Reformed Spirituality and Ethics: Beauty and Justice

Introduction

About 12 years ago I interviewed two African American Presbyterian pastors about their response to civil unrest and protests over racial injustice in their cities. This is around the time the Black Lives Matter movement was rising in public prominence. One pastor was serving a congregation in St. Louis, MO. Michael Brown, an African American, had been shot by a police officer in Ferguson outside of the city. Decades of unaddressed racial strife rose to the surface and the nation’s attention was focused on St. Louis. The other pastor was serving a congregation in Baltimore, MD. Freddy Gray, another African American man, was killed by a “rough ride” the police officers had given him. That is, he wasn’t secured in the police van after his arrest ad sustained fatal injuries as the driver took sharp turns causing his body to be thrown about in the van.

Two cities with similar unrest and protest over the same issue, but the pastors took vastly different responses in leading their congregations.

The pastor in St. Louis participated in the protest marches, leading in a way similar to those ministers active in the Civil Rights Movement. He even faced arrest for his non-violent protest and civil disobedience. He told me,

“Even if an African American person had done something criminal or not, the response of the police was going to cause folk to say, ‘You know what? We’ve just had it.’ In a lot of ways St. Louis is about 50 years behind Birmingham, AL.”

“This was something that was just hovering over the city. And it’s hovering over a lot of cities. Eventually something will cause it to stop hovering, but actually just collapse on top of the city.”

“You do have at one end the whole issue of personal responsibility. But at the other end you have systemic racism and a lack of justice, not just for black folk, but for poor folk…I do agree that there’s a lot of truth that if you apply yourself, work hard, go to school, yeah there’s a lot of truth to that. I did that because I was told that’s what you had to do. But when you’re dealing with policing, I don’t care if you have three PhDs. You get stopped by a white cop in the middle of nowhere in the dark, and you’re going to know that you’re black. He may be stopping you and nothing happens. It may be that you have a taillight out. But until that encounter is over there’s probably some voices in your head that ain’t in the white person’s head.”

He described what he called righteous (or orthodox) activism for the church. He defined it as biblically engaging social justice issues, not just as individuals, but as the church.

The evangelical church has been willing to pursue righteous activism (though they wouldn’t call it that) in the areas of abortion and homosexuality, but not racial injustice.* Race is the issue that evangelicals want to avoid.

“You have stakeholders in the church who basically don’t want you to have forums in their church… Activism to them is liberalism. So, that’s why the evangelical church does not have a sense of what righteous activism or righteous risk looks like. For an evangelical church to basically say, ‘we love for everybody to be comfortable and insulated,’ we’re in a city where we can’t really function as a church and be comfortable.”

The pastor in Baltimore engaged the issue in another way. The church he pastored was in the same community where Freddie Gray lived and was arrested. Yet, his approach to leading through the conflict was markedly different. At the time the church was 30 years old, but he’d been pastoring the church for less than one year. The church was founded with an intentional view towards mercy ministry to the urban poor. The visionaries for the new church were white, the leaders of the mercy ministries where white, while the pastor and most of the congregants had always been black. It was his opinion that a lot of people in that community have been able to “hustle” the church.

“I felt no compulsion to be involved in the protest marches. People say, ‘I bet he was out there marching.’ I see whites more sympathetic to what’s happened than me…They have more sympathy because they come here with evangelical welfare. Evangelical welfare attracts very liberal whites who want to be theological conservatives.

“I felt no compulsion to be involved in the protest marches. People say, ‘I bet he was out there marching.’ I see whites more sympathetic to what’s happened than me…They have more sympathy because they come here with evangelical welfare. Evangelical welfare attracts very liberal whites who want to be theological conservatives.

“When whites do inner city ministries, they come in with a great sensitivity towards blacks, which almost becomes tolerant of sinful behavior. And they don’t realize that black folk hood, we pimp folks all the time. So, we pimp you. Not everybody, but we know how to hustle. That’s what we do. So we’ll say whatever it takes to get the house, to get the service.”

He was intentionally leading towards a pendulum shift away from what he perceived as an overemphasis on the “stuff” of ministry. That “stuff” has been serving the community through ministry organizations launched by the church geared towards meeting the physical needs of the people around them. The church, in his opinion, was missing. Even though it was viewed by many as a flagship church for mercy ministry to the urban poor, the “stuff” ended up not needing the church.

