Justification By Faith And Social Justice By Works (Part 1)

by on November 18, 2025 | Comment

Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) stands at the forefront of technological advancement, representing a simulation of the real—a virtual reality. AI systems and bots can imitate humans, even fulfilling aspects of the cultural mandate. This development has already delivered tangible gains for society, such as an increase in efficiency and cost savings. Yet there are also losses, many of which remain impossible to anticipate fully at this point in history.

Already evident is AI displacing human labour, stripping humans of livelihoods and undermining traditional sources of purpose. More disturbing is how AI, especially when paired with social media, enables the recreation of identity into something “hyper-real” or “beyond-real”. Such digital constructions can offer synthetic improvements upon objective reality—or even invert it—through nothing more than a clinical string of code. In this way, AI can function like a parasite: feeding on a host reality, system or culture, draining it of meaning and resources, and subtly altering or replacing it. The result is a deceptive construction of signs that risks blocking access to the very foundations on which human meaning depends.1

Not unlike the curated online persona or the chatbot therapist, Satan simulated divine authority in the Garden of Eden by attaching himself parasitically to God and his creation with the intent of destroying it. The Evil One exploited the very world of God’s words and works to manufacture credibility and trust, staging a cunning cosmic coup.

At the core of Satan’s temptation was the strategy of sowing doubt—casting suspicion on God’s Word, his fairness, and his justice—while at the same time proposing a rival kingdom built on unmediated and immoral speculation. The Devil succeeded in persuading Adam and Eve that God was withholding from them the “knowledge of good and evil,” which they were led to believe would fulfil their pursuit of glory. Satan’s enticement to “divine-likeness” appeared to harmonize with the pre-fall creation account, where humanity was already made in God’s image. Yet his true intent was far more sinister: to lure humanity into a constant striving after the Ineffable Essence itself—if not to usurp God altogether—through a covenant emptied of righteousness (Gen 3:1–13).

Ever since east of Eden, Satan has mimicked God’s wisdom and ways to seduce sinners into covenant-breaking rebellion, for the Evil One dresses himself as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14). Nowhere does he sparkle more deceptively than at the point where the church stands or falls: justification by faith alone in Christ alone (2 Cor 11:15). Should sinners be persuaded to seek salvation in an alternate justice of works-righteousness, then guilt for sin is silenced, shame for iniquity is suppressed, and Satan prevails. It matters little what form of “justice” is on offer—in fact, the more plausible and benevolent the better—provided that it cancels unilateral grace.

In this essay, I first consider how Satan can manipulate moral intuition revealed in the creation, Noahic, and Mosaic covenants to tempt sinners toward a counterfeit salvation based on works righteousness. I then explore how, when such moralism proves insufficiently glorious, Satan simulates true spiritual justice through speculative religious innovations, as evidenced in the Corinthian church, whose proto-Gnostic tendencies blended mysticism, elitism, and performance spirituality. Third, I trace how private quests for unmediated divine experience have repeatedly surfaced in history as divinized political movements—especially when the church has been able to align itself with state power. Fourth, I argue that these movements, whether on the historic collectivist left or right, share core Gnostic features: the pursuit of transcendent justice in the present, grounded in esoteric knowledge as the basis for a “second order reality.” Fifth, I expose how such distortions of both law and gospel reflect Satan’s parasitic strategy to copy and consume God and creation—turning gospel into law and grace into self-exaltation. Finally, I present the biblical corrective: justification by faith alone in Christ crucified, within Christ’s two-fold covenantal rule over creation and redemption, where believers sojourn as dual citizens under the cross toward the celestial city.

