This Changes Everything (#958)

Well, I can't tell you how excited I am to begin this podcast.

My goodness, I've been chomping at the bit for about two and a half weeks to explore

some stuff with you that appeared from seemingly nowhere in my inbox, and Kyle and I have been

talking about a little bit around the edges here the last couple weeks, but if what we're

going to talk about today is true, and we're still sorting that out, this will change everything.

This is the culmination of my journey in terms of living love and what that means, and now

having some new language to put around that that is really old language that may have

gotten lost somewhere.

So, hopefully, you're confused by now, but we're going to invite you into it in just

a minute.

Hi, Kyle.

Hi, Wayne.

How are you this day?

I'm doing well.

I've been waiting to have this conversation with you because there are a few conversations

that I can think of since, oh my gosh, the 12 years we've known each other that I've

seen you get upended by more than this conversation we're about to have.

It's been that disruptive.

Yeah, it is that disruptive.

I do feel that.

I feel like I'm in the same kind of space I was 30 years ago coming back from Australia

having heard a different view of the atonement.

This is now a very different view of what the kingdom of God is and how it is that we

live in it as the expression of that love.

So, this is that disruptive.

This is going to take a turn and see where we end up.

Before we do that, though, I neglected to start at the outset.

We're collecting some money from Kenya right now.

The original orphanage we started there is sliding.

It's sliding off a hillside because of some torrential rains.

They need to build a culvert and cement it and do some other things.

Trying to raise about $42,000.

We've got close now to almost $20,000, so we're almost halfway there.

If you've got some money in your pocket that you want to share with some orphans in Kenya

that need your help, see the website and see the notes and we'll put you links and we could

get that going, but they need some help.

So, a couple weeks ago, to dive into this, I got an email.

Someone I had corresponded with before, but didn't recall it, it'd been a long time ago.

And he sent me an email that basically said this.

My theological world came to a standstill eight years ago because of a single sentence

that captivated me and would not let me go.

And the sentence is this, the word righteousness does not appear in the Bible.

And at this point, I'm pretty sure I got a kook on the line, right?

Yeah.

I can think of 20 scriptures off the top of my head that have righteousness in them, so

I'm going, what is he talking about here?

Because he continues, the main thesis is quite simple.

Justice has to do with love, and love is related to the life-giving character of God.

And in the absence of that life, justice has to be codified in a series of regulations,

what we call law, to enforce a lifestyle that at least appears to resemble the lifestyle

of the one who shares the love of God.

And not in a hypocritical way, but in a practical way that will prevent us from annihilating each other.

That's how we've used the law.

And then he went on.

Love to explore that with you.

We've done some taping, so we're going to invite, this is from Toby van der Vesthaven,

a man from South Africa who I've gotten to know over the last few weeks because we've

been in a lot of conversation together.

I've got some recordings of his.

We're going to share with you in a little bit as we kind of process this out.

But at first blush, Kyle, how does that hit you?

The word righteousness?

It does not appear in the Bible.

I had a very similar response, initial response as you did of like, of, um, no, it does.

And let me show you.

And yet, gosh, as we have dived into this and I've listened to the arguments and if

this got, I don't know, mixed up, skewed, twisted, misinterpreted, however you want

to phrase it.

It was unnerving.

It was unnerving to me initially because I, I thought through some of the things that

the implications they would have had, even just on the upbringing and the teaching that

I had received, let alone some of the stuff that I've had to untangle throughout my life.

And it was like, oh, this is a cliff that I may not be able to come back from if I step

off of this.

So, well, two and a half weeks ago, I'm at the point of going, okay, this is kooky to,

okay, I'm fascinated to further exploration.

And conversation with him to, oh my gosh, I hope he's right.

Yeah.

Because this makes so much sense.

And now I'm kind of beyond that to, all right, I think he's nailing it here.

And God, if this is wrong, man, you got to bring it to me.

But I've been, I've been talking to some of my more theologically minded friends going,

let's go back into the Greek.

Is what he's saying true?

Is it to have some merit?

And even people who've never heard this emphasis before are going, you know what?

It's there.

