In August, 1978, Christian universities from around the world held a conference on Justice in the International Order at Grand Rapids, Michigan. The conference began with a Sunday evening sermon entitled "Righteousness and Justice: Reflections on Revelation 22:11c and Amos 5:24," preached by Rev. Sidney H. Rooy, a missionary teacher in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The sermon was powerfully packed with close-knit Biblical reasoning and exhortation about the relationship between what we profess to believe concerning justification about faith and what we practice by way of promoting justice in the world. It provided a striking example of both the need for and the possibility of a Christian mind. The summary and condensation which follows will give a glimpse of what it says; those who would like to read the entire sermon may order it through Alta Vista. 

Rooy begins by reminding his hearers that human suffering and human indifference to that suffering have gone on for a long time. He mentions, as illustrations, Jeremiah’s lament over the fall of ancient Jerusalem and a modern Chilean poem identifying organized religion with the oppression of the poor. Over against these tragic outbursts he sets the Biblical injunctions:

"But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream, and He that is righteousness, let him do righteousness still."

-Amos 5:24 and Revelation 22:11c

When the Rooys first moved to Argentina and began to observe the sharp contrast between wealth and poverty, they noticed that the Spanish Bible uses the word "justicia" to translate both "righteousness" and "justice." Consequently it is full of texts about justice whereas the King James Bible, although it refers often to justice in the Old Testament, never uses the word "justice" in the New. Why, asks Rooy, should this be?

1. Etymological considerations.

The Old Testament contains a rich collection of words gathered around the concepts of righteousness and justice; in the New Testament, especially as translated into modern languages, a problem has developed in the usage of the two words. They come from the same root word (a word signifying the index finger that points out the right way to go). To our Lord, they represented parts of the same reality. The Spanish and Latin Bibles have preserved the integral relation of the concepts with more faithfulness to the New Testament language than have the Saxon and Germanic ones. We have made separate "idea-tight compartments" for them in approximately the following manner:

"Justification is that legal act of God that changes our status and which subsequently has implications for our own religious life.

Righteousness is that spiritual quality which we receive and which subsequently has implications for our conduct.

Justice is the form in which we conduct ourselves in relation to our fellowmen and seek for them that to which they have right."

This use of the two words "righteousness" and "justice" to express different aspects of the same concept has had unhealthy theological implications.

2. Theological implications.

Amos uses "righteousness" and "justice" interchangeably. The Revelation passage could just as well read, "He that is just, let him do justice still." (in fact, this is the way the Douay Version translates it.) For Amos, making just judgements and defending the poor are simply two aspects of a person’s being imbued with God’s righteousness in all of his life.
Rooy goes on to suggest that God’s righteousness-justice, like His love, is both transcendent and immanent. They are incarnate in Christ and realized through Him. They don’t occur and remain on the transcendental level. In Christ eternal justice becomes temporal justice in the dynamic encounter between good and evil.
We have narrowed the scope and blunted the force of the Biblical concepts by spiritualizing justification. Justification (which makes us righteous) gives us pardon, makes us new persons, and inspires kindness in us. Justice has become the restraint on crime and the principles of public order administered by early authorities, whether Christian or not. This treatment does violence to the Biblical picture. "We forget that justice is a sort of materialization of existence; i.e. it is the incarnation in time and space of God’s relation to his world; it is the creation-form of life in divinely given structures for society without which man cannot even exist."
Rooy insists that, while it is possible logically to think of justification in merely judicial terms, practically it cannot be separated from the rule of Christ, the King and the Judge. If one justified them, he must be interested in justice. Otherwise he does not take seriously the involvement of the Lord in history.
The Bible speaks often of righteousness and justice in the context of God’s covenant. His righteousness is a covenantal thing; he fulfills His promises. But by the same token, He expects and requires covenant faithfulness and loyalty from his people. This must show itself in active concern for justice. Doing justice is not merely a consequence of the covenant; it is no mere social or private virtue; it is of the very nature of the covenant, for the covenant brings us into a living union with the God who practices justice toward the oppressed, the widow, and the orphan. Hence, Hosea 2:19 can speak of the covenant in the following terms: "I will betroth thee unto me forever . . . in righteousness, and in justice, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies."

