The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society

by Joseph Boot

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.