And his point is this.

It's not that the word righteousness isn't in your English Bible, because it is, obviously.

Yeah.

But it's a mistranslation of a word.

That word would not have been the one Jesus is using or Paul is using when he's talking

to people.

The word righteousness is actually the word for justice.

And somehow in our translating about the same time as the Reformation and righteousness

became a standard that we all need to somehow achieve to before Christ.

And now we've been imputed with it in Christ.

So he declares us righteous.

So now we're all good.

We got our get out of hell free card.

So righteousness is a pretty big word in my theological past.

Huge.

It's not one you move easily.

Yeah.

Go.

Okay.

I think I like where he's landing with this.

He's not dismissing it.

He's not saying righteous is unimportant.

But what he's saying is the word is really justice, which would include righteousness,

but be bigger than that.

So it's not, you don't lose anything with righteousness in this discussion.

But what you do gain is a wider view of how God brings his kingdom into the world.

And the first part of his discussion a little bit is to see the law as here's God saying,

here's what you have to do if you don't love each other.

So you don't kill each other.

So pretend to love enough until we can actually experience love and justice inside of our

own relationship with Jesus and his father.

And then the point of salvation is not, I get it.

Get out of hell.

Hell free card.

But I actually reenter the world as an outpost of God's justice in the brokenness of the

world I live in.

In my tradition, I think righteousness, even because it was imputed in Christ.

So he declared us righteous.

So now actually discipleship, living love, transformation, those are all optional because

the main thing was to get saved and not go to hell.

That was the main thing.

Yep.

So man, this just puts some, so much calling right into the moment.

Let me give you an example.

If we take Matthew 633, for instance, everybody knows this, seek first the kingdom of God

and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

What if it said, seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things

will be added to you.

Does that change the verse for you?

Just a little bit.

Yes.

Just a little bit.

When you first brought this to me, the very first thing that came to mind was a definition

of anger that a good friend of mine uses.

And he says that anger.

Anger is the soul's protest of injustice.

And so if my heart is protesting unjust things, that would make sense that the kingdom of

God and his life is justice because it's bringing to a right, it's bringing to a wholeness,

it's bringing a restoration, which includes righteousness.

But the focus becomes very different.

Very different.

If I'm seeking his righteousness, now I'm immediately thinking, okay.

Morality, ethics, trying to live a right life, holiness in that sense of good behavior.

Yes.

And it's all very personal.

Yes.

It's all about me and Jesus and piety and devotion and those kinds of things.

If it's seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, all of a sudden we've shifted

from personal to interpersonal.

You don't do justice by yourself.

No.

It's very, it shifts throughout the community.

It's a service.

It's a restoration.

It's a collective.

Activistic perspective.

So as I am seeking kingdom, the more his kingdom is manifested through my life, the more restored

or wholehearted or just the entire world around me becomes not just me.

It's an empowering, it's a, it's a restoration, a loving restoration to the people in community

around me.

And becoming a just man or a just woman puts you in the world as somebody that has influence

by the strength of character.

Yes.

Not, not celebrity, not popularity, not I'm cute on the stage, not I'm funny.

It's really, when you talk about that, there's a just man over there or a just woman.

That means an awful lot more than, well, they got saved and confessed their sins and now

they're all better.

Well, and in my mind, when I hear just, again, I think of character.

I think of somebody who has walked it out, that it's not just a moment thing, but it's

something that's been developed over time.

Right.

Over time, that's been something that's been honed and intentional.

When I think of righteousness, I think of, oh, they're a great rule follower.

They've done a great job figuring out how to externally manage sin instead of performance

management versus no, that his, his character, the, the life of Christ runs deep in him.

They are a just person.

Yeah.

And they live in a way, like you said, you know, you're a, you're a, you're a, you're

a, you're a very, very sound person.

Yeah.

Bring him in, because I've recorded quite a bit with him.

But let's meet Toby a little bit, find out a little bit about his history,

and then we'll talk more about his theology.

The point is of this is where you can begin to start right now,

and this is the adventure for me.

I love this adventure.

