Apicontent

Throughout scripture we can see a link between the concepts of love and justice.

Justice is the biblical term for the expectations and rights that should govern how we interact with each other, and especially for how we prioritize responding to the diverse needs within our community.

Love motivates us to respond to the needs we see, justice guides our response through the cloudy waters of fairness, equality of all persons, and competing interests.[1]

As the Church loves others we are compelled to take seriously the needs we see. Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) to illustrate how love for others crosses cultural boundaries and deals with real needs. But what if we complicate the story by wondering what it also means to love the robbers or the religious leaders who walked on by? Love motivates us, but justice gives us an idea of how to respond and balance God’s love for everybody with His specific concern for the powerless.

“In the Old Testament God reveals God’s attitude toward the weak and what God correspondingly expected of the strong. The New Testament presupposes this revelation and reinforces it.”[2] In Deuteronomy 10, love and justice are connected to who God is: “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God who is unbiased and takes no bribe, 18 who justly treats the orphan and widow, and who loves resident foreigners, giving them food and clothing” (Deuteronomy 10:17-18). The Old Testament law mirrored God’s example by expecting those who had power in society to use that power to benefit others, especially the powerless.

The Church has been instrumental in challenging systems of injustice and oppression, not simply working to meet individual needs. Just a few examples illustrate this. When the way food was distributed in the early church was not just, the role of Deacon was created to address it. (Acts 6)

Additionally, the book of Philemon is addressed to a Christian slave-owner as a plea to free his slave, even though to do so would have had huge social implications for him and his community. Finally, around 260 CE plagues ravaged the Roman world. It was Christians’ heroic, sacrificial care for the sick, dying, and dead of every race and religion that challenged governmental structures of care and legitimized belief in Jesus to the populace at large.[3]

It can be easy for us as the Church today to elevate either explanation or demonstration of God’s love as most important. But that is partly because we’ve let them be separated in the first place. And it is true, when the Church sincerely tries to live out Jesus’ command to make disciples, we easily slip into thinking only about personal spiritual growth and not about concrete social implications of that growth.[4] And as a Church we can easily promote individual acts of charity while forgetting the powerful witness of a congregation united in pursuing God-reflecting justice for the marginalized.

To love others is to take their needs seriously—people’s need for a savior, as well as their need for food, dignity, work, health, or freedom from unjust and dehumanizing systems. If we as the Church can equally explain and demonstrate love for others, we will faithfully live out God’s call for the Church. People can see what we do, know why we do it, and begin to be drawn into the incredible love of God.

Footnotes:

1. Stephen Charles Mott, Biblical Ethics and Social Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982) 53.
2. Ibid., 76-77
3. “The Legacy of Love,” unityinchrist.com, 10/3/2014 http://www.unityinchrist.com/LegacyOfLove.htm
4. Roger Helland and Leonard Hjalmarson, Missional Spirituality (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011) 111.

Imagine two doctors. The first was trained in a medical school where no one talked, wrote, or read—training only involved the close observation of working doctors. The second’s training was the opposite. It consisted solely of listening to lectures and reading text books. Which doctor would you rather see—the one who knows how procedures are done but not why, or the other who knows why but not how? Probably neither!

The Church faithfully answers God’s call to love others when we both explain and demonstrate that love.

We explain God’s love when we faithfully teach the content of our faith; when we guard “the original testimony without ceasing to apply it meaningfully to the context of local and prevailing conditions.”[1] Explanation is a way of loving both followers of Jesus and those who are not yet followers. The good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and what that means for us has to be put into words for people to believe. It also has to be put into words for a believer’s faith to deepen.

Explanation is love in that it dignifies our neighbor as a person capable of understanding and making decisions. It is also love when it is motivated by the Church’s concern for people. And finally, explanation connects people to their faith community. As a believer better understands the doctrines, practices, and motivating values of their particular church they are able to more meaningfully participate in the life and worship of that congregation.