“You can go build a house for somebody in [this neighborhood]. If you haven’t reached them [with the gospel], you’ve just put a crack-head in a nice house. You’ve done nothing to change the community. You’ve just changed the aesthetics. That’s a hard message for a church that has built 358 houses. You’re almost telling them that what you’ve done is not valuable…I think we need to do it, but we need to do it from in[side] out.

I can guarantee that many of us in here are trying to decide which one of these pastors we agree with. Which one had the more faithful response, “righteous activism” or “resisting evangelical welfare.” My request of you right now is to not do that. Don’t boil this story down to an “either/or” scenario. There certainly are either/or scenarios, but this isn’t one of them. Both of these brothers are committed to the Reformed faith, and there is room for liberty as we apply our confessional commitments to whatever context we find ourselves.

Here’s what I want to do in our time together as we focus on Reformed Spirituality and Ethics. I want to take a step back and talk about the foundation for spirituality and ethics. And then look at an ethical imperative for how the church engages with one another from the Westminster Confession of Faith, and an ethical imperative for neighbor love outside the body of Christ from the Westminster Larger Catechism. Here’s the premise. The more confessional we are, the more we understand that spirituality and ethics are necessarily bound together. And this has implications for all of life.

The Doctrine of God

All spirituality and ethics begin and find their foundation in the doctrine of God. Volumes have been written on the doctrine of God, but for our purposes I want to say that there is a moral order to the universe because of who God is. The created world is infused with a moral order because of its Creator. This makes the doctrine of the Trinity, as Herman Bavinck writes,

Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2: God and Creation The Importance of Trinitarian Dogma

of incalculable importance for the Christian religion. The entire Christian belief system, all of special revelation, stands or falls with the confession of God’s Trinity. It is the core of the Christian faith, the root of all its dogmas, the basic content of the new covenant.

Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2: God and Creation The Importance of Trinitarian Dogma

In the doctrine of the Trinity we feel the heartbeat of God’s entire revelation for the redemption of humanity.

Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2: God and Creation The Importance of Trinitarian Dogma

From God, through God, and in God are all things. Re-creation is one divine work from beginning to end, yet it can be described in terms of three agents: it is fully accomplished by the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the communion of the Holy Spirit. A Christian’s faith life, accordingly, points back to three generative principles. “We know all these things,” says article 9 of the Belgic Confession, “from the testimonies of holy Scripture, as well as from the operations of the persons, especially from those we feel within ourselves.” We know ourselves to be children of the Father, redeemed by the Son, and in communion with both through the Holy Spirit. Every blessing, both spiritual and material, comes to us from the triune God.

The nature of God as triune is the foundation because we are image. Ethics for humanity flows from Genesis 1:27 “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” We’re not God, we’re image. And as image we are made to reflect the glory of our Creator. Sin and idolatry are so heinous because, as GK Beale writes in his book We Become What We Worship, it “is an affront to human dignity in that it prevents people from reflecting God’s glory. Since people are made by divine hands, to function as legitimate living images, they are to reflect the glory of the image of the living God.”

That’s why holiness matters.

Leviticus 11:44–45 ESV

44 For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground. 45 For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.”

Holiness is inherent in who our triune God is. He commands his image to be what they were created to be, “be holy.” Even more glorious is that he promises that this is exactly what we are and will be in Christ,

Ephesians 1:1–4 ESV

1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus: 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

Ephesians 5:25–27 ESV

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

And the holiness of our God is not just a state of being. It is integral to how he acts, to his conduct. And this is another facet of the glory of the Trinity.

Bavinck,

Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2: God and Creation The Importance of Trinitarian Dogma

The fact is that these attributes [of love and knowledge] as well as all the other attributes only come alive and become real as a result of the Trinity. Apart from it, they are mere names, sounds, empty terms. As attributes of the triune God they come alive both to our mind and to our heart. Only by the Trinity do we begin to understand that God as he is in himself—hence also, apart from the world—is the independent, eternal, omniscient, and all-benevolent One, love, holiness, and glory.

The Trinity reveals God to us as the fullness of being, the true life, eternal beauty. In God, too, there is unity in diversity, diversity in unity. Indeed, this order and this harmony is present in him absolutely.

Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2: God and Creation The Importance of Trinitarian Dogma

Among us unity exists only by attraction, by the will and the disposition of the will; it is a moral unity that is fragile and unstable. And where there is a more profound physical unity as, say, between the capacities of a single substance, there is no p 332 independence, and the unity swallows up the diversity. But in God both are present: absolute unity as well as absolute diversity. It is one selfsame being sustained by three hypostases. This results in the most perfect kind of community, a community of the same beings; at the same time it results in the most perfect diversity, a diversity of divine persons.

“Only by the Trinity do we begin to understand that God as he is in himself—hence also, apart from the world—is the independent, eternal, omnicient, and all-benevolent One, love, holiness, and glory.”

“Among us unity exists only by attraction, by the will and the disposition of the will. It is a moral unity that is fragile and unstable…but in God both are present, absolute unity and absolute diversity…This results in the most perfect kind of community.”

God, apart from the world, has always been holy. He has always been love. That holiness, that love has always been expressed in what I call divine beautiful community. The beauty and glory of our triune God is seen in the mutual glorification of His communal life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

For us then, as image, holiness is exhibited relationally, in our conduct.

1 Peter 1:14–16 ESV

14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

2 Peter 1:3–8 ESV

3 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. 5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, 7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is why, when we talk about spirituality we don’t mean simply immaterial. The height of the spiritual life is not ascetic life distanced from the real world. Yes, in Christ although we are not “of the world,” we are still “in the world.” And our spirituality is demonstrated in our actions. We’re still talking about the implications of being image of the triune God who is divine beautiful community, absolute unity in diversity and diversity in unity.

What is humanity’s destiny? This is probably my favorite Herman Bavinck quote. It had a profound impact on the trajectory of my ministry after reading it in seminary. In his section on the image of God, he says this about human destiny,

Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2: God and Creation Human Destiny in Community

The image of God is much too rich for it to be fully realized in a single human being, however richly gifted that human being may be. It can only be somewhat unfolded in its depth and riches in a humanity counting billions of members. Just as the traces of God (vestigia Dei) are spread over many, many works, in both space and time, so also the image of God can only be displayed in all its dimensions and characteristic features in a humanity whose members exist both successively one after the other and contemporaneously side by side.

Our ethics are rooted in the God we image, and our ethical imperative is to pursue holiness particularly as it relates to being the beautiful community we were created to be and are redeemed into.

Ethics in the Body of Christ

So let’s talk about ethics in the body of Christ. How should we be pursuing beautiful community as God’s redeemed people?

The Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter XXVI—Of the Communion of Saints

1. All saints, that are united to Jesus Christ their Head, by His Spirit, and by faith, have fellowship with Him in His grace, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory: (

This chapter of the Confession isn’t written from the vantage point of the communion of saints being grounded in humanity imaging God. The Divines more explicitly connect our communion as Christians to the doctrine of union with Christ.

“All saints, that are united to Jesus Christ their Head, by His Spirit, and by faith, have fellowship with Him in his grace, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory: and, being united to one another in love, they have communion in each other’s gifts and graces…”

However, the correlation between the mutuality of the Trinity and what is stated here in the Confession is undeniable. 

Robert Letham - the “communion that the saints enjoy with each other does not erode or destroy the integrity of the individual…This is an outflow of the doctrine of the Trinity: there is unity (and union), but in diversity.”

Therefore, as our brother Chad VanDixhorn writes on this chapter in his book Confessing the Faith,

“Ultimately this love for each other cannot be restricted to what we have; it needs to encompass who we are.”

Westminster Divine, William Perkins, in his notes about the communion of the saints says,

“We must here be admonished not to seek our own things, but to refer the labours [sic] of our callings to the common good…Lastly, considering we are all knit into one mystical body…our duty is to redress the faults of our brethren, and to cover them…Love covers the multitude of sins.” 

Lastly, let me make this connection by quoting George Hendry’s comment on WCF 26 from his 1960 book The Westminster Confession for Today,

 this love as one “not based on mutual attraction…but a love that overcomes division and reconciles contraries and brings into communion those who have nothing in common save the fact that Christ gave himself for them.” 

Bavinck said that “among us unity exists only by attraction,” and this is a fragile and unstable unity.” But, in redemption, Hendry points out from the Confession’s exposition of Holy Scripture, that our communion, our unity, is not one that is based on mutual attraction. It is based on a love that overcomes division and reconciles contraries.

