Weightier Matters of God’s Law (Meditation 1)

Let’s start somewhere unexpected: Ligonier Ministries. Ligonier isn’t known for promoting mestizo meditations, championing race-consciousness, or demanding civic justice. Neither is its founder, R.C. Sproul.

But Ligonier and Sproul are known for providing devotionals to millions of readers around the world. I want to consider one of these devotions: “Weightier Matters of the Law.”

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The devotion begins with a passage of Scripture I often quote.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees…you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness (Matthew 23:23).

This verse is the fourth of seven curses—“woes”—Jesus calls down upon the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23. Given how rarely Jesus curses (not cusses) people, we should study when and why he does. 

Ligonier appears to agree. After all, this entire devotion is a meditation on one of the seven curses. But whereas I’ve led by noting the curse’s immediate biblical context, Ligonier leads by discussing the Social Gospel Movement. The choice to obliquely approach the biblical text this way is revealing. It discloses Ligonier’s belief that they must address the Social Gospel Movement before directly commenting upon Scripture.

Let that point sink in. Millions of Christians throughout history and around the world have read devotions on Matthew 23:23 that NEVER discussed the Social Gospel Movement, let alone treated it before exegeting Scripture. So why does Ligonier choose this starting point?

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The devotion’s first sentence supplies an answer.

The Social Gospel movement, which arose in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries under the inspiration of theological liberalism, downplayed sin and reduced Christianity to feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and other acts of social justice.

Allow me to exposit this lengthy sentence, for there’s so much here.

First, Ligonier locates us geographically. It carries us to “America.” Of course, writing of “America” isn’t innocent: It perpetuates the ideological use of “America” to refer strictly to the U.S. And as Walter Mignolo argues, this use developed as part of a nineteenth-century effort to establish global Anglo-Saxon white supremacy. We all know “America” doesn’t refer to Colombia or Mexico, for example. Those places belong to the construct “Latin America”—and we mustn’t forget the qualifier! Without intending to, Ligonier is perpetuating unjust, racialized conceptions of geography.

Second, Ligonier situates us temporally. It takes us to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See the irony? Ligonier situates us within a period of U.S. imperialism expansion that commences the spreading of the racist use of “America” we just discussed! I doubt Ligonier’s staff sees what they’ve done. Latinas/os likely do—and feel it.

Third, Ligonier stations us against the Social Gospel Movement. Consider the loaded word “inspiration.” For Christians, inspiration connotes something God does to the Scriptures and the Kingdom of Christ—God inspires both, though in different senses. But here Ligonier ties inspiration to “theological liberalism,” which is white evangelical shorthand for a perspective/set of views opposed to Scripture and the Kingdom. The remainder of the sentence makes this clear. “[The Social Gospel Movement] downplayed sin and reduced Christianity to feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and other acts of social justice.” Claims of “downplaying sin” and “reducing Christianity” are white evangelical equivalents to curses. Woe to you, Social Gospel Movement followers, for you’ve downplayed sin and reduced Christianity!

Fourth, Ligonier positions us to see certain acts as matters of “social justice,” rather than something else. Feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless, Ligonier claims, are “acts of social justice.” But this label isn’t neutral. Medieval authors, for example, refer to the same deeds as acts of mercy (misericordia), not justice—let alone the wonky construction “social justice.” (I hear Augustine and Aquinas asking: “Why the redundancy? All justice is inherently social; it involves giving others their due? What form of justice, then, are you specifying”). Here too, then, we see Ligonier making conceptually loaded rhetorical moves before treating Scripture.  

The previous four points collectively answer our question: Why does Ligonier choose this starting point? Ligonier is flagging its opposition to a modern movement’s vision of how Christianity relates to acts of “social justice,” and is using conceptually loaded rhetoric—not sustained argumentation—to quickly align readers with them. The density and speed of this opening sentence also reveals that Ligonier is mainly writing for people who already find the Social Gospel Movement dangerous. Hence, Ligonier is mainly writing to white U.S. Christians.

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Ligonier pivots from its opening line to a second critique. Here theologically “conservative” Christians are in view.

There was a justifiable backlash against this movement in the churches and an exodus of people who affirmed the essential truths of the Christian faith. Unfortunately, some theological conservatives were so afraid of falling prey to the Social Gospel that works of charity ranked at the bottom of their priority list, if they were done at all.