Sarah and I are rereading Romans now, or any place where we just read Galatians,

going through part of this, and substituting justice for righteousness.

Oh my gosh, it leaves a dent.

It really does.

And one of the ways he came to this, he talks about Plato's Republic and says,

if you read Plato's Republic, which is in the same Greek that the Bible was written in,

the DK words, that's how they refer to Greek without trying to be Greeky here,

the DK words are translated not righteousness or righteous,

it's all just and justice.

And he's writing about the Republic, a just society is what Plato's struggling with.

Not one of those 342 times in English translations

is it written in Greek.

It's translated out righteousness.

But when Toby was reading it in the Greek or working through the Greek,

he's realizing that if you put righteousness in there in Plato's words,

the book makes absolutely no sense.

Then he wondered, well, if that's truthful,

what about all that we forced on the Bible if we've got this translation wrong?

What if we put justice in all those places?

Old and New Testament, this impacts both, as you'll see in time.

And now it's, oh my gosh,

it is such a full-blown,

better reading as you'll come to see.

So that's how you can kind of start with this.

And to me, it's like a treasure hunt.

Now I'm going on exploration.

If this is true, this does change everything.

I want to know if it's true.

So we're inviting the podcast audience, others to discover.

In fact, Toby will be with us in a couple of weeks on a after show on a Saturday.

We'll tell you more about that later.

If you want to have some interaction with him directly,

and perhaps Kyle and I, I'll be there.

I don't know about Kyle for sure yet.

He's got some adventure hunting to do or some crazy thing.

But I'd like to introduce you to my newfound friend.

This is Toby.

Yeah, I was born in Windhoek, which is the capital of Namibia.

It used to be called Southwest Africa, you know, old German colony.

And then I grew up there.

Dutch Reformed, became quite reckless in my teenage years.

And then we moved to South Africa because of the politics of Namibia.

People were saying we're going to go the same route as Rhodesia back then,

which is Zimbabwe.

So then we moved to South Africa in the Free State.

My parents retired and I attended school.

I was very far away from God for a number of years.

And I had a dramatic conversion at a little Pentecostal church in a town called Parais.

Beautiful little town on the banks of the Waal River.

My brother forced me to go to a Pentecostal meeting.

He had just become a Christian.

He was about 16.

And I just sensed the love of God.

Immediately, you know, I had the sense that I wanted to devote my life to this.

But then a period of four years where I could not get it right.

I just couldn't.

And the harder I tried, the more I struggled.

And that was a torturous four years of trying to serve God,

trying to please Him, doing everything under the sun,

trying to try and kick all my old bad habits and my friends.

And every time I would just end up worse than before.

So I really became a serial backslider.

And in 1984, while I was doing military training,

which was compulsory at that stage in South Africa,

I read Malcolm Smith's Turn Your Back on the Problem.

And then right after that, Watchman Needs the Normal Christian Life.

And those two books blew my mind.

They introduced me to this understanding.

That beautiful grasp of the grace of God.

And I just started devouring everything that I could find,

that I could lay my hands on.

And I completed my military training and I decided to just train to become a pastor.

And I worked for a couple of years, got married in the denomination that I was in at the time,

the Apostolic Faith Mission.

It's South Africa's biggest Afrikaans Pentecostal denomination.

Afrikaans version, I would say,

of the Assemblies of God.

I became a pastor, but I experienced a lot of cognitive dissonance,

because somehow this passion that I had to teach what I learned from Watchman Needs

and from Malcolm Smith just didn't align with the pressure to have miracle services

and massive altar calls.

And I remember my second year at seminary,

I actually failed my sermon that I wanted to write.

I wanted to teach.

I wanted to expound scripture.

But I found myself every Sunday in front of a church congregation that wanted to see things happening.

And so I resigned after eight years of ministry and I became a Baptist.

Then I tried to become a Calvinist for a couple of years,

reading Piper and R.C. Sproul.

My heart wouldn't let me.

I just couldn't do it.

So then I was a Baptist until 2007.

That was when...

Tragedy struck.

And my wife got involved in an affair and that led to a divorce.

Eventually, I stepped down and I remarried.

