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Justice & Law: Who is Guilty?

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We’re still on our third perspective on the topic of justice – law. We’ve already seen certain problems with the way that the world wants to apply law.

Family Tree

For example, who decides who is guilty (or “oppressed”). Well, the “experts”, of course! And the experts often seem to assign guilt not only based on their opinion of your actions, but also based on the group you’re a part of.

Now, as Christians, when we hear a question like, “Who is guilty?”, our minds race to verses like Romans 3:23 or Isaiah 53:6. Everyone is guilty, right?

Well, yes of course. God says, if you’ve broken My law, you’re a sinner – you’re guilty. It doesn’t matter what socioeconomic or racial group you may be a part of.

But wait – doesn’t the Bible talk about the sin of families? For example, in Exodus 34:7, God describes Himself as “visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” Yes, but be careful. Here we’re talking about children who are continuing in the sins of their fathers.

Deuteronomy 5:9-10 clarifies things a bit: “I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

In other words, if the children continue in their hatred of God, they go on accumulating more and more judgement.

But these are brief statements. God explains more carefully in another text – Ezekiel 18. So let’s go there to see what God says about sin, especially sin in families.

The word of the LORD came to me: “What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’?

Ezekiel 18:1-2

You know how your teeth feel when you eat sour grapes, right? You might be making a “sour face” right now! This proverb says, our ancestors at sour grapes, but it’s our teeth that are feeling funny! That’s kinda weird.

In other words, the Israelites were blaming God for judging them for the sins of their ancestors. It’s not fair!

So how does God respond?

As I live, declares the Lord GOD, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.

Ezekiel 18:3-4

Could you please clarify what you mean, God?

If a man is righteous and does what is just and right— if he does not eat upon the mountains or lift up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, does not defile his neighbor’s wife or approach a woman in her time of menstrual impurity, does not oppress anyone, but restores to the debtor his pledge, commits no robbery, gives his bread to the hungry and covers the naked with a garment, does not lend at interest or take any profit, withholds his hand from injustice, executes true justice between man and man, walks in my statutes, and keeps my rules by acting faithfully—he is righteous; he shall surely live, declares the Lord GOD.

Ezekiel 18:5-9

So this is a just man, a good man according to the Law of Moses. An individual who is just before the law, due to his own actions.

But this man had a son…

If he fathers a son who is violent, a shedder of blood, who does any of these things (though he himself did none of these things), who even eats upon the mountains, defiles his neighbor’s wife, oppresses the poor and needy, commits robbery, does not restore the pledge, lifts up his eyes to the idols, commits abomination, lends at interest, and takes profit; shall he then live? He shall not live. He has done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon himself.

Ezekiel 18:10-13

You come from a Christian family? Cool. If you sin apart from Christ, you’re punished. Your family will never save you.

So now we have a wicked son of a just father. Now let’s see what happens if the wicked son has a son of his own…

Now suppose this man fathers a son who sees all the sins that his father has done; he sees, and does not do likewise: he does not eat upon the mountains or lift up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, does not defile his neighbor’s wife, does not oppress anyone, exacts no pledge, commits no robbery, but gives his bread to the hungry and covers the naked with a garment, withholds his hand from iniquity, takes no interest or profit, obeys my rules, and walks in my statutes; he shall not die for his father’s iniquity; he shall surely live.

Ezekiel 18:14-17

So let’s summarize:

The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.

Ezekiel 18:20

Now, this is pretty black and white. Sin comes from the individual. The evil of another person is not a punishment for you to bear, verse 20.

But wait – what happens if that evil man repents?

But if a wicked person turns away from all his sins that he has committed and keeps all my statutes and does what is just and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. None of the transgressions that he has committed shall be remembered against him; for the righteousness that he has done he shall live. Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?

Ezekiel 18:21-23

Remember, we are in the Old Testament here. Now we know the background – God saves us through Christ. But in the OT, even though people didn’t know all about the cross quite yet, they did know that God is merciful. He wants to forgive. If the wicked person repents, God will forgive.

But what if the opposite happens?

But when a righteous person turns away from his righteousness and does injustice and does the same abominations that the wicked person does, shall he live? None of the righteous deeds that he has done shall be remembered; for the treachery of which he is guilty and the sin he has committed, for them he shall die.

