Dale Partridge - Real Christianity #130： Does Social Justice Belong in the Church？

00:00:00.000 Welcome to this episode of Real Christianity. My name is Dale Partridge, where each week I

00:00:15.460 offer 15 to 20-minute answers to tough theological and pastoral questions. This show is a 100%

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00:00:30.840 join the over 500,000 Christians who follow us on social media just by searching for relearn.org

00:00:36.380 on any platform. Now, many modern Christians are finding themselves and their churches

00:00:46.620 fighting more diligently for social justice than they are fighting for the gospel. In fact,

00:00:53.320 Some argue that social justice, that is caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, freeing those

00:00:58.140 who are oppressed from sinful situations, is the ultimate mission of the church.

00:01:04.000 You know, while these are all characteristic works of a person who's experienced the love of God

00:01:09.100 through the gospel of Jesus Christ, the question is, is social justice really the mission or even

00:01:15.280 part of the mission of the church? Now, as you're going to see in this episode, I don't think it is,

00:01:20.580 But together, we're going to look at the scriptures to evaluate not only where social justice fits into the Christian church, but ultimately what the mission of the church truly is.

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00:03:34.920 Okay, today's question is from Calista from Manhattan, New York.

00:03:40.000 And she asks,

00:03:41.100 Pastor Dale, I'm a 29-year-old Reformed conservative Baptist woman

00:03:45.040 who believes in sound doctrine and theology.

00:03:47.940 I also live in New York City.

00:03:50.040 As you know, this makes it quite difficult for me to find a biblical church.

00:03:54.020 The church I currently attend is becoming more and more progressive

00:03:57.500 and is constantly focusing its sermons and outreach efforts

00:04:00.860 not on the gospel, but on social matters like racism,

00:04:05.000 feminism, homelessness, and COVID relief.

00:04:07.400 The pastor keeps preaching heavily on how it's our mission as the church to make the world like

00:04:13.800 heaven. Honestly, I know in my heart that something is off with this position, but I'm not

00:04:20.220 sure what's actually right. Can you please help me understand this more? Okay, great question,

00:04:27.860 Calista, and cool name. I expect that many listeners are actually struggling with this

00:04:35.620 to some degree, depending on what kind of church they're in. And they're probably trying to attempt

00:04:40.440 to understand the mission of the church, but also where does the church play in the social justice

00:04:47.220 conversation. Now, the biblical term for doing social justice is called mercy ministry. In fact,

00:04:56.660 acts of mercy is one of the gifts given by the Spirit to those in the church listed in Romans

00:05:03.340 12, 6 through 8. So it's really the gift of sympathy toward those who are hurting. And you

00:05:09.440 may have someone in your church who is obviously gifted in this manner and is hypersensitive to

00:05:14.720 those who are maybe in trial or sorrow or pain. And these people are usually out in front serving

00:05:21.760 the lowly in the church, maybe the elderly, special needs individuals, prison ministry,

00:05:27.660 going to the hospitals to visit the sick, homelessness. And they do this without

00:05:32.780 complaining, and it brings them joy to basically extend the love of God to the hurting people

00:05:37.640 around them. But the problem arises when we as a church confuse the commands of Scripture given

00:05:44.920 to individuals with the commands of Scripture given to the corporate church. So for example,

00:05:50.760 the Bible tells me individually as a Christian husband to love my wife as Christ loves the

00:05:56.460 church, but it does not tell the church corporately to love my wife as Christ loves the church,

00:06:02.420 right? So on the other hand, I think there's another example is that the Bible tells the

00:06:08.380 corporate church to go out into all the world and make disciples. But that doesn't mean that

00:06:13.800 the Christian family who stays in their hometown in Indiana is sinning by remaining, you know,

00:06:19.820 static in their lifestyle. So essentially, we need to separate the individual and corporate 0.98

00:06:25.980 ethics of the church so that we can start to identify really who is responsible for what,

00:06:31.300 and what are the mission of the church, and what are the characteristic commands for the

00:06:37.840 individuals. Now, in a generation that's saturated with emotionalism and sensualism,

00:06:44.280 many churches and ministries have confused mercy with mission, meaning that they've elevated

00:06:52.200 humanitarian ministry, and as a result, catered more to the carnal matters of health and economics

00:06:58.060 and physical well-being than they are to the spiritual necessities of divine forgiveness

