About a month ago I was among the earliest signers of a public statement that has since gained widespread attention and even stirred up controversy, the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel. Some people wonder why I signed. Their curiosity grows in light of the Cornwall Alliance’s offering my booklet Social Justice vs. Biblical Justice: How Good Intentions Undermine Justice and Gospel, to our friends this month. Why would we do that?

I understand the question. It’s not clear at first why an organization whose mission is to educate for Biblical earth stewardship, economic development for the poor, and the gospel of Jesus Christ would be urging its friends to read a booklet on social justice.

But it really has to do with all three of our emphases.

First, for about two decades environmentalists have tried to portray their cause as a matter of social justice. “Eco-justice,” they call it, or “environmental justice.” Indeed, under the Obama Administration the federal Environmental Protection Agency pushed the idea hard, especially in its outreach to faith-based groups. The risk from that is that many people have been deceived into embracing false claims of environmental danger because they’re disguised as claims of injustice—and nobody, after all, wants to be thought of as favoring injustice!

Second, ever since the 1960s a small but significant group of self-professed evangelical Christian thinkers, like Jim Wallis of Sojourners, Ronald Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, and Tony Campolo, has promoted “social justice” as Biblical. They haven’t always defined it very clearly, but it has amounted to the demand for government-run wealth redistribution to achieve some approximation of equality among all people regardless of their behavior.

In the 1980s a number of evangelical scholars—myself included, through my 1988 book Prosperity and Poverty: The Compassionate Use of Resources in a World of Scarcity—responded, showing that the Bible didn’t require that. Consequently, from the late 1980s through most of the 1990s, evangelical advocates of “social justice” were relatively quiet. But little by little, starting in the early 2000s, they resurrected their demands, and this time they’ve found a sympathetic ear among Millennials.

The risk in this case is that government-mandated wealth redistribution actually harms rather than helps its recipients, and at the same time it harms those whose wealth is taken. The result is less wealth creation—and where there’s less wealth creation, there’s less wealth, period—which means the poor suffer.

Third, “social justice” as generally understood in the movement is actually the opposite of Biblical justice. “Social justice” demands that people be given benefits they haven’t earned—and that those benefits be funded by taking from other people what they have earned.

In contrast, Biblical justice—as I argue in Social Justice vs. Biblical Justice—requires rendering impartially and proportionally to everyone his due in accord with the righteous standard of God’s moral law. It follows that forced wealth redistribution is unjust, and therefore that “social justice” is actually injustice.

But that’s not all. “Social justice,” by confusing charitable aid with justice, corrupts the good news of justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

How is that? Justice means rendering to each his due—what his conduct deserves. Grace, though, means giving benefits freely to those who not only haven’t earned them but have earned the opposite.

As I wrote in Social Justice vs. Biblical Justice,

Granting unearned benefits is grace, not justice. And when the state—the legal monopoly of force—gives benefits to some as ‘positive rights,’ it must take them, by force if necessary, from others. Such a forceful removal violates their God-given rights and so is injustice.

Recognizing this distinction is fundamental to the gospel. Blurring it undermines the gospel.

The Biblical gospel is that justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. This gospel tells us God “saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy” (Titus 3:5). It says, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). It says, “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). From the standpoint of the gospel, one cannot require that justice equalize inequality …. Such a position is fatal.

Paul makes the distinction clear: man’s own righteousness (or justice) is “from the law” (Philippians 3:9). Therefore, since all have broken the law, no man is righteous in himself (Romans 3:9–20). The just desert of sin is death (Genesis 2:17; Ezekiel 18:20; Romans 1:32), not life. If a person’s justification were by works of the law, it would not be “a gift [charis, grace] but … his due,” that is, his just reward (Romans 4:4; compare 3:20–4:3). Whatever is of justice is not of grace, and whatever is of grace is not of justice.

It is troubling, therefore, to see Progressive evangelicals disparaging charity in contrast with justice in meeting the needs of the poor. Properly understood, charity—i.e., grace—is just as important a response to people’s needs as justice. Where the needy suffer because they have been unjustly treated, they need justice. If such justice is not attainable, they need charity. Where they suffer because they have harmed themselves, or by historical circumstances (i.e., divine providence, such as a natural disaster), there too they need charity.

Let there be no misunderstanding. Refusing to equate justice with grace does not excuse disobeying God’s commands to give charitably to the poor. Personal righteousness requires graciously serving the poor—and not only the materially poor but people with all kinds of needs. Believers, individually and corporately, owe our Sovereign this gracious service to the needy.

But if care for the needy is made a matter of justice to the needy rather than to God, then grace becomes law. Then, the needy—and those who merely profess to be needy—may claim the benefits of grace as their due by justice. In so doing, they appeal to the state for their enforcement, since God has ordained the state to enforce justice. Such an appeal leads to all the inherent contradictions of positive rights and the stultifying effects of wealth redistribution by the coercive power of the state. Even worse, it blinds them to their deepest need: the grace of God offered in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

When God commands justice, we are to do justice, and the state is to enforce it. When He commands grace, we are to exercise grace. But it is precisely because grace is not justice, and because God ordained the state to enforce justice, that the state is never to enforce grace. Indeed, “forced grace”—the real meaning of Progressive “social justice”—is a contradiction in terms.

So I hope you’ll take advantage the opportunity to get your free copy of Social Justice vs. Biblical Justice. How? Just make a donation of any size to the Cornwall Alliance and ask for it in the comments box. You can make your donation at our secure online giving site by clicking on the “Donate” button toward the upper right of this page, or by mailing your check to Cornwall Alliance, 3712 Ringgold Rd., Chattanooga, TN 37412.