Ezekiel 18:24

This doesn’t mean that you can lose your salvation. You can’t. What it does mean is that if someone decides to do evil, they will be punished – even if they have lived a good and moral life up until that point.

So if you want to know if you’re pleasing to God, here’s the question to ask. How am I living today? And of course, that includes whether or not you’ve repented of your past sins, and if you’re willing to make things right. We’ll talk more about that later.

Yet the house of Israel says, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ O house of Israel, are my ways not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?

Ezekiel 18:29

People love to judge God, and call Him unjust. But what does God do? What are His actions? He doesn’t punish the innocent for the sins of their ancestors. He only punishes those who are personally wicked. And if the wicked repents? God is merciful – He forgives. But humans think they have found a better way.

So let’s make it clear how God’s Law works.

Justice >> Life —— Evil >> Death
Repentence >> Forgiveness

Do we experience earthly consequences from the sins of our parents? Yes. But God will actively fight against us if we continue in those sins, and will show us faithfulness, mercy, and love if we leave them behind. “. . . the soul who sins shall die”. The just will live.

And remember this: It’s God, our Creator, who tells us what is a sin, and who is a sinner. We are responsible for our own sin. Don’t blame your parents or your grandparents. You’re free from the sins of whatever supposed group you’re a part of – as long as you’re not a participant in their sin. As long as you’re living for the Lord.

We can (and should) remember the sins of our ancestors, and learn from them. We should also remember the brave sacrifices that our ancestors have made, that we benefit from. And listen – this is important – sometimes both of those are found in the same person!

But what is most important for me? How I’m living today.

Well, we’ve spent a long time talking about the perspective of law. We have four more perspectives on justice to go – see you next time!

Jim’s Recent Tweets…

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Ontario Tour: Accomplished!

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It wasn’t a surprise when the flight was cancelled. We had already heard lots of horror stories about travel in Canada – and around the world.

Canada and Mexico flags
Our friends the Kolaris put up a flag just for our visit. We felt doubly at home!

So we were flying from Mexico City to Vancouver, and then Vancouver to Calgary. The cancelled flight was the second one. But the new flight that we were assigned to was only 1 hour later. And once we arrived in Vancouver, we realized that we actually needed that extra time to catch our next flight. God is good.

In fact, a verse was going through my mind during our time in Canada – the words of Joseph to his brothers: “…you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good…” (Genesis 50:20). There is so much going on that is intended for evil – but we saw God use these things for our good. We don’t always see how God is working, but this summer He allowed us a few glimpses.

That being said, we certainly saw for ourselves how difficult travel is becoming. But God allowed us to make the trip!

We went to Alberta first to spend some time with family, and to take care of a few practical matters. And, of course, to actually plan our trip, which happened very last minute!

We enjoyed a week off, all four of us, which was a real blessing!

And then we had a time of ministry in Ontario, travelling as far south as Dunnville and as far north as Moosonee.

We’ve never had a tour quite like it, for several reasons. For example, we were able to see firsthand how much Canada has changed in two years. Drastic changes. And we were able to talk to all kinds of people – from many walks of life, many contexts, two provinces, believers and unbelievers, old and young, people from all over the world (we used a lot of Spanish!). And we were able to hear their stories.

What kind of stories? Well, first of all, Christians especially can see how quickly the culture around them is falling, and they see what’s coming. They may not agree on all the details, but they can see what’s happening to some degree. They are also personally experiencing the results of their community’s active rejection of Christ. Families are being attacked and destroyed. Churches are being torn apart. Jobs are being lost. Resources disappearing.

But once again, we saw God’s Hand. Although we heard a lot of sorrow and concern, we also heard people sharing the gospel. People finding new ways to reach out and help others. People getting on their knees and calling out to the Lord. People being faithful. What an encouragement!

I just went through some notes and pictures from our trip, and I’m amazed again at the number of activities and visits that we packed in, the experiences we had, and the variety of people we saw and/or talked to. And, of course, an important part of our trip was reporting on our ministry to our supporters, and serving them where we could. And we will certainly continue praying about some specific needs we heard about.

The first Tim Hortons
One of the random things we did in Canada – visit the first Tim Hortons restaurant. We were staying just a few blocks away.

We’ve only been home for just over a week, although it seems longer! I think I’m still “debriefing” in my mind, and we’re still dealing not only with things that relate to our trip, but also things that we intended to do over the summer (originally thinking that we would be here in Mexico), and with our re-integration into ministry here. We’ve essentially been disconnected since we left for the conference in Panama on the 7th of June. There’s lots to talk about, but I’ll stop there for now!

