Not one or the other

Russell Moore hit a grand slam with his post Gospel or Justice, Which? Dr. Moore looks at the odd way that the church tends to divide and separate issues of justice and personal evangelism, as if you can have one without the other. As he points out, it is not a matter of "either or" but rather it is "both and" (emphasis mine)...

So how does the church “balance” a concern for evangelism with a concern for justice? A church does so in the same way it “balances” the gospel with personal morality. Sure, there have been churches that have emphasized public justice without the call to personal conversion. Such churches have abandoned the gospel.

But there are also churches that have emphasized personal righteousness (sexual morality, for instance) without a clear emphasis on the gospel. And there are churches that have taught personal morality as a means of earning favor with God. Such also contradicts the gospel.

We do not, though, counteract legalism in the realm of personal morality with an antinomianism. And we do not react to the persistent “social gospels” (of both Left and Right) by pretending that Jesus does not call his churches to act on behalf of the poor, the sojourner, the fatherless, the vulnerable, the hungry, the sex-trafficked, the unborn. We act in the framework of the gospel, never apart from it, either in verbal proclamation or in active demonstration.

The short answer to how churches should “balance” such things is simple: follow Jesus. We are Christians. This means that as we grow in Christlikeness, we are concerned about the things that concern him. Jesus is the king of his kingdom, and he loves whole persons, bodies as well as souls.

That is really the whole problem. We spend so much time arguing about this nicety of doctrine or that point of theology that we forget that if we simply follow Jesus everything else will work itself out. If the church really followed Jesus we wouldn't have thousands of denominations and independent non-denominational churches competing with one another for resources. We wouldn't have people breaking fellowship over the color of the carpet. We wouldn' have budget battles because we wouldn't really have budgets. The Gospel would be preached and the poor would be cared for.

This conversation has been hijacked by Christians on both sides, by people like the late Jerry Falwell and like Jim Wallis, two men who are different sides of the same coin, i.e. using religious language and pliable Christian followers to achieve political goals. I appreciate a voice like Russ Moore who refuses to pick and choose between two priorities that are supposed to go hand in hand, not engage in hand to hand combat.