00:07:04.300 and reconciliation with God through the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, you know, some have called

00:07:11.020 this mercy-centric missiology the social justice gospel—that's what we've called it, I think,

00:07:17.120 in pop culture, while other more conservative proponents may argue, oh, it's not the social

00:07:23.220 justice gospel, it's the fully integrated gospel. Now, it's obvious that both Jesus and the

00:07:30.680 apostles support, and I would say even command, Christians individually to care for the temporal

00:07:37.240 needs of others. But how are these commands to be viewed in connection with the mission of the 0.54

00:07:42.280 corporate church? That's the question, right? In other words, you know, is the one true mission,

00:07:48.200 the central vital mission of the church, temporal mercy or spiritual mending? Is it physical

00:07:55.760 philanthropy or spiritual freedom? You know, is it moral righteous deeds or is it eternal

00:08:02.300 reconciliation with God? Now, you know, I believe when we look at these questions, there's a ditch

00:08:08.580 on either side of the discussion. And as with most issues, there's really two extremes, right?

00:08:13.840 The first group views the mission of the church as a command to bring about the physical

00:08:22.440 manifestation of the kingdom of God on earth. And they want to see physical healing, emotional and

00:08:27.880 mental recovery, and freedom from economic and political oppression. And this is kind of why

00:08:33.360 the communistic egalitarian ideals are so popular within the progressive church that

00:08:37.340 adopts this kind of social justice view. And they believe that it's their mission to bring this

00:08:42.780 kind of heaven-like utopia to their local communities. And I actually remember just not

00:08:48.460 a couple weeks ago, I saw a viral tweet from a proponent of the social justice gospel

00:08:55.420 that said, and I quote, so long as Christians keep thinking their faith is about salvation from hell 0.70

00:09:03.300 instead of liberation from oppression, we will continue to have to deal with Christian terrorism, 0.97

00:09:10.240 end quote. Actually, someone responded to that tweet, another person in the social justice gospel 0.72

00:09:17.220 community, and they said, and I quote, they don't understand that heaven and hell are states of

00:09:24.260 being on this earth during life, not the afterlife, end quote. Now again, these are extreme examples,

00:09:31.380 but that's where this theology ends if your church doesn't operate within the boundaries of

00:09:37.120 Scripture. You begin prioritizing physical mercy above spiritual mending, and it becomes the

00:09:43.220 central focus, and you actually shift that it's not about reconciliation with God, it's actually

00:09:47.900 about freedom from oppression, and the whole gospel gets perverted and distorted.

00:09:53.200 And so, in a sense, the social gospel folks really view the church as an army of good Samaritans or

00:09:59.580 spiritual Samaritans that are looking to bring the physical goodness of God's kingdom to their

00:10:04.080 local cities. And the mission of the church becomes more about what they're doing than what

00:10:11.440 Christ has done. And this view is, you know, usually it's supported by folks who disproportionately

00:10:18.620 focus on the ministry accounts of the gospels over the ministry accounts of the Old Testament

00:10:25.380 or the epistles or the whole, you know, just the whole structure of the Bible. Meaning, you know,

00:10:30.000 this group that's kind of, again, focused on gospel, like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John gospel

00:10:34.960 ministry, views kind of the description of Jesus's ministry as the prescription for their own

00:10:41.380 ministry. And namely, that they're both called to, they believe that they're both called to

00:10:48.360 and capable of producing the same type of ministerial work and miracles and wonders and

00:10:56.040 change that's performed by Jesus, right? This is kind of the Bethel doctrine as well.

00:11:00.960 Mike Riccardi, who's a pastor at Grace Community Church under John MacArthur, in a white paper

00:11:07.000 that he once wrote, he said, where's this quote? Okay, he says, the mercy ministry or the mercy

00:11:14.420 centric view that would have the church, quote, build the kingdom, usher in the kingdom, or

00:11:21.380 establish the kingdom, drastically overestimates both our ability and responsibility to do so.

00:11:29.020 And I actually think he's right. While we are citizens of a future kingdom, and while we are

00:11:35.620 redeemed, you know, in part, but not fully, right? We have the spiritual redemption,

00:11:41.320 but not the physical redemption at this point. You know, we are individually called to be

00:11:47.240 compassionate and benevolent and loving toward those whom we encounter, to take those character

00:11:54.960 standards of the Christian life or the miraculous works of Jesus, which again are, just to be clear,

00:12:02.580 the miraculous works of Jesus were specifically to validate His message during His ministry.