Hannah and Nathanael - "This is how I roll".
Hannah and Nathanael, unicyclists.

Justice: Value and Law

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How is it that the world can seem so passionate about preaching equality and freedom from harm, and at the same time promote so many things that harm the body and the soul?

hand with torch
Revolution?

One reason is that the world doesn’t understand that we are all made in the image of God, a concept that we’ve already studied.

Imago Dei

You see, for many today, your value actually comes from the group you’re a part of. Let’s say, for example, that you’re a woman. You have value because you belong to the woman category. But remember, you need the experts to define what a woman actually is. For example, you may need “feminist epistemology”.

Perhaps if a man thinks he’s a woman, he is. But maybe if you’re against killing unborn babies, you’re not really enough of a “woman” to be a part of the group, no matter what your biology is. You may be considered a traitor to the feminist cause.

And so your value goes up and down depending on your group, and how acceptable your beliefs are to the group.

The Bible, on the other hand, explains that everyone has value. Individual value. And groups have value as well. Women are incredible. Men are amazing. And everyone has basic rights under the law, given by God.

We’ve already talked a lot about the image of God, the imago dei, so we’ll leave it at that for now and move on to the next topic.

Law (part 1)

Who is the lawgiver? Well, Moses is called the lawgiver, but we don’t simply take the laws for Israel, with all their sacrifices and dietary restrictions, and drop them down into our country. In its specific form, the Law of Moses was for ancient Israel.

But we learn about God’s law from the law of Moses, and the whole Bible, and we do apply it to our lives and our society today.

For example, why is it wrong to steal? Because the Bible says, “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15). Because the Bible says,

Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

Ephesians 4:28

In our study of The Authorities, we talked about the various authorities given by God, and their spheres of authority. No one has unlimited power. And all are under God’s law.

When there is injustice, according to God’s rules, God’s laws, we should correct it. For example, the civil authority should approve what is good and punish what is evil (Romans 13:3-4).

God’s law gives us a stable foundation from which we can fight injustice and oppression. But the world doesn’t have this solid foundation – remember the house we talked about?

Today, the world is very much occupied with trying to figure out who is oppressed, and who is the oppressor. Very binary. In the end, it seems like it’s not possible that someone may do some good things and some bad things. And the only way, supposedly, that you can help the oppressed, is by getting rid of the oppressor.

And that brings us to a term that has recently gained a lot of airtime – critical theory.

In the 1930s, a group of academics at the Frankfurt School in Germany was developing the ideas of critical theory, based in part on the ideas of Karl Marx. And since then, these ideas have continued to develop.

Critical theory is a worldview that means to criticize – that is, find systems of oppression within structures and organizations in society. It is a revolutionary theory, as opposed to a reforming theory. That is, critical theory seeks to tear everything down in order to rebuild a new utopia, a world of equality.

And this may help explain some of the things we see in the world today.

For example, in the United States especially you’ve heard the call to defund and dismantle the police. Wait – why not reform the police? Because critical theory would claim that the system itself is the problem. Revolution, not reformation.

When I was doing this series in Mexico, Canadian media was abuzz with news of church burnings and vandalism. 60-70 churches had been targeted at the time.

Harsha Walia, the then executive director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, sent out a tweet in response to the news, with just four words. “Burn it all down.”

Burn it all down? The director of a civil liberties association? Why?

Because in her mind, the “Christian system” is one of the problems. The church, schools, our government – burn it all down. This is revolution.

And in this way, critical theory divides everything and everyone – to tear it all down.

Who is a sinner? The Bible says, everyone. We have all broken God’s law. The Bible says that we all have personal sin. The problem is found in the human heart.

But the world doesn’t want to talk about personal sin – or should I say, none of us want to talk about our personal sin. Instead, many people claim that the “sinners” are those people that the experts would put in the category of “oppressors” – a group. A system. Not the heart. This would be the history of your group, your race, your country – not your heart.

For example, let’s say that the United States is the oppressor. Some would argue that the USA has stolen land from Canada, and from Mexico. In fact, when many in what is now the USA rebelled against Great Britain, those who were loyal suffered. We don’t have to agree on the details for this illustration, but just go with me here. (Actually, one of my ancestors suffered from this “oppression”, losing everything because they were loyal to the king. And in Mexico, we remember the “child heroes” who committed suicide rather than surrender to the US army.)