And then I continued my ministry in a home cell, in the house.

And I've been doing that ever since.

So that would be 15 years now.

And then I started working as a consultant for companies until 2015,

when somebody asked me to assist at a local school.

With computer science, which I started teaching.

And I just loved it because I love teaching and I love explaining things.

Yeah, two and a half years later, I took over the school and it's become our ministry.

Okay, that's a little bit about Toby.

I mean, just a lot of additional background questions.

I mean, that era in that part of the world was going through a lot of turmoil during that time.

He has seen some things living in Zim and then moving.

To South Africa during that season of time.

Very intriguing.

And I think, as we'll find out, he'll refer to this some down the road.

Because I asked him, I said, it seems an incredible gift that if this is something

that the Holy Spirit wants to add to the body of Christ in the world,

that this would rise out of South Africa.

He has seen justice as order by the prevailing white religious group

that could talk about righteousness.

At the same time, they were oppressing blacks in their own country,

where they, their own native lands.

And I think it's just like the Holy Spirit to go, man, somebody that has lived through that and has

seen the tragedy of it, and then begins to talk about justice as an expression of love.

It's particularly powerful, I think, coming from this context.

And you'll see more of that kind of up the road.

Let's take a little bit.

I asked him to kind of just explain briefly what his premise is.

And this is what he said.

That God created us.

For love, that he designed us to be loved, and that we will never, ever experience what it's like to be human,

unless we experience that to the full.

And that in the absence of that eternal purpose, to literally extend himself and his own nature into a people,

children, you know, offspring, that what he did is he designed a system of justice,

to give us a set of guidelines, to enable us to at least behave as though we have come to an understanding of this love.

You know, that was a preparation for that love to be returned to us in the person of Christ.

When I saw that justice has got to do with a relational code, if love fulfills the law, then it means that the law is not a moral code,

but a relational code.

Love cannot fulfill a set of moral imperatives.

If love is the fulfillment of the law, it must have been relational.

Yeah.

And you know, the moment I saw that, I saw that the retribution passages all are instrumental in enforcing the golden rule.

Very simply, by putting us at the receiving end of our own actions, we learn what it means.

To be the other, so to speak.

Eye for an eye, and the tooth for a tooth was not an incitement to vengeance.

What it was designed to do was to make me experience what it's like to be at the receiving end of my actions.

And the moment I experience that, you know, that becomes a deterrent, yes.

But what it does, it sensitizes me to the experience of the other.

So that, all of that was sort of the precursor to the,

what we call the golden rule, treat others as you would have them treat you.

I thought, wow, is this why he instituted retributive justice?

It's to teach me to become sensitive to others, that I will end up treating them as I want to be treated.

God had to codify the terms and the conditions of relationships in the absence of his spirit of life within us.

So he had to tell us how to behave.

He had to say to us, you cannot take that which belongs to you.

You cannot take that which belongs to you.

You cannot take that which belongs to your neighbor.

And if you take it, you've got to give it back plus.

So the entire law is a manifestation of the absence of true love.

For the first time, I could understand why David loved the law like he did.

When I understood this, I suddenly loved reading the prophets.

A way that I'd never done before, because for the first time I saw that they were speaking about love.

But they were speaking about love to people who found it foreign to love.

But they were setting forth this ideal of love, and yet the people couldn't do it.

And that is the beauty, that Christ came and he accomplished what the law could not do.

Which means that, to me, conversion is no longer turning from sin to righteousness or from bad deeds to good deeds.

For me, conversion has become turning from narcissism to a life of love.

And if you don't throw that into the equation when you so-called lead somebody,

to the Lord, you're really deceiving them.

I don't know what you're giving them, but you're not giving them the gospel.

And this thing awakened me in a way that I felt alive, where I saw people as people.

And I was interested in their thoughts.

It took me so long to understand that this is what conversion is.

Whereas the first part of my Christian life, I spent trying to become a holy Joe,

which is just such a waste of time.

And it's so us-focused, right?

Like, it's so us-focused.