We the Church demonstrate God’s love and our own to others when we take their needs seriously—whether physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, or contextual.

While at times, Christians have disagreed over whether explanation or demonstration of love is the more important mission of the Church, it is clear that Jesus saw them as different strands of the same command. Jesus taught that loving God and loving others were together the most important commandments (Mark 12:28-31), and His example is one of blending teaching with meeting the physical needs of those around Him (healing, feeding the 5,000, raising the dead). Jesus was not just a teacher nor just a healer. His authority to teach was proven through His healing and His healing was given deeper significance through His teaching.

Elsewhere in the New Testament, we see the Apostle Paul collecting money from churches everywhere to aid the church in Jerusalem. (2 Corinthians 9) We see the first church distributing money to those in need. (Acts 2:45) And the Apostle James goes as far as saying that caring for orphans and widows is an essential part of pleasing God with our lives. (James 1:27)

Christians have seen acts of charity as the Church’s responsibility for generations, but what about the church actively working to change human experience on a structural/cultural level? Does pursuing justice for the oppressed, victimized, and marginalized fall within our responsibility of the Church? Or is that too political, too far from the proclamation of the gospel? [Read “God’s Call to Pursue Justice“]

Like a doctor confidently practicing medicine because she both understands why a particular procedure needs to be done and has actually physically practiced doing it, the Church clearly practices God-reflecting love of others when we both explain and demonstrate that love. Then believers and not-yet-believers alike, are invited into a deeper understanding and experience of the saving, healing, restoring work of the gospel.

Footnotes:

1. Thomas C. Oden, Life in the Spirit (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, 1992), 353.

Jesus is risen from the dead! Sin and death no longer have the final say. This good news fully revived and overflowed from those who first heard it. So much so, that disciples who had been paralyzed with grief and crumbled expectations suddenly didn’t care if the political powers that be killed them! They were preaching in the streets, healing the sick, selling their possessions and giving away the money—advancing this good news simply mattered more than anything else in life. (Acts 2) The scared-then-unreasonably-bold followers of Jesus together—as a group—answered God’s call to love God and love others.

Ephesians 2:10 says: “For we are his creative work, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we can do them.” These good works flow out of his call to love. Jesus-followers scattered across the globe (the capital “c” Church) are meant to embody love for God and love for others not just individually but as a Church.

Before we can do these good works, we first have to embrace that the Church is God’s handiwork. It’s His. He made it. It is good. It was made for a purpose. The corruption of sin can certainly distort or even obscure how the Church reflects who God is, but even the worst soiling of sin can itself become an opportunity for the transforming power of the Gospel to shine forth. We the Church are God’s handiwork and we’re created to do good works!

We as the Church do the good work of loving God when we worship Him, obey Him, depend on Him, and testify to His greatness through our collective words and actions. Something amazing happens when the Church is united in love for God. As is explained a little later in Ephesians, “in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22). We become a place where we and others can experience God’s presence!

We as the Church are also called to love others, both those who already love God and those who do not yet love God.

Jesus’ final words to his followers were: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20).

The Church loves others when we explain and demonstrate God’s rescuing love to all nations, including our own, as well as when we lead those who already love God into greater depth. Making disciples involves helping others mature in their experience of who God is and how loving Him changes how they live. [Read “God’s Call to Love Others”]

We are on a journey. Pressures, dangers and confusion surround us. But it is not an individual quest, and we are not solitary heroes. The Church is on a journey and it’s as messy and complicated as herding cats. But it is beautiful because in the moments when we are realizing our mission to love God and love others, God-dwelling-in-us is revealed. Joy and worship overflow. And we understand that being a part of this simply matters more than anything else in life.

[Read “God’s Call to Love Others”]

Saturday. It’s a beautiful day for playing outside with friends. A young boy dresses hurriedly, swallows his breakfast almost whole, and prepares to burst through the door into the beckoning sunshine. His plans collapse the moment his mother’s voice rings out. “Whoa! You gotta clean your room first.”