00:12:08.540 So to take those, again, those loving characteristics that we are called to do in Scripture and the

00:12:13.640 miraculous works of Jesus, which were to validate His message during His ministry, and make them

00:12:18.660 the mission of the Church forever, the universal forever mission of the Church, is to confuse both

00:12:25.060 the Church's place in the world and its purpose in the world. Now, on the other extreme, we have

00:12:32.400 what I call the Stoic Gospel. So you have the Social Gospel, and then you got the Stoic Gospel.

00:12:36.700 And this view, the Stoic gospel, is typical of kind of fundamentalist groups that are within the church.

00:12:42.660 They view the mission of the church solely as a gospel proclamation and find their efforts kind of void of mercy ministry altogether.

00:12:50.380 And this view treats the mission field kind of like a war zone of bullet-wounded individuals, right?

00:12:56.440 Like they can't justify putting in any time into healing broken fingers and preparing meals

00:13:02.020 when they're just surrounded with all these folks with fatal bullet holes in their bodies, right?

00:13:06.980 I got to go preach the gospel. I got to go preach the gospel. I got to go preach the gospel.

00:13:11.440 Now, while this view seems to rightly prioritize the gospel message,

00:13:16.820 it leaves the culture with an incomplete view of the Christian life

00:13:20.280 and lacks kind of the extension of the sympathy and kindness that is to be reflective of the members of the church.

00:13:27.580 So how do we sort out the truth between these two extremes? How do we divide what Scripture calls

00:13:34.780 us to do as individuals with what the Bible delivers as the corporate mission for the church?

00:13:41.760 And that should be your church, for your local church. What's your church's mission? And then

00:13:46.620 that's different from your individual commands in Scripture to you as an individual Christian.

00:13:52.180 The first point I want to make is that mercy ministry is important, and it should be seen

00:14:01.840 in the church because we are called by Scripture to display the love of Christ to others, first to

00:14:08.200 those in the church and then to those that are in the world. Now, if we're going to look at love

00:14:14.440 in degrees. You know, the highest degree of love is not helping people with their physical needs.

00:14:23.300 Now, I know that's a big statement, but that's not the highest degree of love. Jesus says in Mark

00:14:27.880 8.36, for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul, right? So this

00:14:36.180 is, you know, this is a clear teaching that the reigning priority in ministry individually and

00:14:42.620 corporately is soul work. The soul is the most valuable thing. It is the most important thing

00:14:49.680 that we have. The soul is eternal. The body is not, right? In terms of our resurrected bodies

00:14:57.020 will be, I'm not going into that debate. But the idea is that the soul is eternal. We need to be

00:15:01.280 dealing with the soul work. You could gain the whole world. You can gain your health. You can

00:15:05.440 gain wealth. You can gain all these things. But if you don't have the soul healed, meaning you're

00:15:11.040 reconciled, forgiven by God, believe in Jesus Christ, redeemed, then it doesn't matter, right?

00:15:17.840 So that's just kind of the priority that Jesus puts on it. We can't just meet physical needs

00:15:23.180 that cannot be the mission of the church. We can't also kind of show them Jesus through our

00:15:31.000 good works. That's what a lot of these social gospel people argue is, you know, just show them

00:15:35.460 Jesus through your good works, right? They say that Francis of Assisi thing, you know,

00:15:39.560 preach the gospel, use words if necessary. The gospel in, you know, Romans 10, 17 says,

00:15:47.280 so faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. Okay. The gospel people is

00:15:53.780 verbal. Okay. The gospel is not your testimony. The gospel is not giving someone a sandwich on

00:16:01.380 the side of the road. The gospel is not your moral example. The gospel is not your Christian life.

00:16:07.300 The gospel is not a donation to a ministry. The gospel is a verbal communication to other

00:16:14.540 individuals who don't believe in Jesus of their current state of condemnation before God and

00:16:20.760 their ability to find forgiveness and reconciliation by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ alone.

00:16:26.720 Bad news first, and then the good news. And the good news isn't good unless there is bad news,

00:16:32.020 Right. Darren Patrick, he wrote a book called Social Justice, and he said,

00:17:02.020 especially as a church-wide endeavor, centrally serve the goal of gospel proclamation, end quote.

