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Zero Social Gospel in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Part Three)
The application of coupling the important New Testament word “gospel” with “social” makes it an issue of eternal destiny. Gospel relates to salvation, so somehow “social gospel” relates to the word “salvation” at least. Does a social gospel really save though? It doesn’t.
The gospel saves, but not something called “social gospel.” Social gospel advocates make the social gospel a determiner of eternal destiny by buttressing it with the parable of the sheep and the goats from Jesus’ Olivet Discourse. At the end of this parable, Jesus says to His disciples (Matthew 12:45-46):
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
Whatever position someone might take about this passage, it sounds very serious. Someone is going to everlasting punishment and another is going to life eternal. Everyone will want to get into the latter category, of course.
The Gospel
Social gospel proponents hint that God requires taking care of the poor to avoid going away into everlasting punishment. Almost all of them would not go that far, because the same ones who interpret this passage as social work also are tentative or weak on eternal punishment for anyone. However, they still want to frontload these works into the definition of the gospel.
In Jesus’ presentation of the gospel, He deals with two aspects: one, the entrance requirements, and two, the confirmation of conversion. Someone can say he acceded to the entrance requirements, but Jesus says to judge that by a confirming transformation. The sheep, who are separated from the goats in Christ’s judgment of nations at the end of the tribulation period, confirm their identity as true sheep and not goats by authenticating behavior.
The Audience of Jesus’s Teaching
Jesus speaks to saved Jews and tells them that at this time of trial and trouble before the beginning of His reign on earth, they will not abandon their fellow believers. That would be the same or akin to abandoning him. At that time of testing, you can identify the true sheep by their embrace of other suffering sheep. Jesus is not saying the following in this prophetic address:
People in general receive life eternal and avoid everlasting punishment by feeding and housing poor people in general, saved and unsaved — in essence, God saves people for their good works in contradiction to the gospel.
The Lord in His Olivet Discourse does not address society in general. He answers His Jewish disciples about the future coming of His kingdom, something they expected as premillennialists. Jesus isn’t spiritualizing or allegorizing. He uses figurative language of sheep and goats, which are metaphors, easily identifiable. Goats are not leadable. They don’t follow. Jesus can and will lead sheep and His sheep will follow Him.
Answering the Disciples about a Literal Kingdom
All of the parables Jesus tells in His Olivet Discourse answer the questions of the disciples at the beginning of it:
Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
The word “coming” occurs seven times in Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 24-25 and especially “the coming of the Son of Man” in 24:27, 30, 37, and 39. God reveals to Daniel and Daniel 7:13-14:
13 I saw in the night visions, and, behold,, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.
14 And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.
The disciples and Jesus refer to this prophecy and this time. This isn’t speaking of any old time. It’s answering a question specifying a particular future actual event.
The Application of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats
How much of the parable of the sheep and the goats and the Olivet Discourse in general apply to now? The Olivet Discourse mainly does not apply to anything happening right now. It’s about something yet to come. That doesn’t mean there is zero application. It does apply in certain general ways.
One, it provides hope for the future. Jesus is coming and He will set up a kingdom on the earth. Two, Jews will believe in Jesus Christ in fulfillment of those prophecies in Isaiah 52-53 and Zechariah 12, so we can trust God’s promises. They will take care of fellow believers and then enter into the kingdom. Above all things, three, the message to believers today is to be ready for these events. Believers ought to always ready themselves for the future. They should and will take care of their own as if they are Jesus Christ Himself.
The philosophy or message of the social gospel clashes with scripture, some of which I addressed earlier regarding salvation by grace through faith. Social work won’t save you. It doesn’t even confirm your conversion according to this proof text. True believers will band together to survive persecution, which validates their true salvation profession. This is equal to not defecting from the faith and instead overcoming by faith.
God’s Purpose
Feeding and Housing?
The Bible smacks up against feeding and housing the general poor or homeless population. As I say that, scripture categorizes people in a different way than the modern social movements. Like He does in the Olivet Discourse, consistent with all the Bible, there the saved and the lost. David writes in Psalm 37:25:
I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.
Preaching the gospel to everyone can move some into the category of the righteous. That will also solve people’s physical condition. It is not God’s will to relieve everyone indiscriminately from their hunger. God uses drought and famine to get people’s attention. He also uses poor physical conditions to prepare hearts and open eyes to the need of and for God.
Using Drought, Disease, and Famine
Feeding and housing takes away the pain of sin-engendered suffering that might help these people listen to the actual gospel message. As an example Amos 4:6-9 says God sends droughts, disease, and famine to warn and cause to listen to Him:
6 And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.
7 And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered.
8 So two or three cities wandered unto one city, to drink water; but they were not satisfied: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.
9 I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: when your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the palmerworm devoured them: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.
Many of drought, disease, and famine bring about the will of God. God doesn’t want people to rescue the ones suffering without repentance. This postpones something even worse for them. God uses these physical troubles to motivate a return to Him. These passages occur all over scripture.
