal number of people, let us suppose that He saves an equal percentage of people. This is the position of those who want the local church to mirror its neighborhood. Here is what that would look like:

Tribe	Total Population	% of Total Population	% Saved	People Saved	% of Total Church Population
1	10	7.69	10	1	7.69
2	20	15.39	10	2	15.39
3	100	76.92	10	10	76.92

Although this method would result in the diversity the Social Justice Advocate desires, it limits God’s ability to save. If a congregation must equal the diversity of its community, then God must save people in accordance with demographic data. In other words, if it is God’s intent that a specific congregation matches the diversity of its community, then God is limited to saving people by the demographic data of the community.

Is this a position someone wanting to stick to the Scripture would hold onto? That the eternal plan of salvation is intimately tied to neighborhood demographic data, as if the demographic held more sway over salvation then God’s own free will? There is nothing in Scripture that would allow one to assert God has self-imposed this limiting factor to His gospel plan.

God Does Not Save An Equal Number or Percentage (He Saves as He Pleases)

We have looked at two models of salvation, each of which limits God’s ability to save: God must either save people at an equal number, to ensure all people groups are equally represented, or God must save people at an equal percentage, to ensure the kingdom of heaven matches the demographic diversity of the kingdom of darkness. Both have been briefly discussed and eliminated from consideration as being a Biblical doctrine. There are no explicit references to such limiting factors and they cannot be inferred from Scripture.

This leaves us with the third possibility, and since it is the only remaining one, we know it is the one consistent with Scripture. This third way supposes that God neither saves people in equal number nor in equal percentage. There are no limiting factors placed on God. God is able to save as He pleases: whoever He wants, whenever He wants, however He wants. Per Revelation 5:9 God wants to, and will, save from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. But this course of action is completely untethered from regional demographic data. The demographic data plays no role in deciding who God will choose to save.

Conclusion

We have just undertaken a Biblical examination of ethnic diversity in the local church body. And the summary of it is this: since we have no idea the actual numbers of people populating the eternal categories of tribe, tongue, people, and nation, we are unable to make any pertinent Biblical application of Revelation 5: 9 to a local church body. The caveat is, of course, that any lack of diversity resulting from racism is a sin and needs to be repented of.

If a church body does not match its neighborhood, and if minority groups are not turned away at the door by majority groups simply because they are minorities, then who is going to throw a stone at that church and tell them to repent for being too mono-ethnic? One must be able to correlate a lack of diversity to a particular sin within the church body – otherwise one is railing against God’s providential assembling of that congregation.

I for one drive by an all-Vietnamese church and praise God that the gospel went to Vietnam, that the gospel went to Vietnamese Americans, and I have no reason to think they are intentionally segregating themselves from other ethnicities because of prejudice. It would actually take me going to that church and asking questions to find out if they are in sin. And the same holds true for a black church or a white church.

There is much more that could be said, but I will stop for now. If you disagree with this argument, and think that sitting in a church that does not match a neighborhood demographic is inherently problematic, then I encourage you to post comments and rebut what has been presented. Considering a web search of “church diversity” yields 109,000,000 results, this is no small topic and I imagine much of what has been presented here is disagreeable to many.

The Biblical Adam: 2 – Was There A Literal First Man?

Regardless of how one interprets the Genesis account of the creation of Adam, one thing is certain: unless there arose multiple human males at exactly the same time, there was a literal first man. If we use a hundred-yard dash as an analogy, there was either one man who won the race or there was a tie for first. Since we have men now, we know that the race was completed – but was there a clear single victor or a tie for first?

If for the sake of argument we accept evolution as being true, the idea that multiple human males evolved from non-human to human at exactly the same time, not even separated by a nanosecond, is highly improbable. So improbable, in fact, that the burden of proof unquestionably falls on the person who should want to oppose a literal first man. Therefore, in the absence of evidence that would cause us to accept the proposition that multiple human males evolved at exactly the same time, what the Bible says about the matter agrees with the soundest conclusion of science – there was a literal first man. And we can apply the same logic to women and conclude there was a literal first woman.