1. Imitating Natural Justice

Human beings are created in the image of God through covenant, which is defined by the principle of justice. This official imprint of divine righteousness constitutes human being and behaviour as embodied souls in the world. Now, the word covenant may strike some readers as odd and perhaps cold, even unnecessary. Yet, covenant is inherent to the human condition and constitutes divine and human relationships. Herman Bavinck writes:

Generally, a covenant is an agreement between persons who voluntarily obligate and bind themselves to each other for the purpose of fending off an evil or obtaining a good. Such an agreement, whether it is made tacitly or defined in explicit detail, is the usual form in terms of which humans live and work together. Love, friendship, marriage, as well as all social cooperation in business, industry, science, art, and so forth, is ultimately grounded in a covenant, that is, reciprocal fidelity and an assortment of generally recognized moral obligations.2

I would add to this general definition the idea that human being itself—a world in miniature—depends upon the right and harmonious ordering of disparate parts for healthy engagement with God and the world (cf. Ps 139:13–6). God created humanity to reflect his image in covenant, which entails a constellation of judicial exchanges: performance in relationship (cf. Prov 11). Furthermore, this divine ordering of human existence finds expression in various legal arrangements—from creation to consummation, in the Old Testament and the New. Yet, Satan, the world, and the flesh have challenged this history at every turn with counterfeits.

Creation Justice

God’s creation covenant with Adam ensured that humanity inherited a natural orientation toward justice—an intuition of judgment according to obedience and performance. Though corrupted by the fall, this judicial sense remains.

God created Adam and Eve in holiness and righteousness for his glory (Gen 1:31; Eccl 7:29). While all creation is governed by the divine laws of the first covenant, only human beings are obligated to reflect God according to the justice of this order. Therefore, we can say that the laws of the creation covenant and divine image-bearing are two sides of the same coin: finding beautiful expression in human being and doing (Gen 1–2 [1:26–7; 2:15–7]; Belgic Confession [BC] 14; Westminster Confession of Faith [WCF] 7.2; Westminster Larger Catechism [WLC] 20; Westminster Shorter Catechism [WSC] 12).

God’s covenant with Adam sets the stage for defining a biblical covenant, which is essentially a relationship between two or more parties with legal aspects.3 Even tighter: Covenants in Scripture are defined by judicial reciprocity with consequences. Covenant organizes the divine-human and horizontal intra-human relationships. In this organization, God is the distinct Supreme Being and human relationships honor dignified differentiation—lest sinners devour God through speculation, and their fellow man through narcissistic fusion (cf. Isa 42:8; BC 1).

In Eden, God gave Adam and Eve certain commands as the basis for their relationship and as a condition for entering glory. In love, God created Adam and Eve in righteousness, knowledge, and truth, with the ability to obey. In other words, God outfitted Adam and Eve with a covenantal nature designed to respond as servants to their Lord by being fruitful, multiplying, and exercising dominion. As body-soul creatures, they were to image God in being and action, to mirror God by fulfilling a commission in the world to earn the reward of heaven (Gen 1:28–31; 2:15–7; Rom 7:10; WCF 7).4

Our first parents reflected God as covenantal creatures in a sacred bond defined by justice. In this treatise of works, God promised eternal life for obedience and spiritual death for disobedience. Therefore, one can say that to bear the creation image is to be constituted as speech-acts in covenant, divine reflections of judicial being capable of royal action toward heavenly enthronement. In short, the original Edenic commission was a legal order revealed by God and natural to man, which can be called natural law (cf. Rom 12–6).5 This natural law was to our first parents a beautiful reflection of the divine and therefore attractive and reasonable to obey.

The first covenant reveals God’s justice and love but not his mercy—God’s divine beauty, bounty, and symmetry, but not his forgiveness (cf. Rom 7:12; Gal 3:10).

Fall

Adam and Eve broke the creation covenant by believing Satan’s promise of an unjust kingdom and by rebelling against God’s commands. In so doing, our parents lost the righteous glory of the divine image and gained irrepressible guilt and shame as a down payment of final judgement (Gen 3:1–21). Despite the fall, Adam and his posterity still possess the innate official, functional, and formal faculties to discern what God revealed in the first covenant and to obey him. Furthermore, we all naturally know that judgment follows lawlessness and obedience finds favour (Gen 9:6; Rom 2:12–6). Yet, due to original sin, human beings cannot will their covenant capacities toward the ultimate good in ways that ultimately please God (Rom 3:9–20). Nevertheless, God still enables his fallen creatures to produce provisional civil good that furthers the cultural mandate (Jer 29; Gen 8–9; Rom 13).

