In a broadly Christian world, Christian virtues tend to get weaponized. We have seen this with concepts like justice and love and empathy, or the condemnation of being judgmental. Only a broadly Christian world says that being judgmental is wrong or that justice or love or empathy are good. But of course everything depends on definitions. When a judge vindicates the innocent and condemns the guilty, he is being judgmental in a good way. When someone finds a lost wallet and decides not to return it to its owner because the owner is an enemy, that’s unrighteous judgment. The Bible requires God’s people to be judgmental, but we are to judge with the standard of God’s word and remember that the measure we use to judge others will be used to measure us.
We are required to love everyone, but love is treating others lawfully from the heart. Love is not going along with what anyone says makes them happy or caving or compromising simply because they say what you’re doing makes them feel bad. Likewise, justice is not making everyone happy. Justice is enforcing God’s law, which primarily consists of punishing evildoers. And while God does require us to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn, we must also practice self-control, which means that we are not to be ruled by our feelings or the feelings of others but by God’s Word.
In one sense, the fact that everyone, even those who hate God, keep appealing to these Christian virtues tells you that we are not yet as far from our Christian roots as some would have you believe. Pure paganism doesn’t care about justice, love, or empathy. But of course, if we continue down this current dark path, apart from the grace of God, we will end up in a paganism that ceases to care about any virtue.
But all of this is why worship on the Lord’s Day is at the center of all that we do. In worship we renew covenant with our Lord. Romans 12:1 says that we accomplish this reasonable service as we offer our bodies as living sacrifices. And in the next verse, it says that we are not to be conformed to this world but transformed by the renewing of our minds. As we renew covenant in worship, God renews our minds, correcting, teaching, training, and changing us from glory to glory.
Toby Sumpter – March 10, 2024