As we are resting and learning how to live loved, then all of a sudden, the manifestation of,

at least for me anyway, the more I have learned how to live in the love of Father,

the more that disarms my need to self-promote or self-protect, and I can simply serve.

I can simply love.

I can simply connect with others for their sake.

And in appreciation for who they are versus in my own way,

and trying to manipulate or trying to gain something from it or trying to find my own way.

Yeah, I love that idea about conversion.

It's from the narcissism of self to really being in the watching the other,

to having a place alongside what love means in the world,

which is Jesus saying, the new command I give you, love one another as I have loved you.

What we call the golden rule in both, Toby and I talked about,

it's a lousy name for it.

We just made another rule out of what Jesus said.

Instead of, he invited us on the adventure of let my Father and me love you in such a way

that you will share that love with other people.

And when that process happens, life in you, life from you to others,

there's no need for a code of any kind.

The code goes away to a relational reality.

And I think for those who are hearing this so far going,

okay, I don't like this whole justice talk,

because justice is so misused in our culture.

And you're going to be thinking about maybe racial justice or social justice warriors

or all the ways that's at a pejorative.

This is really about relational justice.

This is about treating people the way I would want them to treat me.

It really puts on the onus of someone who's a follower of Christ

to instead of trying to be pure and not have lustful thoughts

and try and not view pornography and try and not do X, Y, Z,

I'm learning to live just in the world.

I'm letting his,

his love fill me up so that those things are displaced.

They're not conquered, they're displaced.

And the, and the altitude of that is not,

I become a more a holy Joe, as he says it.

I actually become someone who treats people around me in a way that opens up the,

the flow of life that God into me and then me into them as a,

as a distributor, as a distributor, the better word of that life.

And to me, this is the emphasis that is most,

most touched my heart in all of this.

It is really about transformation, not as option.

If you want to live in the kingdom, the kingdom is found in justice.

It's not in your personal righteousness.

It's not how good you can be.

It's how much of God's love gets to touch you, shape you, change you.

And then you live with a different eye in the world toward the people around you.

And what you look for is fairness.

And I think that's one of those things that.

Everybody has a sense of what fairness is.

It may not always be accurate, but people know when they're unfairly treated.

And it makes us angry.

As you said, it's the injustice.

When somebody cheats me, lies to me, betrays me, messes with my relationships

that I value when somebody does that.

And we're, we're the victim of someone's injustice.

Then we know how badly that hurts.

And we cry out for fairness.

What we're not always aware of is when.

Unfairness benefits me.

I'm treating someone unfairly.

I'm not, and I don't think any of the perpetrators are nearly as aware of how

much I am violating somebody else's rights, even down to something as simple as trying

to negotiate a business transaction.

It may be a personal thing.

You're trying to buy somebody's a car stereo, whatever the whole value in America

is you low ball it as far as you can, especially if they are leveraged in some way.

They need.

To sell it and you don't have to buy it.

And you use all that and then boast about it later.

I've done this.

I go, man, you can't believe the deal I got in this car.

I, this guy needed this and I did that.

And you almost delight in injustice.

This would change business relationships in that I want to find what's fair to us both.

I want you to go away happy.

I want to go away happy.

And if we find what's fair for both of us, and so fairness is an individual.

But if we can't do that, sometimes it's not fair.

It's not fair.

And and I'm not saying it's fair for everybody.

But in the intuitive sense, we all already have.

Most people don't have that for righteousness.

It's just like, oh boy, especially in the religious sense of, OK, so I, Jesus, I got

to stop doing that.

Jesus said that doesn't please God, just ticks him off.

So I got to change that.

And it becomes this personal piety that just cannot be a source of justice in the world.

And.

So.

You can.

they're leading an apartheid system, because to them, righteousness is order, and it's our order,

so they can pay the price for that. That's just part of it. And you have to dehumanize people to

do that, because you can't really see them, and you can't touch the love of God and not be shaped

by it. Oh, I mean, I just, as we were talking about it, I love the perspective of even the

Ten Commandments, and how those are so relational, versus growing up, the system that I heard is,

at least you've got to be able to manage these ten rules, this law. At least you've got to try to

live up to this moral code, versus a relational worldview of, no, I don't want to murder my

next-door neighbor. I don't want to steal what he has. That's going to have a negative impact

on my relationship with them.