So in this simplest formulation of the argument – if all we mean by Adam and Eve is that there was a man and a woman who were the first of a sequence of men and women – the Bible and evolutionary science agree that there was a literal Adam and a literal Eve. But this is where the agreement ends. For sure, the crux of the debate is not about whether there was a literal first man and a literal first woman. The crux of the debate is about whether the Bible accurately describes the details of the first man and first woman.

The Biblical Adam: 1 – Prologue

If we think of the topic of the Biblical Adam as a boxing match, in one corner of the ring are Christians who believe the Genesis account of Adam is a biography, and in the other corner are secular evolutionists who believe humans evolved and Genesis is rubbish. But in the middle of the ring stands a third contestant – the Christian evolutionist. They don’t find belief in a literal Adam directly created by God necessary, but they don’t believe evolution is a secular endeavor – they propose that God uses evolution for His purposes and glory.

Is belief in an Adam created directly by God, not through evolution, a necessary component of Christian faith? The apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians addressed a different matter crucial to the faith, and it is analogous to our topic.

Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. (1 Corinthians 15: 12 – 14)

The Corinthians claimed belief in Jesus, but disbelief in resurrection. Paul called them out, saying their two beliefs were contradictory. Since the Jesus the apostles preached rose from the dead, it was logically impossible to believe in the real Jesus while denying resurrection from the dead. Likewise, we may rightly ask whether one can believe in the apostolic Jesus while disbelieving in an Adam created directly by God. But we must understand what the Bible says about Adam before we can render a judgment as to the importance of direct creation.

The goal then, over the course of this series, is to examine both sides of the argument, in the spirit of Proverbs 18: 17. We will proceed by asking a series of key questions, and then answering the questions from both perspectives (direct creation and evolution). The end result is hopefully a better understanding of the implications of both positions and then proceeding to believe in that which corresponds with the whole of Scripture.

Good Friday Reflection: The Suffering Servant

The Chosen One has died this day
But He, the Son, will rise Sunday
For that is what Amoz’ son did say
And we know that his word is true

Who has believed our message? (John 12: 38, Romans 10: 16)

And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,

And like a root out of parched ground;

He has no stately form or majesty

That we should look upon Him,

Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.

He was despised and forsaken of men, (Luke 18: 31 – 33)

A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;

And like one from whom men hide their face

He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. (Mark 10: 33, 34 and John 1: 10, 11)

Surely our griefs He Himself bore, (Matthew 8: 17)

And our sorrows He carried;

Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,

Smitten of God, and afflicted. (John 19: 7)

But He was pierced through for our transgressions, (Hebrews 9: 28)

He was crushed for our iniquities; (Romans 4: 25, 1 Cor 15: 3)

The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, (Hebrews 5: 8)

And by His scourging we are healed. (1 Peter 2: 24, 25)

All of us like sheep have gone astray,

Each of us has turned to his own way;

But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all

To fall on Him.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted,

Yet He did not open His mouth; (Matt 26:63; 27:12–14; Mark 14:61; 15:5; Luke 23:9; John 19:9)

Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, (Acts 8:32, 33; Rev 5:6)

And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,

So He did not open His mouth.

By oppression and judgment He was taken away;

And as for His generation, who considered

That He was cut off out of the land of the living

For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?

His grave was assigned with wicked men,

Yet He was with a rich man in His death, (Matthew 27: 57 – 60)

Because He had done no violence, (1 Peter 2: 22)

Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.

But the LORD was pleased

To crush Him, putting Him to grief;

If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, (John 1: 29)

He will see His offspring,

He will prolong His days,

And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.

As a result of the anguish of His soul,

He will see it and be satisfied; (John 10: 14 – 18)

By His knowledge the Righteous One, (Romans 5: 18 – 19)

My Servant, will justify the many,

As He will bear their iniquities.

Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, (Philippians 2: 9 – 11)

And He will divide the booty with the strong;

Because He poured out Himself to death, (Matt 26: 38, 39, 42)

And was numbered with the transgressors; (Mark 15: 28, Luke 22: 37)

Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, (2 Cor 5: 21)

And interceded for the transgressors.