Social Justice and Christianity
In Acts 5, Peter and the apostles were forbidden by the High Priest of the Sadducees to preach the gospel in the streets and the temple. They were thrown in prison, and an angel of the Lord freed them. They were again brought before the priest, who said, “Did we not straightly command you that ye should not teach in this name?…Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.”
In essence, this is the Christian commission to obey God rather than humanism. God’s laws are supreme and just; man’s laws are flawed – sometimes just, sometimes unjust. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “An unjust law is no law at all.”
The Communist Manifesto says, “…Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”
From a humanistic point of view—a communist or socialist believes that a just law is unjust unless it follows the Manifesto. And the manifesto denies Christianity. What we see today, therefore, is a dichotomy regarding social justice. One form is Biblical social justice rooted in God’s law as fulfilled by Jesus Christ and His righteousness. And another form is political social justice, rooted in humanist principles but disguised as Christian by those claiming to be men of God supporting it.
Political social justice as defined by man in contemporary society is against the word of God. And because we are a nation whose laws are derived from the Laws of God wrapped in the garment of Liberty, we have not only a say in them, but a responsibility to the God we serve to uphold the laws of God over the laws of man.
Law is only just if it is in harmony with God’s law…And since we are justified by faith, taking on the righteousness of Christ, justice emanates from “we” as a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation hungering and thirsting for righteousness; that in this act we shall be filled and salvation of souls be at hand.
Christians, as the ones who know the truth, are responsible to act on it through the righteousness of Christ. We must put aside traditions of men and hyper-Biblical doctrines, and act on the Word.
The Beatitudes, found in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, is a call to action by Jesus Christ. If we are hungering and thirsting for righteousness, we shall be filled—our faith shall find action as a just people. And we shall, as James 1:25 says, “…look into the perfect law of liberty, and continue therein…, being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.”
Let us hunger and seek after righteousness by not being deceived, and by being hearers and doers of the word as we continue in the perfect law of liberty. This is the true social justice of Christianity—not the false imitation of humanist social justice.
Have a Blessed and Powerful Day!