00:17:10.200 The great late pastor Vance Havener, who started actually preaching when he was 12 years old,

00:17:17.860 he passed away, I think, in the 80s, in 1980s, he said,

00:17:21.600 if they had a social gospel in the days of the prodigal son, somebody would have given him a bed

00:17:28.300 and a sandwich, and he never would have gone home. Okay, so ultimately, there's nothing wrong

00:17:34.900 with performing mercy ministry, especially as a church. There's nothing wrong with that at all.

00:17:41.040 It's actually a good thing. But mercy ministry is not the mission of the church. Therefore,

00:17:48.960 mercy ministry should never receive greater attention than the mission-centric ministry

00:17:55.440 of the church. And I actually think that this whole social gospel issue, especially here in

00:18:03.200 America, is really a product of affluent Christianity. When you get on the mission

00:18:08.860 field in remote villages and try to lay upon those people the weight of the social gospel,

00:18:15.040 you just crush people. Most Christian communities throughout history can barely feed their own 0.95

00:18:21.320 families, let alone spend their time fighting for freedom from political and social oppression for

00:18:26.680 others. In other words, the social gospel is not a universal gospel, and therefore it cannot be

00:18:33.860 the true gospel. The true gospel must be able to work everywhere equally for everyone. And that's

00:18:41.320 just, again, a revealing point, which again leads me to answer the vital question of this episode,

00:18:45.740 which is, What is the Mission of the Church? Okay, Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert wrote an

00:18:54.320 entire book on this topic. I actually have it in my hands right now. It's almost 300 pages,

00:19:01.880 and it's titled, What is the Mission of the Church? The subtitle is Making Sense of Social

00:19:07.720 Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission. I had to read this, actually, for one of my seminary

00:19:12.220 classes on evangelism and apologetics. But they answer this question quite well, and I'm just

00:19:18.120 going to read you their answer, because they put a lot more work into this than I have. They say,

00:19:23.620 quote, the mission of the church is to go into the world and make disciples by declaring the

00:19:30.060 gospel of Jesus Christ and the power of the Spirit and gathering these disciples into churches

00:19:35.960 that they might worship and obey Jesus Christ now and in eternity to the glory of God the Father,

00:19:43.680 end quote. So ultimately, the Great Commission is the mission of the church. That's Matthew 28,

00:19:51.480 18 through 20. I'm going to read it for you right now. It says, and Jesus came and said to them,

00:19:56.600 all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples

00:20:04.400 of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

00:20:10.360 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always

00:20:15.560 to the end of the age. Okay, this means that Great Commission ministry, which is the mission

00:20:22.640 of the church, should be your church's central reigning priority, not just in words, but also

00:20:31.320 in action. This is what you should be doing. The primary duty of your church, your local church

00:20:37.700 should be this. And Great Commission ministry is really made up of three ingredients. Number one

00:20:43.500 is going out and making disciples of Jesus Christ through the proclamation of the gospel. So you're

00:20:52.860 going out, you're making disciples, and you're making disciples of who? Of Jesus Christ

00:21:00.560 through the proclamation of the gospel.

00:21:03.260 That's the first ingredient.

00:21:04.660 Second ingredient is you're baptizing them

00:21:07.520 into the church of Jesus Christ.

00:21:10.440 Okay, the third thing is teaching them the word of God.

00:21:15.040 Now, to really have great commission ministry,

00:21:18.240 you really need all three of those

00:21:19.560 because that's the great commission.

00:21:21.460 Making disciples and not getting them into churches

00:21:23.440 is not great commission ministry.

00:21:25.480 It's part of it, but it's not great commission ministry.

00:21:27.540 Baptizing individuals and not teaching the word

00:21:30.280 is also not great commission ministry. Teaching them the word without baptizing them and converting 0.67

00:21:37.300 them through the gospel wouldn't make sense either. You need all three. Those are the three

00:21:42.720 ingredients of the mission of the church. Now, I want you to notice something. In verse 18,

00:21:47.360 where Jesus says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. This means that we are

00:21:54.260 not sent out to conquer the world, we are sent out by the one who has already conquered it.

00:22:02.880 Okay, John 16, 33, Jesus says, I have said these things unto you that it may give you peace.

00:22:08.300 In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world.

