Answer: Living before God either in thought or practice, implicitly or explicitly, for salvation or life or future hope outside of Christ the mediator’s redemptive mediation and benefits.

It is making the Christian life conditionality-driven rather than passively receptively-driven.

It is seeing the problem of immorality as being due to not being serious about what to do rather than being serious about what to be believing about what Christ did.

It is making the third use of the law a means to salvation rather than a guide to the saved.

This is the fourth part of the blog series on social justice and the gospel.

As We Address the Depravity of Injustice We Cannot Overlook the Doctrine of Depravity

Often in the social justice conversation there seems to be an implicit negation and naiveté about the doctrine of total depravity and original and ongoing sin. This is flushed out in a few ways. The first is by reducing racism and oppression to be a problem explicit to one race or ethnicity or nation or economic bracket (implicitly or explicitly). The reality is that injustice and racism is not a white problem nor an American one but a human one that exists in all kinds of people always with no exceptions.

This is the third part of the blog series on social justice and the gospel.

The Call of the Church Is to Suffer Injustice in a Way That Adorns the Sufferings of Christ Rather than Simply to Abolish Injustice

One of the issues I often see in the social justice conversation in the church is the failure to embrace the call to intentionally and Christo-centrically suffer for the sake of the gospel. The book of 1 Peter is instructive on the matter as Peter's focus for the church in the face of the Roman emperor's oppression is the church trusting the power of the gospel to suffer in a compelling and winsome way (1 Peter 2:21-25).

This is the second part of the blog series on social justice and the gospel.

We Cannot See Justice and Racial Conversations to Be About Justice and Racial Issues

In conversations about social justice of late, we see texts in Galatians 3:28 or James 2 or Ephesians 2 being cited and interpreted as essentially about social justice and societal renovation. Paul and James address classism and racism for greater and deeper issues than being essentially about the victimization of humans and renovation of societal ills.

This series of blog articles will provide theological and pastoral clarity with regards to the very emotionally charged and often confusing social justice conversation pervasive of late. There are a few introductory points I would like to make at the start of this series:

First, I am not against social justice nor its importance nor its place in the Christian sphere of conversation. However, what I see is that we are seeking to approach a right thing in various wrong ways. To seek justice (a right thing) in a wrong way is, frankly, wrong. With the clarifications in this blog series, I would like to change the conversation about justice (which is right) to be done in a right way.

Second, if you read this and find yourself affirming your belief that social justice does not matter or is nothing more than the error of liberals, you are misreading me, and I am not in your corner.

Third, if you are reading this and think that I am saying that social justice does not matter or is not in the Bible or is not important, you are not understanding what I am saying. I am seeking to talk about social justice in a way that does not redefine the church, its mission, the gospel, the Kingdom and many other important biblical convictions. My hope is that those of you who are passionate about social justice would do so well and in a manner consistent with the whole counsel of God.

With these orientational comments, I invite you to consider the following theological points on social justice.