Social Justice and Justification

If you turn with me, please, in your Bibles to the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 24. Deuteronomy, chapter 24. We press forward in our study of God's law. And I can actually see the end coming. That's not an eschatological statement.

It is a prophetic statement concerning the fact that I think once we finish up some material in chapters 24 and 25, we will... I think it would be appropriate to finish off this study if you've not been with us.

We have been, when I have the opportunity of preaching for quite some time now, been looking at God's law. We've called it the Holiness Code, though we have gone far beyond the specific Holiness Code in the book of Leviticus.

We've basically been looking at the really difficult texts in the Old Testament law that are generally used to seek to silence us in speaking the truth concerning the fact that God made us and that therefore He has a revealed will as to how we are to live and what is right and what is wrong in His sight.

We know we live in a lawless day. We live in a day where law is no longer grounded upon the transcendent reality that there is a creator, that there is objective truth, and that we are His creation and that He gets to define these things.

Now law has become a matter of man and man's opinions. And so it is very offensive to secular men to bring forth God's law. And when we try to do so, we must realize that these men take the time to read at least portions of the Bible and they will raise objections.

They will accuse us of inconsistency. And most of the time they're right because we as Christians have in general been negligent in our examination of God's law and in producing a coherent, consistent understanding of how we should understand these texts and how we can differentiate between ceremonial law or law that had to do with sacrifice and then even looking at laws that were given to the people of Israel and understanding what the underlying moral precepts might be in our day.

And so for quite some time we have been involved in this study. And we have a few more sections, one of which is probably one of the least preached upon texts in all the Bible. And yes, we will preach upon it.

And once we finish that, we will close out with the blessings and cursings chapters. Now we read through that just recently on a Sunday evening. It was difficult reading through it, especially the cursings, the blessings part.

That's easy. The cursings part, not again a section of Scripture that is extremely popular amongst many who would call themselves evangelicals. But once again, a section of Scripture that ends up popping up many times and the concepts behind it many times in the New Testament.

And so that is where we are. And so we will be actually starting at Deuteronomy chapter 24, verse 16. But before we do that, let's ask the Lord's blessing upon our time. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we ask that you would help us to put aside any distractions that might keep us from hearing your word.

Once again, give us a firm commitment that all Scripture is God-breathed. Therefore, we are to hear what your Scriptures say. We are to seek to understand. We are to do the work required to consider even difficult things that you might teach us by your Spirit, by your word this day.

We pray in Christ's name. Amen. I do not want to underplay the reality that in Deuteronomy chapter 24, we have some very important precepts set forth for us. The last time we were here, we looked at some of these concepts.

Just going back to verse 14, just to refresh your memory or just to lay it out if you were not here with us. You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your countrymen or one of your aliens, who is in your land and in your towns.

You shall give him his wages on his day before the sun sets, for he is poor and sets his heart on it, so that he will not cry against you to the Lord and it becomes sin in you. Before that, you had the statement that in regards to pledges and things like that, there is a very firm repeated emphasis in this section of Deuteronomy upon what the Bible would identify as social justice.

That's a term that's being used a lot today. Very rarely is it actually describing true social justice. It's normally being attached to one particular group's agenda, that it wants to get promoted at the cost of others, etc., etc.

But biblically speaking, there is a very strong concept given to the people of Israel that there was to be justice done amongst her people. And the idea of not going into someone's home to take their pledge, waiting outside, not allowing a poor man to have to wait for his wages, because as it's said here, his heart is set upon it.

The fact that the people of Israel were to treat one another as fellow citizens of a land that sought to honor God, extremely important, I think. We mentioned it last time. I just simply want to reiterate it.

Because sometimes we get the feeling that if we don't use certain buzz phrases that are popular in our day, that somehow we're not really up to speed and that we're just the mean, cranky, curmudgeonly Reformed Baptists over there in the corner someplace.

The reality is that we can make a very strong case for true social justice in light of what is said in Deuteronomy chapter 24. But that is an equality of opportunity, not an equality of outcome. There is nothing in this text that says anything about it being wrong for you to take a pledge from someone.

