The Trinity of Truth, Love and Justice

The Trinity of truth, love and justice; lessons from James, chapter two.

The end goal of the kingdom of God is justice (the Messianic passages from Isaiah, Matthew 6:33, NEB, Romans 14:17, NEB); Jubilee justice that releases the oppressed (Isaiah 58, Luke 4:18-19).

But how do we move from oppression to justice---through truth and love.

When discrimination, segregation and oppression take place inside the church walls or when they take place in the surrounding community and the church is silent, then social evil is normalized, legitimated, even sanctified; for example, the Temple as a den of robbers.

What is the remedy?  Three steps in this order: truth first, then love, and last justice.  The church should not skip steps one and two and jump to step three.  James, chapter two:

1.  1-7    need a PROPHET to proclaim the TRUTH, expose the evil.

2.  8-13   need a PASTOR to practice LOVE.

3.  14-26    need a PRACTITIONER to do JUSTICE---rebuild poor communities.

Back to verses 1-7: the church was honoring the oppressive rich and dishonoring the oppressed poor; religion was used as cover for this deceit.  Verses 8-13: the church was not loving their neighbor, the poor, the oppressed.  Verses 14-26: the church needed faith fueled good works of justice; these are required to release the oppressed poor.

How does James two apply to the American church?  The American church desperately needs prophetic teaching about the fact that oppression is evil, discrimination is wrong, partiality is sin, neglect of justice is evil, failure to your neighbor is sin.  In the American church,
there is no biblical based theology of oppression so the church fails at step one and cannot proceed to steps two and three until the church has repented and restituted.

Some churches are skipping steps one and two and jumping over to step three, the justice emphasis.  This won't work; at best, one will only produce fragments of justice.  Not good enough to release the oppressed.

All Americans could learn from John Perkins, the Mississippi prophet and practitioner.  In Mississippi, the church had practiced discrimination, segregation and oppression for generations.  To break the demonic stranglehold, John used both the Word of Truth and the Spirit of Truth to expose social evil and provide solutions.  John loved his enemies and rebuilt oppressed communities.

Love alone might RELIEVE  the pain of the oppressed; but only justice will RELEASE the oppressed.