What should we do about this injustice (if you consider it injustice)? I have a great idea. Let’s give half of the USA to Canada, half to Mexico, and we’ll have one less border to cross when we travel. Perfect!

But what about Kevin? Kevin was born in the USA. His family was very poor, but he worked all his life to take care of his family. And now – we’re going to take away his property to “erase” this injustice? How is that “just” for him? We may have to think a little deeper here.

In Mexico, we have a complicated relationship with revolution. We all want what the revolution asked for – land and liberty. We want the freedom to work for our families. None of us want to see all the power in the hands of tyrants. But we need to seek God’s way of dealing with oppression. According to His law.

So we’ll talk more about what the Bible has to say in response to these questions next time.

Justice: Oppressor and Oppressed

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In our Biblical Anthropology study, we’ve been revisiting the topic of truth, from the perspective of justice. Verses such as Leviticus 19:36 remind us of how important truth is to God in our everyday lives. When you buy 100 grams of grain at the store, most people are not happy if it turns out to be 50 grams instead.

We also started talking about how the enemy has to mix truth with lies in order to attack God and His people.

We also introduced Karl Marx, and the Marxist worldview.

We’re going to touch on a lot of related topics today, but I should start with a disclaimer. These posts are very brief, and are meant to start us thinking about a variety of topics. Talking about the history of all these ideas and philosophies can end up being an endless task.

So we’re going to start with marxism in a very broad and general sense. Not all of this will be completely and technically “Marxist”. But the point here is to give us a bit of a hook on which we can hang our thoughts – a starting point.

Today, let’s start with The Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Federico Engels in 1848. Here’s how the first chapter begins:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

The Communist Manifesto

According to Marx and Engels, the world is made up of the oppressed and the oppressors. You are one or the other. And so, in order to correct this problem, we need to completely tear down our society and rebuild it so that there are no longer these two categories. That is to say, we need revolution.

Well, we as Christians are certainly against “partiality”, right? But what is it that is really being said?

Let’s see how all this works. For Marx, the basis of the difference between these two groups is economic, and the power that wealth brings with it. Different “classes” of people.

Today, many people take this idea much farther than just economics, and bring in many other aspects of “power”. For example, you can “oppress” someone using words, or unjust systems in society.

Are you a minority? Maybe you live in China, and you’re Mexican. Or what if men have more opportunities than women? Or what if you consider yourself to be a sexual minority? Or what if your people have been historically oppressed?

Well, we take all of these things and we assign “oppression points” (that’s not a term in common use – but it helps give us an idea of what’s happening). You’re a woman? 10 points. Racial minority? 20 points. Poor? 15 points. (Don’t get upset – I’m just assigning random points here…)

Today, this is often called intersectionality. All of your identities and the groups you belong to intersect.

Now, we have a long way to go here on this topic, and we will talk more about how God’s Word promotes impartiality. But in today’s world, these ideas are used to negate God’s truth. How?

A few years ago, I was at a Spanish language conference in the USA along with thousands of people from the USA and all over Latin America. And someone asked about the development of Christian theological resources from Latin America. In other words, we want to see more.

One of the conference leaders asked (and I paraphrase), “All right, if you had these resources, would you buy them?” That’s a good question for a number of reasons. But then he got more to the point.

If I remember, he basically emphasized that the truth of the Bible is the same, no matter where you see it – whether it comes from a theologian from the USA, or a theologian from Mexico.

After the session, I was at a table with some of my friends from Mexico, and I pushed back a little bit. I pointed out that I think there is still value in different perspectives, even though God’s Word itself doesn’t change. A Mexican writer, for example, may explain the same truth in a way that can be more understandable to Mexicans, and may apply that truth in a way that’s more applicable to Mexicans. And that’s one reason why I was (and am) in favour of the development of more theological resources from all over the world.

However, I think that this leader at the conference may have already thought this through a little more than I had.

What is the value, say, of a Mexican theology book? Well, it’s written in Spanish – that will be helpful for a lot of people. Maybe it will use illustrations that will connect more with Mexican people. It will emphasize issues that we deal with in Mexico. In other words, the application will be different, in some cases.

But again, the truth won’t change.