Bearing the creation image in covenant remains foundational to the individual and collective human condition, which God uses for the common good. But Satan can also use this “covenant-consciousness” for evil. He knows that sinners seek a solution to the anguish of a stricken conscience (Rev 12:10). He knows that they naturally perform for divine and human love. Hence, Satan feigns compassion with the “good news” that sinners can resolve the demands of God’s justice—by works.

In a fallen world, sinners confuse God the creator with God the redeemer. They think that the God revealed in the conscience by virtue of the creation image is a saving God at the end of human effort. Sinners believe that the creator God revealed in unaccommodated majesty and power is their Saviour.

Noahic Justice

Another foundational layer to humanity’s sojourn east of Eden is God’s common, temporal, and universal covenant with Noah after the flood (Gen 8:20–9:17).6 This covenant both preserves and modifies the creation order. On the one hand, Noahic law sustains moral continuity with the covenant of creation. On the other, it tempers retributive justice by introducing divine forbearance, signed and sealed in the rainbow. What is also new is punishment of the civil magistrate—first intimated in Genesis 4—now charged with punishing the evildoer and preserving social order (Gen 9:6; cf. Gen 4:1–16; Rom 13). Yet, Scripture makes plain, from Cain to the many upon whom the sun rises, that God does not ordinarily execute strict civil justice on the lawless (Matt 5:45).

God’s common grace is the daily portion of all creatures. All benefit from his postponement of final judgment upon a corrupted world, even as they contribute to the advancement of human civilization (Gen 9:1–7; BC 35–36). Yet, all also know, however dimly, the cost of failings in judicial exchange—before God and with one another. Each must grapple with the ache of guilt, the wound of moral bankruptcy, and the weight of self-reproach (Gen 27:34–38; Exod 9:27; Ps 51).

If Satan cannot tempt with strict satisfaction of the moral law engraved upon the conscience and republished in the Noahic covenant, he turns to God’s common grace. He twists divine forbearance into a lie, persuading sinners that heaven may be gained on a merciful curve. Thus, troubled souls are deceived into thinking that God accepts imperfect human effort for salvation, just as he withholds judgment from the created order.

In this outlook, sinners speculate about salvation based on God’s actions on the stage of history. If he appears with majestic power, might, and justice restrained by forbearance, then man imagines a ladder of imperfect obedience into God’s essence. If the creation and the providential Noahic standards of glory, success, rectitude, lordship, and dominion are analogous to salvation, they become false goals for finding God. The logic follows: If I prove myself a faithful spouse, a fruitful parent, and otherwise exercise dominion with moderation, then such justice earns me participation in the eternal Good, where Christ makes up for any defects in being.

Mosaic Justice

The constellation of covenant impressions upon humanity further expanded when God made the old covenant with Moses at Mt. Sinai. This treatise incorporated aspects of creation, especially the principle of strict justice (Exd 20:1–17; HC 19; WCF 7). Yet, more fundamentally, the Mosaic covenant reveals with greater clarity God’s promise made to Adam in Genesis 3:15—to save sinners by unilateral grace through the seed of the woman.7

To be sure, God did not make the old covenant with every person in the ancient world. It is most fully displayed in the Judeo-Christian traditions, as testified in Scripture itself. Yet, old covenant imprints of legal obligation and unconditional grace—at least in fragmented form—have surfaced across religions and cultures through storytelling, myths, and symbols.8 While these etchings may not always be conscious, they join the creation and Noahic images informing human conduct—for better and for the worse.9

At worst, the old covenant’s republication of creation law intensifies the sinner’s primordial impulse toward self-justifying performance. And the demonstration of God’s creation power after the order of Eden, coupled with signs and wonders foreshadowing heaven, stirs the perennial human temptation to confuse salvation with demonstrations of power and might (cf. 1 Cor 1:22–5; 2 Cor 12:11–3).

Adding to this disorientation is Satan’s juxtaposition of both law and gospel in the Mosaic administration of the covenant of grace. Infamous examples of this in the New Testament include the Judaizing of the good news in Galatia and Corinth (cf. Gal 3:10-4; 2 Cor 3:3ff).