Going to not teach them how to love well, because that's showing them a completely different

perspective of the way to relate with humans. And I thought about, even just the, you used the

illustration of watching pornography, or whatever, through the lens of justice, you would see the

humanity of the people that are even participating in that. As you continue to be infused with

Father's love, your care for the people who are on the screen is going to impact how you even

experience that.

Which is going to disarm or change the way that you would even pursue or view pornography, let alone wanting to utilize it for your own personal gain.

And Toby does a lot of that here. What we're going to see is, when I learn to live out of justice, I'm going to end up living in

righteousness, because I can't treat people the way I need to. Like you just said about pornography, I'm aware of the people that are

paying the price for my amusement or titillation or whatever. And now I see them as people. It changes.

It becomes distasteful. And that's the beauty, I think, of this kind of transformation. It genuinely

draws a line to what loved-based transformation looks like. As I am loved and learn to love. And

both those two got to go together. I think many of the people, a lot of the love message in the

world today is all about our personal appropriation of love. This adds the whole idea of, oh, it's not

just that. If you have a lake in which river, water does not flow out of it, this was on one of the

blogs I thought was brilliant. You got the Sea of Galilee in Israel, and water flows through it. And so it's pure, and it's

beautiful, and it's wonderful. And it all flows down to the Dead Sea where there's no outlet. And where there's no outlet, it's a

Dead Sea. It's just too full of salt. And man, I think that's what happens to Christians who are so focused on, I will take in

from the Lord his life, but I haven't found a way to communicate that life just in the way I live. Not go on the mission field,

teach, not get a ministry, not do anything. Just because I live toward my spouse, my children, my extended family, my

neighbors, my co-workers, I'm living with a sense of looking out for their needs. How can I be a voice of justice for them

today in fairness, letting their life have a fair shot at what their desires are? And it's beautiful. Let me play one more bit.

This is Toby again.

Well, you don't even need to be a Protestant. But if you are a believer, and you have

any basic idea of the gospel, then you would know Romans 3.21. You won't be able to quote it, or know the reference, but the

words. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets be

witness to it. You know, now reading this, and thinking that, you know, the only way in which we can justify the intrusion of the

word righteous,

into this verse, is to suggest that the law existed for the sake of righteousness, and that the law abiding Jew was trying to find that

righteousness by keeping the law. Now, if we, you know, if we define righteousness in the Protestant paradigm, as a right standing before

God, as an imputation, or in the words of the Westminster Confession, you know, as a legal for

a

law or a law that is taken away by the state, then it is a law that is least of all things, a law that is LAW. Now, if you're right-minded and you are thinking of this as the law, you should look at it as a law that is

that this is not transformative you know this is forensic in other words it's a status that

is conferred on you if you think of righteousness like that then you know then you've got to ask

okay so it seems then that the law was there to bring that about but now there's a problem with

that because the law was not there to create this right standing before god that's not the purpose

of the law the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice and to rectify it if it does occur

that's the purpose of the law now if we take this as a as a point of departure then we will realize

that the the right standing is the fringe benefit of justice so the right standing is not obliterated

or challenged it's there but it's not the focus and the verse that came to mind was romans 13

3 where paul says would you have no fear of the one who is in authority then do what is good

and you will receive his approval so the doing of the good is that which leads

to the approval now you know a lot of believers are going to have their hair stand up at this

point and say oh you know you're propagating a works gospel not at all what i'm saying is

that the aim of the law is to bring about justice name of the law is justice

and if you can manage to live up to the law's demand for justice then you will be in right

standing with the with the authority and this focus does something in one's mind when you when

you begin to see but now the justice of god has been manifested apart from the law so the first

thing that happened in my mind when i began to meditate on this is i thought but this takes the

law of moses in my thinking and it brings it very close to the laws of countries because the law of

moses if it's associated with righteousness it's almost a different angle to the normal

way we think about law but if it's associated with justice then suddenly it's almost on the same par

as the laws of the gentiles because the laws of the gentiles

are concerned with justice and the moment i understood this i thought wow if the law has got

to do with justice then i'm going to find the same principles that are found in the law in ancient

codes of justice ancient legal codes i immediately you know i was literally trembling when i did

this because i thought i knew i was going to find it and i started searching and you know the oldest

legal code that i quickly i told you after i went through it i found the law of justice and i was in the.