Let me connect this to the story of the two pastors I mentioned at the beginning of this talk. Part of the reason we still wrestle in Reformed and Presbyterian circles, at least in the United States, with these ethical questions on the proper response to racial injustice in the public square is because many of our white Presbyterian forebearers, from their pulpits and seminaries refused to proclaim, exhort, and challenge the church to live out the full implications of the Communion of Saints. You cannot justifiably say that you believe this is a faithful representation of the doctrine taught in Scripture and simultaneously promote racial segregation in the church. Either is our duty to publicly and privately perform such duties that conform to our mutual good, inwardly and outwardly, or it’s not. Either we are bound to perform such spiritual services that tend to our mutual edification; relieving each other in outward things, or it’s not. Either this communion, as God affords opportunity, is to be extended unto all those who, in every place, call upon the name of the Lord Jesus, or it isn’t.

These are legitimate either/or’s. What’s more, Black Presbyterian ministers who engaged the doctrine of the image of God and pressed against racial injustice, men like Samuel Cornish, Henry Highland Garnet, James Pennington, Matthew Anderson, Francis Grimke, their works have had to be recovered in recent years to help with these questions.

Ethics Among Our Neighbors

The question of ethics applied in the body of Christ is one thing. Several years ago I presented material from WCF 26 in a seminary lecture, and one student said, “that’s about how we’re supposed to treat each other as Christians, what about how we’re supposed to treat our non-Christian neighbors?” What do the Standards have to say about our moral obligations as image bearers towards other image bearers? What does it say about how we are to be just in our dealings individually and collectively? The most prominent place in the Westminster Standards for our moral obligations as image bearers, full stop, is found in the question and answer section of the Larger Catechism on the second table of the Law; commandments 5-10.

This is worth multiple lectures, but I want to focus on the question of justice and the fifth commandment.

In the Westminster Standards, the overwhelming reference is to God’s justice (vertical).

❖WCF 3: Of God’s Eternal Decree

•3.7. The rest of mankind God…extends or withholds mercy, as he pleases…to he praise of His glorious justice. 

❖WCF 5: Of Providence

•5.1. God the great Creator of all things does uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things…to the praise of the glory of His wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy.

❖WCF 8: Of Christ the Mediator

•8.5. The Lord Jesus, by His perfect obedience, and sacrifice of Himself…has fully satisfied the justice of His Father…

❖WCF 11: Of Justification

•11.3. Christ, by His obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of all those that are thus justified, and did make a proper, real and full satisfaction to His Father’s justice in their behalf.  Yet, in as much as He was given by the Father for them; and His obedience and satisfaction accepted in their stead; and both, freely, not for any thing in them; their justification is only of free grace; that both the exact justice, and rich grace of God might be glorified in the justification of sinners.

❖WCF 33: Of the Last Judgment

•33.2. The end of God’s appointing this day is for the manifestation of the glory of His mercy, in the eternal salvation of the elect; and of His justice, in the damnation of the reprobate, who are wicked and disobedient. 

In the Westminster Standards, the primary references to human (horizontal) justice are found in the WLC Q&A on the second table of the Law (neighbor love).

WLC Q&A 136: What are the sins forbidden in the sixth commandment (you shall not murder)?

The sins forbidden in the sixth commandment are, all taking away the life of ourselves, or of others, except in the case of public justice…

WLC Q&A 141: What are the duties required in the eighth commandment (you shall not steal)?

The duties required in the eighth commandment are, truth, faithfulness, and justice in contracts and commerce between man and man…

WLC Q&A 142: What are the sins forbidden in the eighth commandment?

The sins forbidden…are…injustice and unfaithfulness in contracts between man and man…

What is justice?

We might say that doing justice simply is “giving people what is their due as image-bearers of God.” Doing/living justly from a biblical perspective includes equal/fair treatment, generosity, special advocacy for the poor, both individual and corporate responsibility (Keller). 

Justice is for the purpose of pursuing shalom. Shalom is “things being as they ought to be,” harmony, right ordering and right relationship between God and humanity and among humanity (Ince).

WLC Q&A 93

What is the moral law?

The moral law is the declaration of the will of God to mankind, direction and binding every one to personal, perfect, and perpetual conformity and obedience thereunto, in the frame and disposition of the whole man, soul and body, (Deut. 5:1–3,31,33, Luke 10:26–27, Gal. 3:10, 1 Thess. 5:23) and in performance of all those duties of holiness and righteousness which he oweth to God and man: (Luke 1:75, Acts 24:16) promising life upon the fulfilling, and threatening death upon the breach of it. (Rom. 10:5, Gal. 3:10,12)

WLC Q&A 98

Where is the moral law summarily comprehended?  