Rooy now moves to a second answer to his basic questions. He asserts that in his second heading the predicates are interchangeable. Returning to the Scripture passages in Amos and Revelation, he insists that being righteous (i.e. justified) and doing righteousness (justice) are concomitant realities. One does not become justified first and later develop an interest in justice. The doing is key to being. He develops this topic first from God’s side and then from man’s.
He turns first to the writings of John and shows how clearly John identifies love with righteousness. The argument is this: 1) The man who does right (justice) is born of God. (1 John 2:29; 3:7b). Likewise he who loves his neighbor is born of God (1 John 4:7) 2) He who does justice knows God. He who loves also knows God. (1 John 4:7). 3) He who does not do justice, as he who does not love, does not know God – for God is love. (1 John 3:10; 4:8).
John says nothing new in this argument. Jeremiah had long since identified doing justice to the poor and needy with knowing God. (Jer. 22:13-16 and 9:23) Hosea, too, had shown that knowing God was inextricably linked to loving Him and doing justice. (Hosea 4:6; 6:6; 10:12; 12:6). Isaiah says the same thing when he identifies the Messianic King as the one who judges righteously. (Isaiah 11:1-9).
Rooy sums up his point in a statement and a quotation. "Knowing God is no theological reflection; it is doing justice and righteousness. Or, to say it the other way around:

1. The Church must learn justice-righteousness.

The people of the covenant are responsible to do justice and to strive for justice in human, historical, cultural ways. Rooy puts Amos into contemporary language when he says, "Grave cultural crimes cannot be remedied by grand cultic ceremonies. Close down your churches, stop paying the rich ministers, call a halt to the construction of fancy buildings, for I hate, I despise, your communion services and polished sermons . . . Stop the noise of your hymn sings, and all your special music. . . But let justice and righteousness roll down. . ."

2. The church must teach justice.

The church must teach the state of the church’s right to exist as God’s mouthpiece declaring the right to exist as God’s mouthpiece declaring the total lordship of Christ. "It must teach God’s justice-righteousness in God’s world." It must also teach men about human rights. To do so is to proclaim the gospel; to be silent is to break covenant with the Lord.

3. The church must incarnate justice.

"It is not enough to teach, not when three billion people do not know the justice-righteousness of the kingdom, not when half the world goes to bed hungry at night, not when totalitarian governments systematically negate elemental human rights, not when the minority percentage of the world’s population – the majority of whom, are Christians – use the greatest part of creation’s resources for themselves." Evangelism is important and essential, but let it be an evangelism that deals realistically with the obligation of the church to do justice!

4. The church must righteous the future.

In old English, "righteous" was a verb. The church must make it one again by working for justice in world. "Justification and justice-righteousness are but two sides of God’s coin of grace; they are inseparably untied in Christ of history." Let us not break faith with man and with creation by failing to work concretely for the justice that will come in its consummation with the return of our Lord.
Thus Rooy brings to a conclusion a stirring challenge to the church of today. It is a challenge that forms an integral part of the Christian mind we are called to develop.

Editor: Al Greene

Alta Vista College

Dr. John H. White
Dean of Religious Services
Geneva College, Beaver Falls, PA

What are those elements that make our investment of time, money, and prayer in a Christian school so vital? Why should we provide a Christian education for our children and the children of the Christian community of which we are a part? I would like to make three suggestions that are intended to be provocative.

Much has been written about the fact that we are living in a post-Christian age. Such diverse authors as Will Heberg, a Jewish sociologist, and Francis Schaeffer, an evangelist Christian, have documented that reality for us. There was a time when the Western world thought of a triune God who controlled His world by his law. In that world there were angels and devils, man, animals, plants and things.
However, quietly and subtly, God has been removed from public life. The most obvious legal expression of that was the Supreme Court decision that removed Bible reading from public schools. It is all right if people want to pray and read the Bible, we are told, but such activities must be restricted to our private lives and our churches. The creeds and the Bible, our society insists, must not be a part of politics, education, economics, or other "common" concerns.
At first glance nothing seems to have happened as a result of this attitude, but after a second look, one realizes that if God is gone then angels and devils must go and, even more importantly, any notion of an absolute law must also be abandoned. This view has been formalized by the concept that social and judicial law arises out of some kind of natural law or by the social impact of the governed, but that it does not in any sense come from God.
More recently there has been a not too subtle attack on the nature of man. For example, there was Diderot’s assertion almost a century ago that there is essentially no difference between man and animals, plants, or things. Today Jean Paul Sartre defines man as a "blob of ooze on a sea of nothingness" and the popular comedian, Rodney Dangerfield says, " I don’t get no respect," and much of his humor proves "I " don’t deserve it. The secular science of our day has, by its own assumption, "proven" that in fact there is no difference between man and animals and plants. The assumption is that there was a primordial mass; then after a long period of development, animals; and finally, and advanced animal which was labeled "Homo sapiens."
The impact of this post-Christian age is twofold: First, there is a complete reversal of the way of thinking about the world. What is fundamental begins not with God but with things and proceeds up the scales toward God who is thus no more than the projection of man’s needs. The "old" way of thinking started with God. Secondly, there is a reduction of man and life to a thing or things, so that is what is considered true and valid is what can be observed and analyzed from, for example, the end of a microscope.
As Christians, we need to recognize that the motor that drives our culture is fueled by these secular and humanistic assumptions. This is especially true of our public educational system. As believers who are not committed to a children to a teaching situation and system based on these false assumptions.