discovered was the code of hamurabi which is the ancient babylonian code and the amazing thing is

that when you when you look at this code it starts off and he says when marduk okay now if you can

just ignore that the reference to the to to marduk in brackets the god of babylon he sent when he

sent me to rule the people and to bring help to the country i established law and justice

in the land and then he starts delineating you know what these are and you find a remarkable

similarity with the old testament laws you find a reference to the tooth for a tooth

an eye for an eye you find the restrictive justice that you shall not do this to your neighbor you

shall not but if you do you shall repay and why i thought this was significant is because to me

this

took me back to romans 2 verses 15 and 16 that the lord god has written his law on the hearts

of the gentiles and i suddenly realized that this thing of justice is inside all of people people

you know and then i began to study and i started looking at ancient legal codes

you know in africa i happened to i i had a acquaintance who passed away and his father

was a missionary up in africa and he had a library of incredibly wonderfully rare books

and a lot of them had to do with with research into the ancient customs of tribes up in africa

even before the settlers came or you know the colonialists and um it's remarkable to see the

the pattern of justice and how all societies are founded on the principle of justice and how rulers

are appointed for the sake of overseeing the justice system when i understood this and i saw you know when i came to london you know you found out that the justice system was the rule of the future once you do justice and you know it was there all over the place it is what you knowmin就到

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You know, whether it's Mesoamerica, whether it's China, whether it's ancient India or Egypt.

And I see the similarity and I link that to Romans 2, the law is in the hearts of the Gentiles, so much so that they are literally without excuse.

Suddenly, this verse took on a new meaning, namely that for the first time in history, the justice of God has been manifested apart from a system of law.

And I thought, wow, can this be?

Is this the gospel that the very fabric of that which we call governance and kingdoms and empires and the reason for kings and rulers?

You know, I mean, you could just carry on and unpack this, that the justice is just written over everything, that all of this was fulfilled through the coming of a justice.

That was not dependent on a law, on a code of regulations that would regulate people by telling them what to do and by giving them an incentive through reward or judgment or a punishment, should they not do it.

And suddenly, for the first time, and I mentioned this to you in our last conversation, and the reason I mentioned it is because I wanted to get to this point.

You know, for decades.

I've never quite grasped this concept of the kingdom of God as I as I wanted to, you know, and when I saw this, suddenly, I realized, yeah, is a kingdom that is different from all kingdoms.

And this kingdom did not only come as a fulfillment and a completion of the sort of prophetic justice picture portrayed by the law of Moses, this kingdom come as a fulfillment of every empire and every kingdom that has ever existed.

And I tried to govern themselves with a system of justice.

And what he was saying is I'm bringing justice outside of a system of law.

Yeah.

A lot to unpack there, isn't there?

Not getting to the tribe in wherever and sharing the gospel with them and that they were dying.

It's like, well, no, it's been written on their heart, but we still need to get there so that they're righteous and we can speak righteousness to them so that they're able to be saved and get there.

Get out.

Hell free card.

It makes so much more sense that I have written my justice, my law, my justice on the hearts of mankind.

That makes so much more sense because you look at all societies and yes, there's corruption and there's the brokenness of humanity.

But you look at when humanity is manifesting in the good, whether they know the name of Christ or not, it's in alignment with true justice.

Am I wrong?

No, I think what humanity seems to be able to write out fairly well is the idealization of what justice could be.

Yes.

The fact is we can't implement it or we can't live up to it because wherever there's a system, there's people in charge.

And those people get very autocratic and boss other people around.

And they also get very indulgent because we're at the top of the peak.

So justice doesn't apply to us.

We can get away with like if you were in Congress today.