There's nothing in this text that says, well, if you take a pledge to someone, you should just give them all your stuff so that you all have the same amount of stuff. There's nothing about equality in that way.

God is the one who makes men to differ. The equality that is to be found here is equality before God, equality in the eyes of the law, equality in the sense of fairness, but not any type of communistic concept of equality in regards to the result of all these things.

There are rich men, there are poor men, there are people in the middle. The people of God are to be people who give to others because, as Jesus said, the poor you will always have with you. The kind of, quote unquote, social justice being forced down our throat today rarely has anything to do with any of this, and I can't see how it could have anything to do with any of this because it's not based upon the idea that there is a God who has given us his law, that we are made in his image, and that therefore there is a firm foundation upon which we should be seeking the betterment of those around us, and it's to God's honor and glory, not because some governmental authority demanded that you do so.

There is a major difference that is to be found within that. Now, we have looked at a number of these texts. Obviously there are, again, miscellaneous laws that are given here. There's not necessarily a flow of context that can sometimes help us.

But we come to one text that I think you should be aware of, specifically in verse 16. Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers. Everyone shall be put to death for his own sin.

Now, the reason that I want to emphasize this is that very often this is utilized by Jewish apologists as a fundamental argument against the Christian gospel. It is also used by, well, anyone who would want to seek to argue against the Christian understanding of atonement might find in these words an argument against what it is we're saying, if they have a shallow understanding of what we mean by substitutionary atonement, and what we mean by the fact, and this is something that needs to be emphasized, I've said this to you many times if you're talking to our Muslim friends, this really needs to be a central part of your emphasis, but that is the fact that Jesus voluntarily takes the place that he does in the covenant of redemption.

That is, the son makes himself of no reputation, the son enters into human flesh voluntarily, the son gives himself voluntarily for his people, so that he, as the sinless one, can bear their sins in his body upon the tree.

But the argument, you can see, would go, well, fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers, everyone shall be put to death for his own sin. Well, let's start with what the text originally was speaking about.

As we've seen in this section of Deuteronomy, you are having fundamental rules of legal equity laid out, and clearly what is being addressed here would be the idea of the perversion of proper justice by seeking to have some situation arise where what was due to one person would be transferred to another person.

So, you would maybe have a son who has done something, and in the perversion of justice, you go after the person's father. Or, likewise, the other direction, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers.

And so, you could see, it would be a horrific thing to even begin to imagine, but some concept where if you have a very non-functional family unit, an offspring that has been mistreated, the red-headed stepchild type situation, could be put forward in a perversion of justice to bear the punishment that is due to someone else.

Clearly, all that is in light in Deuteronomy chapter 24, verse 16, is the proper application, especially, of the death penalty. The death penalty specifically. Everyone shall be put to death for his own sin.

There are only a certain number of sins that had as its penalty the capital punishment itself, and the point is that especially in those situations, that that capital punishment is to come upon the person who has committed the sin.

Well, that's understandable. We dare not rush past that, but I once again point out, there are many people today that would not even accept this statement of Scripture. They would not accept the idea that there could be any law that would sanction the death penalty for any kind of sin at all.

And there are many people in our day who would say that New Testament Christians should hold that perspective. And they would argue that New Testament Christians should hold that perspective because you want to have the maximum opportunity possible for any type of unbeliever to have opportunity for repentance.

And so there are those who would argue against the concept of the death penalty because that person should have as much opportunity to repent because, well, Christ can redeem any sin. There is no sin so grievous that he cannot bear it, and certainly we would confess that to be the case.

But does it follow then that what is said here was somehow only for the people of Israel, or is there something that should be recognized, and that is that there are certain sins, there are certain crimes that are so heinous, that are so horrific in their nature, that the idea of taking an individual, and of course you don't have in the Old Testament law some concept of extended incarceration.

It's just not there. The idea that other people should give of their belongings and should contribute the fruit of their labor to feed and clothe and to somehow house for extended periods of time individuals is just simply not a part of the Old Testament law.

There is no concept of that to be found. And so there was to be retribution, there was to be work that was to be done. It might take a long time to make that retribution, but that was how a person was to be dealt with.

