"All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society. Means and methods used for the improvement of society and the establishment of righteousness among men can be truly and permanently helpful only when they are rooted in the regeneration of the individual by the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ. In the spirit of Christ, Christians should oppose racism, every form of greed, selfishness, and vice, and all forms of sexual immorality, including adultery, homosexuality, and pornography. We should work to provide for the orphaned, the needy, the abused, the aged, the helpless, and the sick. We should speak on behalf of the unborn and contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death. Every Christian should seek to bring industry, government, and society as a whole under the sway of the principles of righteousness, truth, and brotherly love. In order to promote these ends Christians should be ready to work with all men of good will in any good cause, always being careful to act in the spirit of love without compromising their loyalty to Christ and His truth."
One will find much worse/weaker statements of the relationship of the Christian to the social order by many Presbyterians, swayed as some are by extreme forms of two-kingdom theology. That reactionary ilk, though, is mostly concerned with clarifying the institutional Church's mission, along "spiritual" lines of discipleship. As will be shown here, I agree in some respects. However, I appreciate the strong view presented here in the BF&M concerning the Chrisitan's obligation to seek to promote the will of Christ in every area of life, including public/social arenas.
The second sentence here rightly points out that Christian ethics are not promoted publicly, in the first place, by top-down political coups, ecclesiocracy, or a focus on legislation; rather, in the first place, men's hearts must be changed by the Holy Spirit so that they see Christ for who He is--Lord of heaven and earth, not just Lord of individual hearts--and embrace His commandments. This happens through the gospel, both as it is preached in formal worship, and as it is shared by individual believers in informal settings.
This section is also right to focus on the Christian and the social order, rather than the Church and the social order. The two of course can never be separated, but a clear view of the mission of the institutional Church as being focused on discipleship is important, biblically speaking. Noticeably absent from the pastoral epistles is any emphasis on important things like charity work, social justice concerns, and the like. The repeated emphasis is on the teaching and preaching of the Word, and the maintenance of good discipline in the Church. It is individual Christians who are called, in various individual vocations, to "build the kingdom" in ways beyond discipleship proper as they seek to apply the implications of both Law and Gospel to every area of life--arts, politics, industry, criminal justice, human life, etc.--and to redress the Fall in its myriad effects of sin and misery (including working for all kinds of "social justice"...so long as that term is defined biblically rather than by neo-Marxist intersectionalists).
As rightly sensitive as the more conservative wing of the Reformed world in the U.S. is to the "capital-S, capital-J" Social Justice movement that threatens to derail the institutional Church from its central mission of making disciples (and to distort its theological anthropology by overly reifying the concept of "race" beyond "human" in the first place), I do fear that at times, in places, the reaction has tended toward a level of blindness to real remaining social problems that those on the political and theological Left are more sensitive to (but also tend to exaggerate at times, on the other side). For example, is racism far less of a problem in the modern West than in almost every other time and place in global history? Yes...try saying something racist on social media today and notice the reaction--is that not an indication of the actual cultural zeitgeist on the matter? However, does that mean there is absolutely no "systemic" racism left anywhere here, in the sense of its subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle!) permeation of certain social groups, professional bureaucracies, and the like? I'm not convinced that such a thing has been eradicated the way some on the Right have suggested, and that's not because I'm any kind of expert social commentator--far from it. It's just that 1) I've heard dozens of stories from trustworthy non-white Christian brothers that indicate to me that there is still deep and wide racial hostility in some places; and more importantly, 2) biblically, the kingdom of Satan doesn't work by isolated "guerilla warfare" attacks...sin spreads like leaven through dough, and it is never eradicated overnight. We should be clear-headed about that fact in relationship to every area of private and public life, and as Christians we need to work to expose darkness werever we find it and push it back with the light of the gospel of the kingdom (not with reparations and affirmative action--things which pretend compassion and mercy but actually strip human dignity and, especially in the Church, functionally deny the gospel of grace and pretend divine precision of judgment over history). I could be wrong about this, and my goal is not to speak out of both sides of the mouth because I have an a priori goal of "balance" defined by the middle of the cultural moment; I lean Right on most theological and many political issues, but I do worry sometimes that the Reformed reaction to the SJW movement has been more "Republican-balanced" than "biblically-balanced." I just think our own reactions to any movement should be thought through as self-critically and carefully as possible. For what it's worth...
In a previous section I already wrote a bit about cooperating with other men "without compromising...loyalty to Christ," as it is put here, so I would simply echo my previous thoughts on that in relation to this section as well. There is a sense in which the wider kingdom of Christ includes a "common grace" realm of sorts, but, unlike some hardcore amillennial two-kingdom thinkers, I do not think that exempts those areas of life from the specific, concrete authority of the rule of Christ (which brings even Old Covenant law principles/"general equity" to bear on the New Covenant situation). And this will affect the degree to which Christians can lawfully cooperate with men of "good will" (and there is some need to define that phrase further on its own!...) without compromising loyalty to Christ. For example, to what degree can a Christian cooperate with or participate in a government system that explicitly sanctions religious pluralism (at least as its constitution is commonly interpreted today), which is an offense to the true and living God? Our brothers in more establishmentarian-leaning denominations raise a good question here. I'm not completely sure yet on my position about voting vs. strong dissent, but I am convinced, at the very least, that most Christians need to think longer and harder (and more biblically) than they often do before "laying on hands hastily", as it were, in selecting their leaders at the ballot box, lest they "partake in other men's sins" (cf. 1 Tim. 5:22, about ordination, but relevant to democratic processes as well).
As one theologian quipped once, Jesus Christ is Lord in reality, not just between our ears. Therefore all areas of life, including public and social areas of education, government, industry, etc., belong to Him already in principle (Ps. 110). And Christ is constructing an eschatological footstool for His feet by destroying every enemy of His who stands in the way of His advancing kingdom. The institutional Church, the called-out covenant community that gathers regularly for worship, must focus on "baptizing" (incorporating) and "teaching" (training/deepening faith and loyalty to Christ among the incorporated members)--that is to say, making disciples. But that training should result in individual believers who are equipped to go out from the New Jerusalem into the beginnings of the new heavens and earth and build the kingdom of Christ in every area, taking every thought captive to His obedience, tending to the "garden," bearing fruit, crushing the serpent under their feet (Rom. 16:20; [since he has already been crushed under Messiah's foot]), so that Death and Sin, which have no more rightful authority in this world (Rom. 5-8), will eventually be banished forever (ultimately, at Christ's return, and because of it, of course).
Overall, I am encouraged by the robustness of this section of the BF&M, and only wish more Baptists in America took such theology to heart. With the decline of dispensationalism, I think that is beginning to happen even in some unlikely circles. Thank God for that. It just needs to stay centered on the gospel--the actual gospel, not the gospel of Liberation Theology, nor the gospel of apocalyptic, monastic retreat (neither of which are any sort of gospel at all).