Social Gospel Clashes with Jesus and the True and Only Gospel
The social gospel elevates the temporal, like Esau relinquishing his birthright for a mess of pottage (Gen 25:31-34). This confuses people. It sends a wrong, false message that this is your best life now. No. Faith trades the temporal for the eternal. This is the simplicity of losing your temporal life for eternal life. The social elevates the former as the priority. Jesus doesn’t do this. He says give up the world and take Him, which is to obtain eternal life.
The social gospel doesn’t take scripture seriously. It primarily uses the Bible. The goal is not understanding what Jesus said in Matthew 25, but using what he said for an agenda, one that isn’t true.
Should social gospel supporters scare people by telling them that they won’t have eternal life if they don’t volunteer to feed and house the general population? Do they even believe this? It’s either true or it isn’t. It isn’t true, and since it isn’t true, this kind of threat is wicked.
Jesus will turn people into the lake of fire. Who He does and who He doesn’t are as important as anything. It’s a terrible thing to confuse the gospel. People are saved, not by doing good works, but by faith alone in Jesus Christ.
The Knotty Subject of Free Will: Do We Have It Or Is It an Illusion? (Part Two)
Free Will
When you read “free will,” you read two words, one of which is “will.” “Will” is simple. A mind is capable of choosing, like ordering a flavor of ice cream or reaching into the candy bowl for Snickers or Reeses.
There are layers here. The will is the capability of the mind choosing, but a motive directs the will in its choice. Many different factors may or can combine to bring someone to volition. Scripture deals with them in several various instances.
The word “free” has to do with opportunity or power. Someone can and has the opportunity to do what he wants. The question arises, does anyone truly have the power and opportunity? Is anyone really free in his will?
In part one, I see in scripture that the free will of man exists by the very use of the terminology “free will” in scripture. What though goes into free will?
Concerns in the Subject of Free Will
From my vantage point, I see six main types of concerns in the subject of free will. One, God created man, wants love from man, and man needs free will to love God. Hence, God created man with free will.
Two, free will explains suffering. God allowed men a choice to sin and the consequential curse that brings suffering to men. Suffering isn’t God’s fault. It’s ours. This does not mean that God cannot allow suffering or deliver from suffering, but it rose from man’s sin.
Three, apparently if man has free will, then he becomes the deciding factor of salvation and God doesn’t then get the glory. This assumes a salvation decision makes man’s salvation by works. Scripture doesn’t read that way, but it’s a kind of logical argument for determinists.
Four, if man doesn’t have free will, then God determined sin and becomes the author of sin. God is not the author of sin according to James 1:13. His hatred of sin would also assume He’s not the author of sin. God created beings with the potential to sin, but He didn’t create sin.
Five, the Bible does not at all read deterministic. God is sovereign, but His sovereignty doesn’t contradict man’s free will. The two do not contradict. God does not cede His authority by allowing men to decide.
The Debilitation of the Sin Nature
Six, free will given to man by God is debilitated by the corruption of his sin nature, even as seen in 2 Peter 2:19:
While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.
This bondage is so complete that Jesus says in John 15:5:
I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
Without Jesus, man can do nothing. This is also seen in 1 Corinthians 2:14:
But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
The Illusion of Free Will
Men are so darkened in their minds that they operate in bondage. This speaks of the illusion of free will. In Romans 8:8, Paul writes that man in the flesh “cannot please God.” That doesn’t sound free, does it? He cannot. In the previous verse, “The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” The carnal mind cannot subject to the law of God. That also does not sound free.
I hear today especially young people about their loss of free will. They even consider this “loss” as a kind of deviance. On the other hand, they consider the choice of sin to be free. Sin isn’t freedom. Jesus said in John 8:34: “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.”
Sin is not freedom. It is bondage. What I’m writing here is why the subject of free will is a knotty problem. Their freedom is illusory.
Freedom comes from God. The way out comes from God. The grace of God allows free will. God created man with free will, but sin brought bondage. God’s grace brings freedom.
Satan deceives everyone and especially young people today, that they are free because they can choose evil. That “choice” is an illusion. The exhilaration of their choosing evil is part of the deception and bondage. They find themselves in great peril in these chains of darkness. And they don’t view their new Satanic religion as deviant. It’s the same sociological pathology held by the opponents of Noah while he prepared the ark.
The Inclination of the Grace of God
On the subject of free will, confronting the knottiness, Jonathan Edwards distinguished between natural ability and moral ability. Sin does not stop a man from making choices. He makes them. Because man can and does make choices, he has responsibility before God.
Even though he chooses, moral depravity chains a man to sinfulness. Everything he does is ruined in some way, so that he makes no good choices even when he makes good choices. That sounds contradictory, but he cannot please God and that makes everything bad. Even when he’s trying to please God, his remaining rebellion and rejection of truth ruins those too. That is the moral inability of Edwards.
Edwards contrasts with ancient theologian and heretic, Pelagius. Pelagius saw inability as injustice, because God commanded man to obey. If man couldn’t, then God was unjust. God isn’t unjust, so man must be still good to a certain extent. Pelagius depended on flawed logic like determinists also do.