So we have a difference immediately in the understanding of how punishment is to be brought about. But certainly we can understand that in our day there has been a fundamental degradation in looking at the law and looking at the penalties of the law.

When we see, for example, and we saw this just over the past month, when we see two individuals engaged in the same kind of extremely sinful criminal behavior, one is given a few months and one is given 12 years, we recognize that we live in a fallen world and justice is not always being done.

And in fact, the more and more our law becomes separated from what is true and honest and just as defined by God, the less moral authority it will carry. That's just a reality. The less our laws reflect what is written upon our hearts because we're made in the image of God, the less people are going to have any respect for that law.

It's a great blessing upon a nation when there is a general hand of restraint upon the evil of men within a particular culture. But as we see the hand of restraint being lifted, as we see the very world view of our society shifting and changing and becoming less and less reflective of what we know to be the truth as image bearers of God, the future is going to be a very difficult time requiring tremendous wisdom on our part to be certain.

And so what we have here is a recognition that there were certain sins, that God said this individual who has committed this act, now there was always investigation, there was always the bringing of the elders.

This was not some willy-nilly type thing like you have in many places today where banana republics and totalitarian governments and so on and so forth will utilize death penalties for every person who doesn't think, act, and look exactly as this government would like them to think, act, and look.

That's not what we're talking about here. When there was, however, that very important level of investigation, examination, when someone committed these acts, they were to be removed from the people, not just kicked out to then be inflicted upon some other people, but that they had fundamentally forfeited their right to life itself.

There were certain things that were that bad and that serious. And all this verse is saying is a person who does that, the whole reason for that death penalty is that that person is not to be allowed to remain amongst the people and is not to be inflicted upon someone else.

They have forfeited their right to life. You can't transfer that to someone else. You're not doing what is right for the people of Israel to put someone else to death and leave that evil person to continue the activities that they are now been shown to be likely to commit within the people of God.

You simply can't allow that to happen. And that also shows why this breaks down as having any moral relevance or any theological relevance to what we believe as Christians in regards to substitutionary atonement.

Because in the atonement of Jesus Christ, not only is the one who is giving himself sinless, but in his giving, and this is very important, I realize this isn't the answer to be given by a lot of non-reformed folks, but you need to recognize that in the giving of the Son of God is the whole purpose of God, which includes the redemption of God's people and the changing of God's people.

So in other words, when Christ takes my place, he doesn't just simply remove the guilt of sin against me. You see, this is why what we call the Ordo Salutis, the order of salvation. It's an important thing to understand.

It's not just a temporal thing. It's a first this happens, then this happens. It's a logical thing. But you see, it all holds together. And we understand that God has a purpose in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and intimate to that purpose.

And you cannot separate from that purpose is the creation of a holy people in him. You're not just leaving that sinner who has committed a sin worthy of death to just continue on in his sin. There is a new creature that is made.

The old has died. The new has come to life. There has been a resurrection to spiritual life. There is now the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. There is that work of sanctification going on. There is that spirit of adoption whereby we cry out, Abba, Father.

All of these things have to be seen together. And when we understand that, then we see that the primary emphasis of this text, which is you don't do substitution because it leaves the evil unaddressed.

The evil is completely addressed in what God is doing in substitutionary atonement in the Son. Because part of that purpose is not just the removal of the wrath of God against that sin. That's vitally important.

That must be done. But God doesn't just then leave us at a moral neutral point. Now you have the coming of the Spirit. You have the resurrection of the new man. You have that we've died to our old selves.

We now live to Christ. We have his spirit within us. We love his law. He writes his law within our hearts. So the very thing that this verse is actually speaking against is fully addressed if we understand the interrelationships of what God is doing in the subject of atonement.

But let's just be honest ourselves. In most evangelical churches today, the issue of the atonement is handled primarily emotionally. It is an emotional appeal. It's an emotional thing. And the relationship between God's sovereign decree, his law and his wrath, the work of atonement itself, the application to the elect through the work of the Holy Spirit who raises them to spiritual life, and the whole purpose of God in the gospel itself, very often those things are left disconnected points here, there, and everywhere.

You don't see how they all come together. And hence, very many people find it difficult to provide a coherent response to an objection based upon a text such as this. And so we see the propriety of what the text is talking about, especially when it comes to the limited area of human justice.