The moral law is summarily comprehended in the ten commandments, which were delivered by the voice of God upon Mount Sinai, and written by him in two tables of stone; (Deut. 10:4, Exod. 34:1–4) and are recorded in the twentieth chapter of Exodus.  The four first commandments containing our duty to God, and the other six our duty to man. (Matt. 22:37–40)

Q. 123. Which is the fifth commandment?

A. The fifth commandment is, Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

Q. 124. Who are meant by father and mother in the fifth commandment?

A. By father and mother, in the fifth commandment, are meant, not only natural parents, (Prov. 23:22,25, Eph. 6:1–2) but all superiors in age (1 Tim. 5:1–2) and gifts; (Gen. 4:20–22, Gen. 45:8) and especially such as, by God’ s ordinance, are over us in place of authority, whether in family, (2 Kings 5:13) church, (2 Kings 2:12, 2 Kings 13:14, Gal. 4:19) or commonwealth. (Isa. 49:23)

Q. 126. What is the general scope of the fifth commandment?

A. The general scope of the fifth commandment is, the performance of those duties which we mutually owe in our several relations, as inferiors, superiors, or equals. (Eph. 5:21, 1 Pet. 2:17, Rom. 12:10)

Q. 129. What is required of superiors towards their inferiors?

A.It is required of superiors, according to that power they receive from God, and that relation wherein they stand, to love, (Col. 3:19, Tit. 2:4) pray for, (1 Sam. 12:23, Job 1:5) and bless their inferiors; (1 Kings 8:55–56, Heb. 7:7, Gen. 49:28) to instruct, (Deut. 6:6–7) counsel, and admonish them; (Eph. 6:4) countenancing, (1 Pet. 3:7) commending, (1 Pet. 2:14, Rom. 13:3) and rewarding such as do well; (Esth. 6:3) and discountenancing, (Rom. 13:3–4) reproving, and chastising such as do ill; (Prov. 29:15, 1 Pet. 2:14) protecting, (Job 29:13–16, Isa. 1:10,17) and providing for them all things necessary for soul (Eph. 6:4) and body: (1 Tim. 5:8) and by grave, wise, holy, and exemplary carriage, to procure glory to God, (1 Tim. 4:12, Tit. 2:3–5) honour to themselves, (1 Kings3:28) and so to preserve that authority which God hath put upon them. (Tit. 2:15)

Q. 130. What are the sins of superiors?

A. The sins of superiors are, besides the neglect of the duties required of them, (Ezek. 34:2–4) and inordinate seeking of themselves, (Phil. 2:21) their own glory, (John5:44, John 7:18) ease, profit, or pleasure; (Isa. 56:10–11, Deut. 17:17) commanding things unlawful, (Dan. 3:4–6, Acts 4:17–18) or not in the power of inferiors to perform; (Exod. 5:10–18, Matt. 23:2,4) counseling, (Matt. 14:8, Mark 6:24) encouraging, (2 Sam. 13:28) or favouring them in that which is evil; (1 Sam. 3:13) dissuading, discouraging, or discountenancing them in that which is good; (John 7:46–49, Col. 3:21, Exod. 5:17) correcting them unduly; (1 Pet. 2:18–20, Heb. 12:10, Deut. 25:3) careless exposing, or leaving them to wrong, temptation, and danger; (Gen. 38:11,26, Acts 18:17) provoking them to wrath; (Eph. 6:4) or any way dishonouring themselves, or lessening their authority, by an unjust, indiscreet, rigorous, or remiss behaviour. (Gen. 9:21, 1 Kings 12:13–16, 1 Kings 1:6, 1 Sam. 2:29–31)

Here is why being more confessional supports more spirituality along ethical lines. The fifth commandment applies in every place of authority, the family, the church, the commonwealth.

Given the explication of the catechism on the requirements and sins of superiors, how should the church respond when those in civil authority are not living up to those requirements (i.e., police, politicians, etc.)?

Misuse of the Spirituality of the Church

BCO Preface, Preliminary Principle 7: All church power, whether exercised by the body in general, or by representation, is only ministerial and declarative since the Holy Scriptures are the only rule of faith and practice.