Just the idea that you have a better health care system than you are letting other people be a part of would be unjust on the face of it.

Yes.

But humanity doesn't have the ability.

When I hear this, and there's a lot more that we'll get into in the weeks to come.

There's a lot here about why when he talks about Jesus revealed a justice apart from a system.

And what did Christianity to do?

We just went and created another system that has all the same thing.

Here's the expectations.

Here's the people that benefit and are above the rules.

They don't have to follow the rules.

But here you need to follow the rules.

And there's various points of, you know, whether that qualifies you for heaven, as some groups say, or that doesn't really matter.

But unless you want God's blessings, we took all of Paul's principles and thoughts about justice and we just codified him into a sense of a set of behaviors again.

And I love where he's going to point us here.

This sense of justice and living out of God's justice in the world.

Is not something imposed from without.

It's something that becomes inherent within you as you learn to live in his love.

And then you will live treating others fairly.

I was thinking of something as simple as, I hate going to a website.

Within five seconds, you got a pop-up thing that you got to sign for somebody's email address.

And that's almost 98% of websites out there.

People have told me I need to do it.

People who watch some of what I do saying, that's how you heart.

I've seen some of those service emails and there's a place if you want to be on my mail, there's a place to sign up.

But I, when I'm on a website, I resent it.

So I won't do it.

It's not like, okay, I resent it, but I've got to do it anyway.

And that's, it's little things like that, that we begin to trade and the sense of relational justice.

I'm not going to do to a viewer on my website.

What I don't want done when I go to another website.

I don't know how people jump over that.

Yeah.

In a major way that this, if this were true, the rep and the referent reformers would have understand this.

They wouldn't have created another system.

No.

And Calvin creates this huge system.

And as we're going to see, no matter what system you create, even the one that God gave in the law, there's no system you can create that can't be abused by those who have the power to abuse it.

Even the Pharisees, they, they use their doctrines to subvert the law.

And Jesus confronts them on it.

It makes a lot of sense.

Now he's talking about, you don't even live to justice.

You claim to be loved by God and care about love.

And you, and we embed it in a system.

I've been one of those.

It's been in the justice system, both as a juror and as someone who had been sued.

And I got to tell you, our justice system has little to do with justice.

And anybody knows that who's been involved with it.

It's about manipulating law to get the outcome you want.

It's not about finding truth.

It's about finding truth and being just to both people who are involved in some kind of claim or action against each other.

So he can say, yeah, the law has all this ideal in it.

The fact is humanity doesn't have what it takes to live in the reality of any system that we've created.

You got to continue to do punishments and whatever.

But then some people get away because they're rich enough to get away with doing whatever they want to do.

I just, I think this keeps pointing us back to there's something so much richer here,

which will impact us.

in podcasts to come.

Man, how do we zero in on this engagement with God?

You begin by saying, man, but this is a flow of love.

The love that you experience in God teaches you not human justice, God's justice.

And that's a very different reality.

And not only does it teach you, it teaches you by freeing you enough to live in it and finding that when you live in it,

it's the joyful, wonderful way to live, not, okay, I got to do justice for God again.

Yeah, because it's...

I think back to it in regards to, or should we pause here and...

Yeah, let's, let me just do, let me just do this and then we'll come back.

Okay, we're going to break right here, people.

I know we've got so much more to unpack and we will in the weeks to come.

For those of you that want to join us on Saturday morning, September 21st at 11 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time.

Okay, so you got to convert that to wherever you are.

Toby's going to join us in a Zoom chat.

If you want to be part of that, write to me, make a request.

I'll send you the link.

And you can join us in that.

We'll also try and stream that live.

So if you don't want to be in the room necessarily, you can watch it as we kind of talk about it.

I think we've got the whole live streaming down now.

I think, I think we're not doing it for this podcast because the unique thing,

you just watch Kyle and I listen to a lot of recording, which could be kind of boring.

In any case, Kyle, we'll continue this next week.

Okay, sounds great.

Thank you for traveling with us today on The God Journey.

You can join this conversation by visiting thegodjourney.com.

We'll see you next week.

Bye.