Just last week, or maybe it was the week before, probably the very last trial of Nazi war criminals took place in Germany. The man who was convicted was a very young man who was a guard at one of the death camps.

Auschwitz, I don't remember which one it was. Buchenwald, I don't remember. But 94 years of age. Now, for many people, we look at something like that and we go, why bother after all this time? Well, we bother after all this time because we're made in the image of God, and part of that image is that we recognize, God's word certainly tells us, that justice is the very foundation of God's throne.

And there is, in the hearts of mankind, when God blesses in such a way that we do not become so centered upon ourselves and so perverse in our evil that we actually think and reason as human beings, there is within the heart of man a fundamental desire for justice to take place.

And that's what this text is talking about. God's law would not be honored if the death penalty was placed upon a son in the place of his father, or a father in the place of his son. No matter what kind of silly emotional situation you come up with, that's not what the text is addressing.

It's not talking about some Hollywood movie or something like that. It's talking about someone who has committed evil amongst the people of God in full knowledge of what that meant, and God's law would not be honored.

Justice would not be done. Now, I know we say this all the time. I imagine almost every one of us in this room, if we had but the time to think about it this past week, we probably said this in our minds at some point in time.

But if we did not believe that there was going to be a day when it's all going to be set right, when justice is going to be done, when God is going to be vindicated, everything is going to be laid out.

We're going to see exactly why God did what God did, and how His holy character has remained absolutely firm and consistent from creation to this day. If we didn't believe there was a day like that, it would be hard.

It would be hard to press forward in light of the injustice that we see around us all the time. But as Christians, we have that promise. As certain as the resurrection is the fact that someday there will be justice done.

That will, in fact, take place. And so, this particular text is not an argument against the atonement of Christ. And if it is raised, I hope maybe that discussion will allow you to press forward in asking questions of the individual and maybe giving a response.

Now, again, we saw, we've already looked at, we sort of jumped through chapter 24 a little bit. And again, the not perverting justice, so on and so forth, the not reaping all the way to the corners of your field, beating the olive tree, all these things are brought up in front of us.

Then, I want you to look at chapter 25. Chapter 25. And in chapter 25, there is a little bit of a shift, but I want to get to your attention. You all know what next year is. 2017, the 500th anniversary of the beginning of what is called the Protestant Reformation.

Oh, there's all sorts of things going on. Next May, I'm going to be doing a debate relevant to the subject of the Reformation in Wittenberg, Germany. No, I'm not doing it in German, though I'm sure I'll throw some in there for the fun of it.

But we will be engaging in, well, it's actually what's called the German Shepherds Conference. It's the Shepherds Conference, but it's in Germany, so it's the German Shepherds Conference, which always makes people chuckle, but there's really no way around it, so you just sort of roll with it.

Thankfully, in German, it comes out as not being funny at all. But anyway, we're going to be, once again, addressing, more so than normally what happens toward the end of October, the subject of the Reformation.

We're Reformed Baptists, and so I bet pretty much almost everybody in here can quote Martin Luther, and we can get all excited, and here I stand, I can do no other, God help me, and we're children of the Reformation, right?

And we all put away our hymnals, and we sing A Mighty Fortress, and demonstrate how truly Reformed we are. Okay, well, can we be honest enough to admit the fact that when we come to justification by faith, and in Sunday School, I read one of the best quotes on justification by grace alone, through faith alone, from the letter of the Church of Rome to the Church of Corinth from about A .D. 95.

It's great, it's strong, and we can revel in it. It's wonderful. But can we admit, and shouldn't we admit, that for many of our fellow, even those who claim to be believers, the doctrine of justification by faith alone just doesn't get them excited anymore.

I mean, you have to show movies, and sing certain songs, and get the choir going, but for a lot of people, the doctrine of justification is just sort of like, Yeah, okay, so they really thought that was really important back then.

Why? I mean, okay, I'll accept that it's an important thing, and that there's a lot in the New Testament about it, but okay, I'll believe that. But where's the passion? Where's the passion about this subject?

