Missions Textbook 47
The Gospel and Social Justice

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

The Gospel is God’s method for changing people. God has placed His supernatural power in the Gospel. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). No other aspect of God’s creation does this, and nothing that humans create can permanently and eternally change people inside.

The Great Commission is not the Gospel. The Great Commission is Jesus’ command to evangelize and teach, using the Gospel as the foundation of following Jesus. The Great Commission doesn’t change people.

Most societies broadly define Social Justice as equal rights, equal opportunity and equal treatment for all. This appears desirable because humans want as much comfort as their societies can give them. However, the autonomy of nations and cultures produces different definitions of justice. Defining and carrying out justice are problematic for two reasons. No society has a perfect set of laws that encompass all the facts; therefore, someone promoting Social Justice can never be totally right, even though they will usually proclaim that they are right, and anybody who disagrees with them is wrong and consequently evil. Also, no society has perfect courts which can always bring perfect judgments. When someone states, “It’s just not right!” they are emotionally basing their belief on their viewpoint of their justice system. True justice can only come from God.

God’s justice is based on human sin, not on man’s being deprived of more comfort. God has all the facts, and God will judge correctly. Social Justice is usually based on an attempt to even out the playing field for everyone. Sometimes it grows into hatred for people who disagree with them. While Social Justice can demonstrate a form of compassion, it still overlooks the command of Jesus for His followers to love their enemies.

From the Gospel’s standpoint, Social Justice has no power to change people. Social Justice only alters their outward circumstances and forces some people to conform to imperfect laws. Getting into heaven has nothing to do with a person’s comfort level on the earth.

How does God use Social Injustice? With the Holy Spirit convicting people of their sins (John 16:8), He forces the unsaved to question their own standards, and He attempts to help them recognize that they can never have true and absolute justice for everyone in their system. An unsaved person will respond either by rejecting God and blaming Him for what they define as evil (which might or might not be evil from God’s viewpoint), or that person will recognize the hopelessness of their system to right all wrongs and turn to God for help. God also uses Social Injustice to grow believers in their faith (Romans 5:3-5).

So why should a believer pursue Social Justice in his or her own society? One reason and one reason only: to draw attention to Jesus, who helped people for the purpose of getting them to listen to His message. After Jesus had healed lots of people, and more people wanted to be healed, He responded, “’Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.’ And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.” –Mark 1:38-39

Jesus did not come to bring Social Justice to the world during this age. He came to offer people forgiveness for their own sins, forgiveness for the injustices they commit against others and against God, and an eternal relationship with Him. He commanded his followers to love their enemies, not take them to court. How utterly futile it is to fight for Social Justice based on human standards of justice. If a believer takes a side in a fight for Social Justice between two unsaved factions, without presenting the Gospel to those factions, they are misleading the unsaved into believing that God wants to change the world through imperfect human Social Justice. And ultimately, those believers are not correctly showing the love of Jesus to the unsaved, which begins with man’s sin and ends in the injustice of the Cross.

When a believer takes a closer look at attempting to obtain Social Justice in an imperfect human system, three options surface – two extremes and a middle road:

1.     No Social Justice at all: Just give the Gospel. Some believers who have the ability and resources to engage in working for Social Justice make no effort at all to achieve it in their society. Why not? They are either selfish and choose to keep their resources to themselves, or they believe that Jesus wants them to focus more directly on the Gospel and explain to the unsaved the futility of fighting for Social Justice, when the ultimate problem is not their physical difficulties but their sinful hearts.

2.     Social Justice with no Gospel content: Some believers fight for Social Justice with no intention of bringing the Gospel into the conversation. Usually these believers are driven by their emotions as they witness the evil perpetrated by humanity. However, these believers either misunderstand the power and difference between the Gospel and Social Justice, or they don’t want to offend anyone.  The point of the Gospel is to open people’s eyes to their two options: Jesus or not. Without the Gospel, any attempt to improve the lives of our unsaved friends is wasted effort.

3.     Middle Ground: Working for Social Justice with the intent of sharing the Gospel. Believers need to recognize that Jesus always combined His teaching with helping others: Mark 1:32 healing & 1:38 teaching. Jesus had compassion on all, and He had the resources to heal all! He didn’t heal everyone, however, but He used healing as a platform for teaching! Believers need to recognize that people are not saved through Social Justice, but through the spoken/written Gospel. It’s time to reevaluate: Do our efforts in Social Justice fall short of furthering the Kingdom of Jesus? Do they just make the unsaved more comfortable without giving them the answer to their separation from God? Do our forays into Social Justice make us feel better about ourselves or keep others from looking down on us? How can we consciously and actively incorporate the Gospel Message into our Social Justice ministries?

The message of the Gospel is not intended to make people feel good about themselves. It will not make them more comfortable to hear that “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Jesus made it very clear that friendship with Him will not win you many friends on earth. The Gospel was not intended to help humanity flourish here on earth; it was meant to prepare humans who received and believed on Jesus Christ for eternal life in heaven. Since the beginning of time God has used natural and supernatural catastrophes to force people to recognize Him. God has been destroying cultures who hate Him since Cain built his city in Genesis 4. Resistance to the Gospel really cannot prevent God from accomplishing His will on earth and in heaven. Justice will be done. We can read Revelation, and we know how the story ends.

We Never Saw It Coming: An Introduction to Christian Missions (textbook)

SHOP

Privacy Policy