Tag Archives: social justice

Three Propositions

09 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by in Culture, Ezekiel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

John MacArthur has preached three sermons from Ezekiel 18 (he will preach at least one more next week) on “social justice.” The question of “social justice” stirred a great deal of debate among evangelicals.

The basic propositions set forth by MacArthur are:

1) Good works are not part of the Gospel, but true believers will do good works.

2) While human beings do abuse one another and while sin has infected all of society; no human being can defend against a charge of his own sin by pointing to the sins against him.

3) No one is responsible for the sin of another.

Which of these proportions could an orthodox Protestant Christian contest? Do those who advocate for social justice deny any of these three propositions?

For a pair of sandals

07 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Amos

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

“A jail sentence doesn’t matter anymore,” says David Patrick Columbia, founder of New York Social Diary. “The only thing that gets you shunned in New York society is poverty.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/04/01/bill-clinton-katie-couric-woody-allen-jeffrey-epsteins-society-friends-close-ranks.html

The callousness of these most wealthy, most powerful, people — the “best of the best” if you will, reminds me of this condemnation:

Amos 2:6–8 (ESV)

Judgment on Israel

6 Thus says the Lord:

“For three transgressions of Israel,

and for four, I will not revoke the punishment,

because they sell the righteous for silver,

and the needy for a pair of sandals—

7  those who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth

and turn aside the way of the afflicted;

a man and his father go in to the same girl,

so that my holy name is profaned;

8  they lay themselves down beside every altar

on garments taken in pledge,

and in the house of their God they drink

the wine of those who have been fined.

The Message of the Church

19 Saturday May 2012

Posted by in Discipleship, Martyn Lloyd-Jones

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Discipleship is make one who follows Jesus, who proclaims his Kingdom, who seeks the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ:

1 Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.
2 But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.
3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.
4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.
6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

2 Cor. 4:1-6. The temptation for the church will always be to proclaim some other message. We look upon the effects of the Fall and think we must raise the curse, we must end the pain. We are tempted to make disciples who proclaim our program our politics our change – anything but Christ.

All such efforts will fail. It is not that we are to not love other human beings. It is that merely alleviating the transient pain of this world is ultimately too little. It is not that we do not seek the good of others, it is that we fail those we claim to love. To give food and medicine without Christ is to feed sweet poison to children: we fill their mouth and kill their heart.

Lloyd-Jones in his sermon, Christianity – The Only Hope put it thus:

He will come again, even as He went. He will return, in bodily, visible fashion, riding the clouds of heaven, surrounded by the holy angels. And He will judge the world in righteousness and set up His glorious kingdom, to which there shall be no end.
That is the message of Christianity. That is what has made the church what it is. Do men and women need to be told about some kind of program that will give them better conditions? That is not our greatest need. Our greatest need is to know God. If we were all given a fortune, would that solve our problems? Would that solve our moral problem? Would that solve the problem of death? Would that solve the problem of eternity? Of course not. The message of Christianity is not about improving the world, but about changing people in spite of the world, preparing them for the glory that is yet to come. This Jesus is active and acting to that end, and He will go on until all the redeemed are gathered in, and then He will return, and the final judgment will take place, and His kingdom will stretch from shore to shore.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Authentic Christianity

Less this sound as if we care not for human life, consider the further statement of Lloyd-Jones in The God Who Acts:

There is a real confusion today about Christianity and about the Christian church—her nature, her task, and her message. This is a great tragedy. Think of the problems harassing people today, individually and collectively. Think of the unhappiness, the heartbreak and the cynicism and bitterness in life. We are all aware of these human problems, as they are called. But if only people were truly Christian, most of those problems would immediately be solved. And it is the same with our international tensions and difficulties. Enmity and war and strife are due to the fact that men and women are in a wrong relationship with God, and they will only find out how to enter into a true relationship by knowing, believing, accepting, and submitting themselves to the message of the Christian church, the message of the Gospel.