And I believe that the reason is because in the days of the Reformation, you knew your own mortality. You knew that at any moment, you could be standing before God. You had the plague, you had war, child mortality was through the roof.

In many places, a woman would have to have ten live births to get one through to maturity. That's how bad it was. Almost everybody had a sister or a brother who had died in infancy because, well, just think of all the diseases.

It could not be dealt with. We didn't understand them. And so you saw death and dying all around you. We hide from that. Oh, you see it fake in the movies and TV shows, but almost everybody back then had seen dead and decaying bodies, and had smelled the stench of death.

And so the reality of your own mortality, the fact that you're going to stand before a holy judge, and it might be a whole lot sooner than you thought. It's not like so many of our young people today that will go for days and weeks on end without ever even thinking about something like that.

So entertained. I mean, there's so many young people today, you don't know what silence is. You get uncomfortable in silence. You have to stick an earbud in and start music if there's silence, because in silence you might start thinking about things that are uncomfortable.

And I think one of the reasons that justification by faith alone does not ring the bells of men's hearts, to quote from John Murray, is because we don't understand our own mortality, and we don't understand the seriousness of sin and our guilt before God.

And if we think we're just highly evolved animals, and animals make mistakes, then the idea of justification before God, standing in right, being in right standing with Him, not because of anything I've done, but because of what someone else has done in my place.

Well, that idea just simply doesn't cause the passion that it once did. One of the most important texts in the defining of what righteousness is, is right here in Deuteronomy 25 at the beginning of the chapter.

That's why I mention this to you. If there is a dispute between men, and they go to court, and the judges decide their case, and they justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked, then it shall be, if the wicked man deserves to be beaten, the judges shall then make him lie down and be beaten in his presence with a number of stripes according to his guilt.

He may beat him forty times, but no more, so that he does not beat him with many more stripes than these, and your brother is not degraded in your eyes. Now, how is that relevant? Well, it's right there.

Notice what it says. The judges decide their case, and they justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked. Now, there you have a proper legal forensic category laid out. When an innocent man comes before the judges, the proper sentence of the court must be the justification of the righteous man.

In other words, the court says, you are right in relationship to this court and to the law of God. You are in the right, but when a guilty man is brought before those judges, the wicked man, there is to be condemnation.

You are not right in relationship to this court, and therefore to the law of God. Now, the perversion of that, then, is when the wicked is justified, and the guilty is condemned. This would be the twisting of those categories.

This would be unnatural. This would be the wrong thing to have happen. The declaration of the court must be that the one who is in right standing, the righteous one, is justified, is declared to be right before God.

Now, the Hebrew terms that were used way back in Deuteronomy become the very foundation of the discussion in the New Testament. So, in other words, as you know, those Hebrew words between 250 and 200 years before the birth of Christ were translated into what we call the Greek Septuagint.

The Greek translation of the Old Testament. And that document has tremendous impact upon the vocabulary, language, and categories of the New Testament discussion. So, it's not shocking whatsoever that when we look at the Greek Septuagint here in Deuteronomy chapter 25, that the very Greek words that are used there to translate righteous and justify are translated into Greek words that then end up in our New Testament in such places as Romans chapter 8.

Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies. All this very same language becomes central to discussion of how we are made right before God in the New Testament. And so, it's not overly surprising that very often there are errors made by New Testament Christians because they don't bother to look back at how these terms were used in the Old Testament.

Not that the Old Testament then becomes the controlling authority. And there are others who go, oh no, we can never go beyond what we have in the Old Testament. There can't be a New Testament fulfillment.

There can't be something greater. And so, there have even been some that would say, well, hey, this passage likewise is against what you Christians teach. There might be some Jewish apologists that would make the argument that this is also against what the Apostle Paul taught.

And I've even had some of the little more radical Roman Catholic apologists get into this particular area as well because they reject the idea of forensic justification, the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to us.

Why? Well, what is the argument of Paul in Romans 3 and 4? Who does God justify? The ungodly. It sounds, on the surface, as if this is a direct violation of the precept that is laid out here. The court is to justify the righteous, not the ungodly.