God can hold man responsible for choices, because he has the ability to choose. The freedom of choice, however, is an illusion to all except those who encounter the inclination of the grace of God. God’s grace exerts its power in the means God chooses for the reality of free will. The lost have free will in their natural ability and potential for moral ability, ability only experienced by true believers through the grace of God. They are free indeed (John 8:36).
The Conflicting, Perplexing Calvinistic Doctrine of Free Will
As I started to write this post, I thought about whether I decided to write it or whether God predetermined my writing it. After the smoke exited and cleared my ears, I started writing again. Are my fingers typing on their own?
The Calvinistic Doctrine of Free Will
Does Calvinism Square With Scripture?
How Jesus Relates Persecution to the Gospel in the Sermon on the Mount and His Example to Us In Doing So
In what is called “the Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 5-7, Jesus preaches salvation to a Jewish crowd of people and pulls down with supernatural wisdom and authority their unique strongholds. For instance, in the very first statement, one of the Beatitudes, He says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The Jews didn’t see themselves as spiritually poor, but spiritually wealthy. They were by rights, God’s chosen people. Of course, they were already “blessed” through the Abrahamic covenant, and even in their own eyes, the Mosaic covenant, according to the Deuteronomic code. None of their thinking was true on this, so Jesus eviscerated it in the Sermon.
Another Jewish thought is “the kingdom.” They would have considered themselves already the beneficiaries of the kingdom through the Davidic covenant. “Heaven” is the abode of God and they saw themselves as the children of God, so wherever God was, they would be, even as God resided in the tabernacle through the wilderness. Jesus confronts their wrong thinking when he shows the rich man is in Hell, not in heaven in Luke 16. None of this, the kingdom or heaven, was theirs, however, unless they were poor in spirit, which meant that they acquiesced to their own spiritual poverty, that they really were lacking and in dire need. They needed to do what the Apostle Paul did and count their own spirituality as loss and as dung for them to win Christ or find themselves under the reign of the Messiah in His kingdom with all its promised blessings.
The Jews already saw themselves as sadly and badly not receiving their just desserts, their appropriate reward. According to their own assessment, they were persecuted by the Romans as they had been by many other various empires previously. This would fly in the face of being a blessed people and a kingdom people. It was an unacceptable circumstance that should be turned around and would be reversed by a true Messiah. That’s not what Jesus said though.
Just like the people in the kingdom of heaven would be first poor in spirit, they would also be persecuted for righteousness sake (Matthew 5:10). Persecution is the guaranteed cost of a truly saved person and Jesus frontloads this in His gospel presentation in Matthew 5:10-12. As people enter into true salvation through Jesus Christ, they need to expect persecution. They need to count the cost. Jesus said in Luke 9:23, that if any man will come after him, let him take up his cross daily. Jesus issues that understanding right up front to those who might receive the kingdom. It’s a narrow road with few on it.
Churches today do not give their targets for attendance or membership the impression that they will suffer or be persecuted by joining up. That’s a way to shrink the numbers. However, it is the method of Jesus. He included that in His gospel presentation and more than once. Do not expect to have it easy if you’re a Christian, and that’s not why you’re receiving Christ, for what you’ll receive in time, because that’s going to be persecution. Very likely why less are truly converted today is because they do not see the Christian life as worth suffering for. They would choose a Christianity full of pleasure, but not the one with guaranteed pain, so they reject genuine Christianity for the placebo. Churches offer the placebo, because that’s what people want. Then the entire program of the church revolves around various pleasures, especially for the young people.
The Jews thought they were persecuted already, but they were were persecuted for unrighteousness. Daniel prophecies why Israel would be dominated by the Romans. He was downhearted by the lack of enthusiasm for God among the captives in Babylon, comfortable to just stay and not return to the land for true worship of God. They would keep being chastised because of their faithlessness and then they took that as persecution. Actual persecution is for righteousness and not unrighteousness. Just because the Jews of Jesus’ day were suffering didn’t mean they were persecuted and neither did it mean they had a future kingdom for them. No, that kingdom was only for those persecuted for righteousness.
People in the future kingdom do not fit into the present one, the kingdom of this world. The people under the future reign of Jesus are those who want a present reign of Jesus. People who want Him to be king in the future have got to want Him to be king in the present. Those over whom Jesus reigns will be persecuted. They will not fit in. They will be despised, reviled, and accused falsely by men. That will be the norm for those following Jesus Christ into the kingdom and He wants them to know that right up front.
Jesus isn’t going to take away persecution in the short term. He offers the future kingdom as a motivation for present rejoicing. The basis for being exceeding glad now is the reward in heaven for all eternity. There is a lack of joy in churches and in professing Christian families because of something far less than persecution. The church and family members are not getting their way and they don’t like the discomfort now. They expect to be treated better and have their rights protected. When they get hard preaching from scripture they become easily offended. When they are required to live like a Christian, they are put off and threaten to quit, if not just to find another church where they’ll be treated like they want.
Professing Christians aren’t looking for a church where they will suffer. They are looking for a place of creature comforts with lots of friends. This is not what Jesus told true believers to expect. He told them just the opposite and He included it in His gospel presentation.
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