The Bible teaches us that believer’s children have a unique relationship with God and that parents are responsible to give and provide for the Christian nurture of their children. In Genesis 12 – 17, God establishes His covenant relationship with Abraham and with his children. When Peter preached the Pentecost sermon, he made clear that the promise of forgiveness and new life was to those who believe and to their children (Acts 2:39). Throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament there is special emphasis on the responsibility of parents to nurture their children in the things in Christ. The passages make clear that it is not merely a nurturing in some narrow "religious" sense but nurturing that relates all of life and the elements of this world to God. In Deuteronomy 6, God followed his command to love Him by saying to the parents of Israel, "and these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way." The command to nurture is something that relates to all of life.
Are we willing to submit our children, those for whom we have taken vows before the Lord, to an educational system that at best leaves God out of the picture or at worst formally rejects Him?
God tells us to bring our children up in the "nurture and admonition of the lord" (Ephesians 6:4)

I believe that our redemption in Jesus Christ calls us to be counter-culture Christians. By culture I mean those assumptions and presuppositions that people hold which determine their values and life-style. The institutions and systems of our culture are not sinful in themselves, but the presuppositions behind them leave God out or are actively anti-Christ.
When God called his people into a covenant relationship with Him, His redemption called upon them to be a "holy nation, a possessed people," "a kingdom of priests" Exodus 19:5,6). This designation was in the deepest sense a call to counter-culture living and thinking. To be holy required an ethical distinctiveness in sharp contrast to the surrounding nations, and to be possessed meant to belong, not fundamentally to oneself or to a political entity, but to Yahweh. The Old Testament concept of Israel as God’s servant nation was rooted in the designation " a kingdom of priests." It is of great significance that this term was used by Peter to describe God’s New Testament covenant community (I Peter 2:8-9). Whenever Israel failed to live out this counter-culture call and became entangled in the Baalim and the idolatry of the surrounding cultures, they experienced God’s chastisement or ultimate judgement.
When Jesus walks onto the stage of redemptive history. It becomes evident that his ministry and lifestyle are counter the prevailing religious and even the Graeco-Roman culture. In the Sermon on the Mount He said, "You have heard that it was said by them of old time." that is, "The religious establishment said." then He added, " but I say unto you." Jesus tells Nicodemus that his need is not mere theology or morality but a total inward change. Also it is no happenstance that Jesus was put to death by a conspiracy between the religious (Jewish) and political (Roman) establishments.
In the apostolic period the non-Christian community accused that the Christians of turning the world upside down (Acts 17:16). The crowd understood that the Christians were counter the prevailing culture. Furthermore, in the book of Romans as the grand climax to the doctrines set forth in Romans 1-11 Paul writes.

"I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." (Romans 12:1-2)

God calls His people, not to be carried along by this world’s way of thinking, but to be renewed in their minds. It is evident from the full scope of God’s Word that He commanded His people to be a counter-culture community.
This concept of counter-culture does not mean a retreat from the world. The response demanded is not that of a fortress or a ghetto but of a launching pad or a beachhead: a commitment to preach and live out an alternative life style and vision in such a way that the creation and its institutions testify to their rightful owner, King Jesus.
If that is our calling in Christ, we must provide an education for the next generation to inculcate principles and develop ways of thinking and living that are Christian. Our children must be concerned for a lost and hungry world and committed to a system of values derived from God’s Word and not from "Better Homes and Gardens."
Why Christian schools? Our culture needs them. Our responsibility to our children demands them. Our calling in Christ commands it.