I wonder if the Apostle Paul were alive today if he would rewrite Galatians 3:3 to say:

Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by pursuit of social justice?

It is one thing to speak of justice as a result of acceptance of the gospel, it is another thing entirely to present social justice as the mission of the church.

I get why churches have capitulated in this way. It plays well in current society. This thinking is the same thinking that capitulated on the inspiration and authority of Scripture in the last century. The idea is that if the church subscribes to the culture’s way of thinking, the church will then gain new acceptance and its sphere of influence will grow.

The problem is that the exact opposite happened. The church was not accepted by the culture and many “Christian” congregations eventually stopped being the church.

Now, I think that every form of injustice is by definition wrong and Scripture does have much to say about those who perpetrate and those who overlook injustice.

The problem is that when the church allows itself to be reduced to a group of social justice warriors, we lose the war to win the battle. We treat the symptom without curing the disease.

The church’s mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ, not social justice warriors. By proclaiming the good news that Jesus Christ came to rescue us from our sin and by accepting Jesus as the provision for our sin, we can be changed from the inside out. That inside-out change will affect how we treat each other.

If the church preaches social justice without preaching the good news of Jesus Christ, the church merely provides justification for the hearers to hate the oppressor. Need I remind my readers that Jesus taught us to love our enemies, not rail against them in our social media posts.

It would be great if there was a world where injustice never happened. That world will not come about by the church or any other group taking up a political cause or trying to start a social movement.

That world will ultimately come about in only one way. That one way is when Jesus comes back to set things right.

Now, we have glimpses and hints of what that world will look like when there is an outpouring of God’s Spirit that brings spiritual revival like we have seen in the Great Awakening and other movements of God.

So church leaders, preach the gospel and all the implications for those who embrace the gospel.

We are called to obey the second great command to love our neighbor as ourself. But without the gospel we lack the strength and conviction to actually do it.

Until a few months ago, I had not heard the term “virtue-signaling.” There doesn’t seem to be a universally accepted definition of the term, but I understand it to be a reference to any effort to appear morally superior by taking a popular stand on an issue. It is usually used in a pejorative sense; it is used as a criticism of the signaler.

The irony of using this term is that one could accuse the user of the term as doing his own virtue-signaling; this is the danger of all criticism. As Christians, we have to keep in mind Jesus’ warning about the log and the speck. It is so much easier for each of us to see the faults of others while ignoring our own.

With Jesus’ warning in mind, I press on.

One of the issues I have seen in Christendom is the desire to establish credibility with those who would be considered the cultural and educational elites. Many Christian colleges have had their Christian testimony compromised or destroyed by trying to win academic respect from the culture at large.

Christianity is by nature counter to many aspects of the surrounding culture and while we may not feel comfortable about it, it is true. Jesus did say:

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

Matthew 10:34, ESV

Truth always brings separation. Truth, by definition, is incompatible with what is not true. So any time that we are trying to appeal to the culture around us, we are in danger of compromising the truth. This is the first problem with virtue-signaling.

In Luke 14:7–11, Jesus warns of the dangers of self-promotion. The warning applies to individuals and I also believe that it applies to church congregations. We need to be on guard against the lure of using sermons on the issue of the day as a means of establishing credibility in the community.

We need to constantly remind ourselves that Jesus is the one who has the authority and the power to build his church (Matthew 16:18). If we allow the issue of the day to take precedence over the thoughtful and accurate proclamation of the word of God, we have usurped Christ’s authority and taken on a responsibility that is not ours. This is the second problem with virtue-signaling.

But neither can we ignore the issues of the day. As Christians, we believe that the Bible speaks to every issue that humans will face and it is our duty and privilege to communicate the truth of Scripture and how it speaks to what is happening in the surrounding culture.

But having proclaimed what Scripture teaches, we then need to do it.

James tells us that we are to be doers and not merely hearers of the word of God (James 1:22). Our rhetoric needs to be backed up with action. Mother Teresa was not honored because she talked about working with the destitute, she was honored because she went and did it.

There is nothing wrong with church leaders wanting to speak to the moral issues of the day, but if all we do is add to the rhetoric we are not making a substantive contribution. The danger is that we can form a reliance on how current and (dare I say it?) woke we are to help grow the numbers of people coming to our services.

So the third danger of virtue-signaling is that we can say more than we do. This is true for individual Christians and is also true for church congregations. We need to be on our guard against trying to appear better than we really are.

We need to be ever vigilant against our inner Pharisee.