If righteousness could be gained through the law . . .

e're contemplating the biblical perspective on how Christians might best impact worldly cultures, and we're especially reminding ourselves of four principles the evangelical movement has had a hard time holding onto.

The first principle (which we talked about on Monday) was:

1. Preaching, not lobbying, is how we make truth known.



Today, let's observe a closely-related principle:

2. Gospel, not Law is what changes sinful hearts.

Notice the principle at the end of Galatians 2: "I do not set aside the grace of God," Paul says. "For if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!" (v. 21).

Of course, he's talking in that context about the Old Testament law. He was battling the error of the Judaizers, who were teaching that legal obedience is the instrument of justification. If you're not circumcised, they said, you're not truly saved. If you're a Gentile who wants to become a Christian, you first need to become Jewish and obey all the ceremonial laws, because those things are necessary to make you truly righteous. They insisted that the righteousness sinners need for salvation must be gained through their own obedience to the law. That's what the law was for, they taught—the law makes sinners righteous.

That was a direct assault on the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the principle of sola fide. It was an implicit denial that faith is the instrument of justification, and it made the law instrumental instead.

Paul answered the error head on by saying that if righteousness could be brought about by legislation, the whole gospel would be superfluous. He repeats the same principle exactly a chapter later, in Galatians 3:21: "If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law."

Again, the point Paul is making in Galatians has to do with the law of Moses and its role in our salvation. The law was given to awaken us to our sin, to reveal the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and to eliminate every possible option for salvation other than the transforming grace of God. The law didn't lay out a way of salvation, because law is totally impotent when it comes to transforming human hearts.

And if that's true of Moses' law, which came directly from God, it is certainly true of earthly statutes that are the result of political wrangling and compromise. Law has its rightful place, and no righteous person would ever want to see a lawless society. But when it comes to the question of how Christians might transform an already evil-society, the answer lies in proclaiming the gospel, not in campaigning for legislation.

American evangelicals, of all people, ought to understand that. Our history is full of failed forays into the political realm—various attempts to establish Christ's kingdom on earth by legislation, and efforts to impact society spiritually through political means—starting with the Puritan experiment in the 1600s. The founders of Massachusetts wanted to establish a society of believers governed by righteous laws which were enforced by magistrates who were mature church members, because they believed that would create an earthly paradise and (in the words of Matthew 5:14) a city set on a hill. But the sons and daughters of the original Puritans became so comfortable with the notion that they were keeping society righteous through righteous laws that they neglected to evangelize their own children. (Just like Old Testament Israel.) And within two generations, Puritan society was beset with the very same problems the original Puritans had left England to get away from—not to mention witch trials and religious persecution. Before much more than a century had passed, Unitarianism and Deism became more powerful religious forces in New England than Puritanism was.

Even the few limited or short-lived political successes evangelicals have achieved in American history all turned out to be monstrous failures. At the beginning of the twentieth century, for example, practically the entire evangelical community in America used their clout to pass a constitutional amendment (the eighteenth) making it illegal to manufacture, sell, or transport alcoholic beverages in America. Far from elevating the spiritual climate of America, prohibition unleashed a wave of organized crime like the country had never seen. Thirteen years later, the twenty-first amendment formally repealed the eighteenth, American society went on a binge from which it has yet to recover, and today drunkenness remains a massive social problem. I hope we realize by now that only the gospel offers a true solution to that problem.

Laws have their rightful place in restraining evil and punishing evildoers. Romans 13 recognizes that. Even in the hands of such an utterly wicked ruler as Nero, the mechanism of government still functions in that common-grace sense, to bring a measure of peace and order to the most fallen, sin-cursed society. But if your true goal is really the transformation and redemption of the culture—or more precisely, the salvation of individual sinners—law is not the proper tool for that; gospel is. And woe to churches and pastors who divert their energies and resources away from gospel ministry under the delusion that the best and most important way to fix society is through campaigning for a certain kind of legislation. It's not.

Some readers may be thinking, But no evangelical really believes political activism is a proper replacement for the gospel. Would anyone actually advocate the suppression of the gospel in favor of political lobbying? Actually, people do it all the time. There are Christian radio broadcasters who rarely talk about anything other than political controversy. Often their topics as well as the arguments they use are hardly any different from what you'd hear Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity say. Some of the best-known broadcasters in Christian radio <cough>James Dobson, Chuck Colson</cough> fit that profile. You'll never hear them stress justification by faith, because Roman Catholic support is essential to the political coalition they hope to build, and they can't afford to alienate that segment of their audience. You're not likely to hear them stress the exclusivity of Christ or the absolute necessity of faith in Christ, either, because that would offend their Jewish allies. In practice, what they are saying when they do that is that they believe it's more vital to achieve a political and legislative solution to America's moral crisis than it is to proclaim the gospel clearly.

That, brethren, is an absolute abdication of our calling as ambassadors of Christ. The message we're commanded to proclaim, and the theme of all our public ministry is summed up in four words in 2 Corinthians 5:20: "Be reconciled to God." We're first of all ambassadors; not political lobbyists or cultural jihadists. We are commissioned to proclaim the gospel, not to act as if mere law (or more law) were the answer to what ails sinners.

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