“Just preach the gospel.” How many times have you heard pastors and critics of social and political action scold Christians concerned about the moral direction the world is headed? The gospel is more than a life insurance program or a “Get Out of Hell Free” card. It is to transform everything we think about and act on. There is no neutrality, nor are any areas off-limits to the application of God’s Word.
The gospel renews a life for service in God’s kingdom — an ever-present reality — via a changed heart and changed mind (Rom. 12:1-2). What are we to do with these two renewals? Wait to be taken to heaven in something called a “rapture,” live in the world God created and called “good” (Gen. 1:31; 1 Tim. 4:1-4) and allow the enemies of God to exercise dominion over it, claim that since Jesus didn’t get involved in politics that Christians should follow His example, or learn how the Bible applies to every area of life and make it our life’s work to transform every part of it.....
But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully, realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, with which I have been entrusted (1 Tim. 1:8-11).
Note how the law and the gospel are not mutually exclusive because the proper use of the law is determined by the law and is “according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, with which [Paul] had been entrusted.”
Like God’s creation, the Law is good. God’s commandments are good. Jesus said to His disciples, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15). John writes, “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). R. J. Rushdoony writes:
Lawless Christianity is a contradiction in terms: it is anti-Christian. The purpose of grace is not to set aside the law but to fulfill the law and to enable man to keep the law. If the law was so serious in the sight of God that it would require the death of Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, to make atonement for man’s sin, it seems strange for God then to proceed to abandon the law! The goal of the law is not lawlessness, nor the purpose of grace a lawless contempt of grace.[3]
Without an appreciation of God’s law, there is no way to combat lawlessness and the redefinition of everything from abortion to same-sex sexuality. Many of today’s churches have accepted homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle choice and twist the Scriptures to justify their position. And why not? Christians have been taught that God’s law (just some of it) is either (1) just for the church or (2) grace supplants biblical law. It’s a double whammy, making the Christian message irrelevant this side of heaven.
https://americanvision.org/posts/theres-more-to-the-gospel-than-just-preach-the-gospel/?_kx=QPOQfLulfjqaVcgfnjDLpWuZlIWRM_1Oi_IfIKxJ91I.Psh6FsTo escape this inherent despair, fundamentalists have turned to their own version of the humanists’ escape hatch: an upper-story universe. This upper story is the world of faith, expectation, and hope: the heavenly realm. It is a hope in heaven — a world above and beyond this world of Christian powerlessness and defeat.
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Fundamentalism’s lower story is the world of work, economics, professional training, art, institutions, authority, and power, i.e., the “secular” realm. This realm is governed, not in terms of the Bible, but in terms of supposedly universal “neutral reason” and natural law.[9]
And that’s the problem. It didn’t used to be this way. Every area of life was seen as a place to apply God’s Word, even among those who did not embrace Jesus as Lord and Savior. The world worked the way it did because God made it that way. As a result, Western Civilization flourished. In time, however, many people came to believe that the impersonal cosmos was good enough to develop a moral worldview. Of course, natural law advocates used their understanding of Special Revelation to read Nature, otherwise “Nature, red in tooth and claw,” would have been the outcome.
Darwinism killed any lasting vestige of a link between nature and God. God was not needed in an unwound clockwork universe. Apparently, a blind watchmaker was in charge. That would be like having Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles drive a taxi. The Christian response was to reformulate theologically. A sacred-secular divide was developed, coupled with an eschatology that made this time and world irrelevant, anticipating a rapture at any moment to relieve them of the task and responsibility of cultural change.