Natural Law

The idea of God’s natural justice is captured in summary form in the early chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans. In Romans 1, the apostle Paul teaches that everyone by nature knows God the creator, yet suppresses and defends against this knowledge. In Romans 2, he describes how even a corrupted conscience can discern the moral law. In Romans 13, Paul admonishes believers to submit to the civil authorities who govern according to God’s natural law. This common judicial sense arises from the convergence of creation, Noahic, and Mosaic images—each revealing conditional performance through tangible displays of divine power.

Herein lies fertile ground for Satan to recast Jesus as a synergistic partner, a moral exemplar, or a new Moses to follow—into the land of meritocracy. In this counterfeit kingdom of self-righteousness, the Devil parodies justice satisfied for salvation: whether through regimented devotion, cultural virtue, or disciplined morality. Psychological rupture in the face of divine reckoning is averted through self-justifying substitutes such as self-care, gestures of communal charity, and displays of political activism.

In short, the Devil leeches onto the law and drains the gospel of its saving power, reducing it to virtue-signalling, family values, and social uplift. He is content to make sinners into ethicists, moralists, and politicians—anything but true theologians (of the cross). If Satan can make sinners into a reformed version of the first Adam, then the second Adam is rendered unnecessary (cf. Rom 5:12–21). At its core, sin after the fall is the refusal of the gift of grace and the setting of the self in place of God—whether through secular power plays or pious workaholism, the latter being more insidiously deceptive.

Notes

  1. See Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (The University of Michigan Press, 1994).
  2. See Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2, Sin and Salvation in Christ, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Baker Academic, 2004), 568-9.
  3. See Michael G. Brown and Zach Keele, Sacred Bond: Covenant Theology Explored (Reformed Fellowship, 2012), 5.
  4. On the catholicity of the covenant of works at creation, see, e.g., John V. Fesko, The Covenant of Works: The Origins, Development, and Reception of the Doctrine (Oxford University Press, 2020). On the creation covenant constituting man in the image of God as a probational being in action, see David VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order: A Biblical Theology of Natural Law (Eerdmans, 2014), 39–46, 74–5, 481–2; and Zacharias Ursinus, The Commentary of Dr. Zacharias Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1992), 32–3.
  5. See Ursinus, The Commentary of Dr. Zacharias Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism, 148–50; VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, 68–76; 86–90, 481–2; and Michael S. Horton, Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology (Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 133–6.
  6. For those defending God’s post-flood covenant with Noah as temporal and common to all, see, e.g., VanDrunen, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, 13; Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview, 2nd ed. (Two Age Press, 2006), 153–89; Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:216–19; Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 2, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann (Concordia Publishing House, 1960), 140–1; and Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God’s Gifts for a Fallen World, vol. 1, trans. Nelson D. Kloosterman and Ed M. van der Maas, ed. Jordan J. Ballor and Stephen J. Grabill (Acton Institute, 2016).
  7. On the republication of creation law in the old covenant, see, e.g., Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol. 2, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger (P&R Publishing, 1994), 169–269; and Bryan D. Estelle, J. V. Fesko, and David VanDrunen, eds., The Law Is Not of Faith: Essays on Works and Grace in the Mosaic Covenant (P&R Publishing, 2009).
  8. For example, in my native South African context this was evident in the theological legitimization of Apartheid in some corners of the Afrikaans Reformed family of churches; see Simon Jooste, “Recovering the Calvin of ‘Two Kingdoms’: A Historical-Theological Inquiry in the Light of Church-State Discourse in South Africa” (PhD diss., Stellenbosch University, 2013), especially Chapter 3.
  9. On the biblical and natural law idea that the unconscious is populated with experiences that are both individual and collective, both lived and inherited, see Herman Bavinck, Biblical and Religious Psychology, trans. Herman Hanko and Gregory Parker Jr. (Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2024), 144. On the concept of archetypes, see also Carl Gustav Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 9, Part 1, trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton University Press, 1968).

©Simon Jooste. All Rights Reserved.

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    Post authored by:

  • Simon Jooste
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    Rev. Simon Jooste (Phd, Stellenbosch University) is a former USA Division I tennis player and CPA now living in his native South Africa serving the Reformed Church Southern Suburbs. He is a research associate for Stellenbosch and North-West Universities working on Embodiment and Power: the Essential Nature of the Women in Office Debate (2022) and Pilgrim Politics: Putting the Cruciform back in the Creedal (2023).

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