And how is it that we as the ungodly receive the sentence of justification? Because of the condemnation of whom? The innocent one. The innocent one. So, it looks, on the surface, as if the very message of the Apostle Paul in Romans 3, 4, and into 5 is a repudiation of Deuteronomy chapter 25, verses 1 and 2.

But is it? But is it? Well, what it does tell us is that what we have in Deuteronomy 25 is a valid, necessary, legal statement. There is a perversion of human justice when a judge justifies a wicked man or when a judge condemns an innocent man.

That is a perversion of justice. There's no question about it. That should not happen. That is something that grates against us. I hate movies where that happens, where there's framing of someone. I just don't even like watching things like that.

I don't like... I know at the end probably it's going to turn out alright. Sometimes it doesn't. I get it, but I just don't even like seeing it. Because it is unnatural. It is against what we truly desire in our hearts to see justice done.

So, how can we understand the law court in Romans chapter 8? If we call Romans chapter 8 the very summit of Christian revelation, isn't it interesting that smack dab in the middle of it is a scene from a law court?

And you've got a judge, and you have sinful people. You have guilty people. Now, there's already been discussion of this beforehand in Romans chapter 4. The foundation's been laid for our understanding.

But in chapter 8, you've got the judge, you've got the person who is not righteous, and yet they hear the sentence justified. What we need to learn from this is that the gospel proclaims to us mercy and grace which transcends, not violates, but transcends the simple categories of justice.

What do you mean transcends? That's a weasel word. No, it's not. Because you see, God's justice is perfectly fulfilled. Because of the perfection of the sin bearer and the fact that he voluntarily takes upon himself the sins of those who will be justified, it would cause a problem if you try to go beyond that and say that he also bears the sins of those who wouldn't be.

I'll leave that to the Armenians and the Amaraldians and the rest of them to deal with that. I'm talking a biblical perspective here. But given the perfection of the intention of the triune God, the perfect bearing of the sin bearer of the sins that are due to that people, provision is made for the complete fulfillment of the righteousness of God.

The sin of every person will be dealt with justly. For those outside of Christ, they will bear their own sin before the judgment bar of God. For those who are in Christ, their sins are judged upon the tree itself.

No sin is simply winked at. Nothing is simply left out. But what you have in the gospel is not just categories of law, but the one who gives those categories in and of himself transcends those categories in mercy and in grace.

So that if we receive that mercy and grace, our sin is dealt with, that wrath is satisfied, Deuteronomy 25 is not violated, but one thing is for certain. If you really understand this, you will never, ever have any ground for boasting in yourself.

A proud Christian, a Christian who looks down upon somebody else as if I'm somehow special, I figured this out on my own, what a stench in God's nostrils. Grace and mercy are absolutely free. They cannot be demanded.

They cannot be earned. It is all of God. That's why the scriptures say, if you're in Christ Jesus, you are so solely because of God, not because of who you are, how smart you are, or what you've accomplished, or anything else.

These categories transcend justice. It's not that it's contradicting Deuteronomy 25, it's just Deuteronomy 25 is a simple law court where you just have two individuals. You've got the judge, and you've got the people being judged.

What's the difference in Romans 8? The God-man. There's no God-man in Deuteronomy 25. But what's the difference in Romans 8? What about he who died, yea rather who rose again, who now intercedes for us before the throne of God?

We have the God-man. We have an intercessor. We have the only one, because of his absolutely unique nature, as the God-man, who can be the perfect sacrifice, and yet be the perfect sacrifice for all of God's people who are described as being as the sand of the sea.

See why the deity of Christ is important? Some mere prophet can never do those things. But Jesus Christ could, and he did. And so there's no violation of the fundamental law because God's wrath and God's law is fulfilled, but there is a transcendence going above and beyond into those categories of mercy and grace that flow from the heart of God.

And one of the greatest blasphemies before God has been when man has tried to control that grace and that mercy through his own actions. The religions of men are almost always man's way of controlling God's grace.

The sacraments of Rome, man's controlling the grace of God as if it's things you can turn on and turn off. No, the New Testament knows nothing of anything like that. God is free in the giving of his grace.

God is free in the giving of his mercy. And that's why it must be by grace alone, through faith alone. Because you get rid of either one of those alones and man will find a way to put himself in there so as to control God's grace.