Those who neglected acts of social welfare for fear of looking like liberals were guilty of throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Ligonier’s stance against the Social Gospel Movement remains. And its presence underscores the initially gentler chastisement of theological conservatives. The conservatives engaged in a “justifiable backlash” against their liberal counterparts; they were justified in departing churches that failed to affirm “the essential truths of the Christian faith.” But, we read, some were so afraid of falling prey to liberal wolves, that they diminished or ignored “works of charity.” Still, so far, so gentle.

Then comes the rhetorical punch. The conservatives are guilty. They threw out the baby with the bath water when they “neglected acts of social welfare for fear of looking like liberals.”

Once again, there’s a lot here. Why the focus on fear? Are works of charity, acts of social welfare, and acts of social justice equivalent? How do the essential truths of Christianity relate to works deemed Christianity’s metaphorical bathing baby? And what has all this to do with Matthew 23:23? The text raises these questions, but never directly answers them.

Instead, we read: “Though the parallels between this historical example and today’s passage are inexact, Matthew 23:23–24 warns us that it is possible to become focused on one set of God’s demands at the expense of another.” Careful readers will have yet more questions. Why all this framing if the example and passage are “inexact” parallels? Why not offer an historical example that is an exact parallel? And how to relate the oppositional framing of truths and works/acts to “God’s demands”?

We must wait until the devotion’s conclusion before we find a partial answer to these questions in an allusion to the opening example. “Commitment to justice, mercy, and faithfulness demonstrates commitment to Christ (James 2:14–26). Thus, our care for the poor and oppressed must be as evident as our concern for doctrine.” We may deduce that the historic example’s theological liberals and conservatives both failed, though in different ways, because their care for the poor and oppressed was not as evident as their concern for (right) doctrine.

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The passage grounding our deduction raises new questions, because it introduces two categories into the devotion: poor and oppressed. Moreover, whereas this is the single use of oppressed, poor appears once more in the following, and final, sentence: “What sacrifices are you making to help the poor and marginalized?” What to make of the devotion’s final two sentences introducing the categories poor, oppressed, and marginalized

Please don’t miss the significance of our latest question. Many white U.S. Christians associate the terms oppressed and marginalized with liberal identity politics flowing from the springs of Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, or cultural Marxism—springs they deem irreparably polluted. Consequently, many of Ligonier’s intended audience will find our latest question pressing, perhaps wondering how to square Ligonier’s use of oppressed and marginalized with its reputation as biblically based source of Christian education.    

Let me encourage readers wondering about Ligonier’s biblical faithfulness to examine the use of poor, oppressed, and oppressor in English bible translations.

Let me encourage readers frustrated with Christians omitting biblical mandates to care for the poor and oppressed—“the least of these” (Matthew 25:31-46)—to consider how this analysis of a single devotion illuminates patterns sustaining those individual and systemic sins of omission.

And let me conclude by linking our current question with Ligonier’s closing one. Matthew 23:23 compels Ligonier to shift from an inexact historical example to exact biblical language. Jesus is condemning the scribes and Pharisees for neglecting justice, mercy, and faithfulness—the weightier matters of God’s law. Each of these categories track the OT’s discussions of the poor and oppressed, those God treats with special regard. And, as I noted, these categories track Christ’s mandate to care for the least of these. Therefore, Ligonier is right to conclude this devotion by asking Christians what they are sacrificing to help the poor and oppressed, those marginalized within society.

But my exposition shows that Ligonier itself should do more to care for these groups. In a racialized world, poverty, oppression, and marginalization fall along racialized lines. Consequently, Ligonier should: (1) produce biblical devotions that make this clear; (2) avoid using language that perpetuates ideologies of white supremacy and national hierarchies; (3) use examples that track with more of the Church’s racialized communities—especially in a devotion about Christ cursing people for ignoring the weightier things of the law!—rather than those that perpetuate white centrality; and (4) be willing to deem losing readers who find race-conscious writing repulsive because, to rephrase their insight, “Faithfulness may mean the loss of one’s [readers] as the result of bearing witness to Christ”—a Christ that identifies with the poor, oppressed, and marginalized.