The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society

by Joseph Boot

One reaction has been to dismiss these questions as socio-cultural matters of concern only to ‘social gospel’ peddlers aligned with liberal Christianity, so by definition, they cannot be relevant to evangelicals.

the law of biblical revelation the only legitimate framework for organizing a society in a manner that does not invoke the judgment of God.

this can only be accomplished as Christians rid themselves of false humanistic assumptions about ‘neutral’ areas of life and thought and see all things in the light of the good news of Christ’s salvation and Lordship.

The choice is theonomy (God’s law) or autonomy (man’s self-law),

This highlights the fact that democracy is only as good (or useful) as the people and their submission to God’s covenant; it is not a good in itself as though participation of the people in government assures us of truth, righteousness and freedom prevailing. Democracy can function as

We see that at the root of the biblical truth of the gospel is a cosmic worldview relating law, justice, restitution and restoration, but when this view of reality falls out of society, restitution, justice and true judgment also begin to disappear from the social order. Where hell and judgment fall out of the church’s theology, just punishment falls out of the justice system. Where the law of God diminishes and the meaning of the cross is undermined, restitution, retribution and restoration, as the basis for criminal justice, start to vanish. This is empirically observable in our society today. Since the church is salt and light in the world, where the church fails to uphold these truths of the gospel, society will inexorably tend to lawlessness. In such a context, sin and crime will steadily flourish with growing impunity and a professional criminal class will develop. Cheap

grace then has the social consequence of producing expensive law – a costly proliferation of scientific planners, therapists, correctional systems, positivist laws and various techniques to try and justify and save man by another means; not because he is a sinner (lawbreaker) whose punishment must fit the crime, but because he is sick or maladjusted to his environment, fixable by manipulation, therapy and technique. The enforcement of law then becomes a massive cost because restitution and retribution are not delivered by the courts and system of justice. Instead, a pharisaic and legalistic scientific plan of justification is offered by man’s ingenuity. Thus without the biblical gospel, people do not govern themselves in terms of God’s law but become lawless. As society becomes lawless, the costs of keeping criminality at bay skyrocket and this is evidently what we are witnessing in our time.17 Indeed, this is the inevitable outcome when cheap, counterfeit grace attempts to excuse sin, without justifying the sinner.

The first question which must therefore be asked is: why would God’s law appear abhorrent to any Christian filled with God’s Spirit, since the Holy Spirit is the author of the law?

the rejection of Christian civil law is the de facto establishment of religious atheism that would inevitably persecute the Christian faith.

one out of every hundred American citizens is behind bars.

Christian withdrawal from politics on the ground that no good can be achieved is an abdication of God-given responsibility which ensures the short-term triumph of ungodliness.

I am certain that it is in no small part due to this faulty and widespread dual kingdom outlook that the churches in the West are often empty, in particular, of godly men (whose calling is dominion); and those who are present are often hopeless in their faith and derelict in their duty to fulfil the law-word of God in family and vocation. Instead of laying before men their calling in Christ to minister God’s Kingdom life in every area, in their families and vocations, as priests unto God, they are told that their family, work, money, the education of their children and leadership in society and culture is merely a ‘creation mandate’ that is not related to our redemptive calling – it is ‘law’ not ‘gospel.’ Men are drilled instead to believe that the kingdom work is the work of

churchmen in their institutions (the sacraments) and that their ‘secular’ role in life is to be kind and ‘loving’ at work, to be a sanctified husband and father in personal piety and then pray for the return of Christ, and if possible, on route, snatch a few brands from the burning. The Holy Spirit in this view does not fully represent the Godhead in the earth today and is unable to equip the church to fulfil Christ’s final command to bear the message of salvation and the restitution of all things to the nations.

Furthermore, Christians often fail to appreciate that humanistic sociologists and educators have invented the sociological concept of the ‘teenager’ (or adolescence), with inevitable expectations of rebellion and sexual experimentation in order to destabilize the family, alter the beliefs of the young and alienate them from the morality and thinking of their parents.51

This is a critical statement since it reveals that we cannot understand postmodernity as the rejection of all meaning and truth, but the abortive attempt to salvage relevance, meaning and truth in the face of the abyss, by clinging to subjectivity alone.

The force and appeal of the inclusivist position lies in the sense that it is surely unfair of God to require conscious knowledge of and faith in Christ and his redemptive work as a precondition of salvation since

“The Enlightenment would shatter the theocratic ideal. Religion would be banished to the private sphere, leaving the public sphere to reason.”8