00:22:13.780 First John 5, 4, the apostle John then writes, for everyone who has been born of God overcomes

00:22:21.600 the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith, end quote. Okay, so

00:22:30.400 one, overcoming the world, the only way to do that, to have victory, to be free from the

00:22:39.420 oppression of the world, is to be born of God. And faith in Christ, through Christ, like his work on

00:22:47.440 the cross is the agent of overcoming the world. So if you want to be kingdom-minded and you want

00:22:55.020 to be mission-minded and you want to bring victory into the world, you must do so by preaching the

00:23:00.920 gospel of faith in Jesus Christ alone. So we go not because we have been sent out to fix what is

00:23:11.100 ultimately broken. We go because he has already fixed what is already broken or what is ultimately

00:23:18.100 broken. And this is the good news that we get to share with the world. It's universal. It's for

00:23:24.180 everyone. And we get to go out and preach and proclaim that gospel message. Now, this does not

00:23:32.800 nullify the great number of commands in the scriptures to display the love of Christ toward

00:23:36.320 others in the church and in the world. Now, this does not mean that we become mission-only

00:23:41.720 Christians who divorce the heart of Christian character from the mission of the Christian

00:23:47.560 church. This simply means the primary mission of the church is to go and make disciples through 0.99

00:23:54.380 the proclamation of the gospel, baptize those disciples into the church of Jesus Christ,

00:23:58.160 and teach those disciples the biblical commands of their king or the word of God.

00:24:02.220 Now, when we as a church include within proper prioritization, mission, then mercy, we begin to see the fruitful and faithful ministry of the church thrive.

00:24:20.200 And we see reconciled souls find real physical needs being met.

00:24:26.360 We find broken people, find real healing through biblical truth, and genuine relationships.

00:24:35.340 But most of all, and I think this is the kind of crux of the show, is that we see the great

00:24:40.080 commission being fulfilled and the people of God being revived and restored to their

00:24:46.520 king.

00:24:46.980 So that, in my opinion, Calista, is the central mission of the church.

00:24:53.080 And I'm going to give you guys a few resources that I think will be really good for you.

00:24:57.060 And I think these are really important for us as Christians right now to be very educated

00:25:00.940 upon.

00:25:02.840 So I would read, if you get a chance, what is the mission of the church?

00:25:06.700 You don't have to read the whole thing.

00:25:07.540 It's actually just you could go chapter by chapter and choose the chapters you want to

00:25:10.400 read.

00:25:11.020 But what is the mission of the church?

00:25:12.920 And I'll put a link on that for you guys in the show notes of this episode at relearn.org.

00:25:18.740 If you just search for this episode, it's titled, Does Social Justice Belong in the Church?

00:25:24.520 The second resource I'm going to give you is a four-part video series of four sermons that

00:25:30.520 were delivered by John MacArthur titled, Social Justice and the Gospel. And then the last thing

00:25:36.960 is a PDF. It's on a website. I'll link it to you on this blog post as well. And it's the statement

00:25:45.280 on social justice and the gospel that was really put together by Grace Community Church and John

00:25:52.620 MacArthur and that whole crew over there. As you guys know that I go to the Master's Seminary.

00:25:58.100 I went to Western Seminary, but I also go to Master's Seminary now, and Master's Seminary is

00:26:02.820 on the campus of John MacArthur's church. And so those three, I think, will be really good

00:26:08.860 resources for you to understand this conversation on a deeper level. Last couple things, just if you

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00:26:20.540 write anything, but you can just tap the stars in the podcast app. It's just a blessing when I get

00:26:25.880 a chance to read those reviews. So if you do leave them, I will read them. Also, if you don't follow

00:26:30.320 us on Instagram, you can do that at relearn.org. In terms of going to Instagram and finding us

00:26:34.520 there. I'm on Twitter, at Dale Partridge, trying to release content on a regular basis, but we

00:26:40.960 would love to have you online to stay connected with you as we further our mission here as a

00:26:46.060 ministry. On that note, thank you guys for joining this episode of Real Christianity.

00:26:49.600 I'm Dale Partridge, and I'll see you next week.

00:27:04.520 dot org forward slash donate again that's relearn dot org forward slash donate and for those looking

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00:27:20.800 house lastly do you have a theological question you would like answered on the show submit your

00:27:26.000 question at relearn dot org forward slash question thanks for joining us on this episode of real

00:27:31.320 Christianity. We will see you next Wednesday.

Dale Partridge - January 27, 2021

Real Christianity #130： Does Social Justice Belong in the Church？

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