And so if I buy a book to study a topic, I want the best study of that topic, no matter who the author may be.

We can also affirm that a poor widow in Tanzania who studies God’s Word with normal means will find the same basic truth as the scholar in the United States.

But this is not what the world is trying to tell us.

What is it that many teach today? First, we find someone with many points of intersectionality. Then, we especially listen to that person, because they can see a “truth” from their perspective that you can’t see from yours. In fact, if they’re in the right “oppressed class”, their “truth” is actually more valid than yours.

And I put “truth” in quotation marks, because in the end we’re talking about relative truth, not any kind of absolute truth that may be in the mind of God.

This is standpoint theory, or standpoint epistemology (epistemology being the study of truth).

In the local church, we listen to one another and learn from one another as equals in Christ. But the truth doesn’t change based on our perspective. But for many in the world today, we listen to the “oppressed” (more about how that’s defined later), and they tell us what the “truth” is.

Do you see the difference? For the world, the point of view – the standpoint – defines the truth. God doesn’t define the truth. And so we find feminist epistemology, feminist truth that only they can see. Or decolonization epistemology – knowledge has been dominated by the colonizers throughout history, and so we need a “new truth”. Some places are literally trying to change mathematical truth because they believe that certain nations have controlled it.

The day before I preached the sermon that this post comes from, I heard about someone from a large global Christian mission that said we need a new hermeneutic to understand the Bible. If you have taken a hermeneutics course (the study of how we study and interpret the Bible), forget about it. We need to change the truth of the Bible.

This is from a Mexican newspaper in 2005 (La Jornada) – translation mine:

There exists today a crisis in the social sciences, which generates a feeling that these disciplines cannot resolve the social justice problems in our society. For this reason, in Latin America we need to develop a new epistemology that explains our reality, highlighted the Portuguese researcher and jurist Boaventura de Sousa Santos . . .

La Jornada (2005)

According to many today, we need to change the truth.

And all that brings us to an interesting question. Remember now, according to Marx, the entire world is made up of the oppressed and the oppressors. And so we need to take from the oppressor and give to the oppressed.

So let’s say that Mark is an oppressor. But wait – who defined “oppressor” in the first place? And now, what if Mark doesn’t want to give to Ashley, who is oppressed? Easy. We need a government that can decide what truth is, define who is oppressed and oppressor, and who can take from one and give to another.

Are we starting to see a problem here? This revolution requires experts – with complete power.

I remember reading a satirical article – it was entitled “Experts Are Super Smart And 100% Reliable, Experts Confirm”.

A new study performed by experts has confirmed that experts always know what they’re talking about and never, ever just make stuff up to sound smart, experts confirmed today.

“Experts are always to be trusted and have never been wrong before,” said the experts at the recent Expert Conference, Sponsored by Experts. “Experts are so smart. And also really good-looking and not socially awkward. You should be friends with experts, ’cause, uh, experts are really neato.”

The Babylon Bee

But really, it’s no joke. Do you remember the half-built house, the headquarters of the enemy, from the last post? Who can keep it holding together? Someone with authority must enforce their version of the truth. Because reality is not uniting us – a lie is not something real.

In March of 2020, the prime minister of New Zealand made this comment about the COVID-19 situation. Now, no matter what you think about COVID-19 and the lockdowns, listen carefully:

We will share with you the most up-to-date information daily. You can trust us as a source of that information. … For that information, do feel free to visit at any time to clarify any rumour you may hear [government website url], otherwise dismiss anything else. We will continue to be your single source of truth. We will provide information frequently. … When you see those messages, remember that unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.

Jacinda Ardern (2020)

To say that people should only listen to one source to find the truth really is an end to science and to liberty. Don’t question – don’t test or evaluate – just accept.

Humanity has fallen into sin. To give too much power to a human authority is to invite oppression.

But without God, the world wants to decide what is true, and what has value. But according to the Bible, who has value? Everyone! Because of the imago dei – the image of God. Value given by God Himself.

So next time we’ll revisit that topic as we continue our search for biblical justice.

Tomorrow: Moosonee Community Church

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This weekend we’re in Moosonee, and we look forward to reconnecting with friends there!

If you’d like to see us, Lord willing we’ll be sharing at the Moosonee Community Church Sunday morning (11am), and then again in the evening (8:30pm).

We’re so thankful that the Lord has provided us the opportunity to see so many of you in person!

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