Is the Gospel enough?

“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes...”

-Romans 1:16

There’s a plethora of discussion happening in the current climate of the Church today regarding the latest form of cultural shift – the Social Justice movement.  This isn’t necessarily a new movement, but rather it has resurfaced due to several tragic events that have taken place in recent years involving law enforcement and young, African American males.  Just yesterday, in fact, an officer in a neighboring town was convicted of murder and sentenced to 15 years in prison without parole after firing into a vehicle of African American teenage boys, none of whom were armed, who were leaving a party after the officers had asked everyone to leave. 

            Setting political stances aside, when these types of things happen, they are senseless, they are wrong, and yes, they need to be fixed and fixed quickly.

            However, let the record show, that I do believe there are also wonderful officers of all socioeconomic/ethnic backgrounds who serve our communities admirably and without prejudice every single day.

            My purpose for this writing is not to explore the “Why’s” and the “How’s”, the "woulda's" and the "shoulda's" and everything else that’s been discussed on social and news media platforms at infinitude.  I will leave all of that to those individuals.  However, there is something troubling that, as a pastor, I’ve noticed taking place during this time of social/cultural tumult within the Church as a whole: It is being questioned if the Gospel is truly “enough” to fix the many social problems our country faces.

            I can understand the culture and the unbelievers in society dismissing any chance of the Gospel being an effective method, much less the only method, for changing hearts and minds that will facilitate real change and real reform in these matters – namely matters of social justice.  However, what is so baffling to me is the number of Christians, pastors, and influential Christian leaders who are proclaiming that the Gospel is an insufficient solution to this problem.  Perhaps they don’t say it as blatantly as that, but their rhetoric and tone clearly indicate that many of them do not believe what is clearly taught in passages such as Romans 1:16.  They are instead claiming that the Gospel is NOT the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. 

            It is made quite clear in Scripture that the saving work of Christ involves a process of progressive holiness called sanctification.  This is to say that every true believer, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, is on a path as “God’s workmanship” (Eph. 2:10) to gradually be transformed into the image of Christ which will be completed in eternity.  For example, Ezekiel 36:26-27 states, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put My Spirit in you and move you to follow My decrees and be careful to keep My laws.”  To this reality, the Apostle Paul wrote by the Spirit, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor. 5:17)  All of this describes to us how sanctification is even possible.  It is a supernatural work of God by the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ.  This theme of ‘newness’ rings throughout Scripture.

            Furthermore, as if to make His will even clearer to us in all of this, God spoke plainly, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification…” (1 Thess. 4:3).  Side note: What is God’s will for my life?  To be made into the very image of Christ.

            If the Gospel is God’s will and God’s work, and if the Gospel is the power and means to get that accomplished, then why is it not enough when it comes to the social justice issue?  The questioning of the sufficiency of the Gospel and it’s transforming power has taken place on a number of recent issues, but particularly today I ask: Why is the Gospel powerful enough to change the heart of the drug addict, the prostitute, the liar, the thief, the atheist, the drunk, the adulterer, but it isn’t powerful enough to change the heart of the racist?  That may seem like a leap to go from social justice to racism, but racism is the issue that’s at the core of all that is involved in the social justice movement: The belief that these things continue to happen, and the continued narrative behind it all, is that racism fuels these tragedies.

            I cannot speak to every situation, I don’t know the minds and hearts of the individuals involved in each tragedy, and quite honestly, I don’t know if we will ever have all of the details and facts woven within each story.  We may never know all of these things.  But what I do know is this: If the Gospel is seen as powerless in changing the hearts and minds of those who truly are racist, and if the Gospel is seen as insufficient to bring people of different skin colors and backgrounds together in unity, both inside and outside the Church, then we have no hope or prayer in anything getting resolved.  Ever.

            The heart is the problem.  “The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9).  It's baffling enough to me that someone could even be a racist, because biblically speaking, different races DO NOT EXIST.  There was one race created in the beginning, the human race.  We all share the same ancestors, Adam and Eve, and from there climate and other elements have given us varying skin pigmentation.  Different races of people is a man-made subject.  It is not of God.  So to be a racist is to hate yourself!  

            Man certainly can’t know the heart; man can’t even know his own heart (Jer. 17:9).  But, God knows all hearts, actions and thoughts. (1 Sam. 16:7; Ps. 139:2).  No amount of Twitter war, debate, rioting, education, conversation, law making, or government intervention can fix this problem of the heart.  Sure, you can talk and debate long enough to convince someone of a certain position intellectually, but if you can talk someone into something, you can always talk them out of it.  You simply need a more compelling narrative.  However, when the heart of man becomes changed through the power of the Spirit found only in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, an irreversible transformation takes places as that born again individual enters the narrow road on the way to sanctification. 

THIS, the Gospel, and the power found only within it, is the only solution to a growing problem that no man will ever be able to solve on his own, left to his own devices.  What man cannot do, God can (Matt.19:26).  Man cannot change the heart of another man, but God can.

Social justice and the atrocities that have spurned the movement are a heart issue.  The only antidote for a sinful, wicked, broken heart is the power of God found in the only Gospel for salvation to everyone who believes.