Talking about vocation is exciting. We are energized at the thought of an overall sense of purpose that gives us a part in the bigger story of God’s work in the world. But there is a lot of life that doesn’t fit neatly into a vocational box.

Alongside God’s call to love that applies to all Christians and His call to each of us individually to live out that love in very specific ways, He also calls us to live out love in our individual tasks and responsibilities that vary from day to day.

These tasks and responsibilities are different than our unique vocations. They are places for us to faithfully live but may or may not contribute to our overall sense of mission in the world. “The daily demands on our lives are not necessarily threats to the fulfillment of our vocation…They are all part of what it means to be called of God.”[1]

God calls us to follow Him in all our time. In fact it’s not really our time at all, it’s his! So maybe that’s in a job that just seems to pay the bills but not much more, the interrupting phone call from a friend, daily chores like washing dishes, or that stranger walking home in the rain who might just need a ride. When we believe that our time is actually God’s, we take on a posture of anticipation toward what the Lord will bring our way that day.

Some responsibilities are certainly easier to look forward to than others. Some things fit more easily into our sense of mission in life while others might just seem pointless.

We can learn from believers who were slaves in Roman times. Masters had total authority over their slaves, even to the point of life and death. Yet, the Apostle Paul writes,

“Slaves, obey your human masters with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ, not like those who do their work only when someone is watching—as people-pleasers—but as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from the heart. Obey with enthusiasm, as though serving the Lord and not people.” – Ephesians 6:5-7

Here were people who had no option of career change, yet they are invited to do their work as God’s work. Their own daily work was given dignity because they were now doing their master’s business—their master being Jesus.[2] Our work is to be worship—done “as if you were serving the Lord”.

These people had responsibilities of the day that didn’t seem related to a sense of mission, but how they did them could be.

Following Jesus becomes the way in which we live, not necessarily the means by which we live. It is something more than what we do on coffee breaks or weekends. We live as followers of Christ not just by how much we can witness to our co-workers or how much time we can take after work to help our neighbors, as good and important as those things are. Our work itself can be worship, and how we do our work can be an arrow pointing to Jesus. We must ask ourselves, then, “To whom does my life point, especially in the interruptions and less glamorous tasks of my day?”

Footnotes

1. Gordon T. Smith, Courage and Calling (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 11.
2. It is helpful to note, however, that the gospel doesn’t condone oppression—these lists in Ephesians and Colossians for wives, children, and slaves actually turn the status quo on its head by redefining the master or Lord (the legal terminology of the time for the male head of the household) as Jesus. See Eph. 6:9 and the book of Philemon for evidence that the movement of the gospel was intended to have an impact on the reigning oppressive social structures of the day. See also: Brian J. Walsh and Sylvia C. Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004). Especially pp. 201-219.

“Get a good job, become financially secure, have a nice family, buy what you want, enjoy a few of the finer things in life, avoid the troubles of the world, retire with ease.”[1]

Is this a Christian vision of life? Is anything wrong with pursuing comfort, financial security, or personal fulfillment?

It’s not so much what that vision of life contains, as what it’s missing.

“For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh, but through love serve one another.” – Galatians 5:13

We do not exist only to serve our own interests. Nor do we exist to serve others on our own terms. So what that initial statement is missing is the linkage between what we do with our lives and for whose sake we do them. Christian vocation is “a purpose for being in the world which is related to the purposes of God.”[2]

It is here that we see how our unique ways of answering God’s call to love him and love others leads us toward a vocation–how we live out the call to love in every sphere of our lives. Vocation is unique to the individual but fits into the big picture of God’s work. It is an individual purpose for the sake of others. Vocation, however, is different than a job or career. Jobs may or may not be an expression of one’s vocation. It is wonderful when there is congruence between the two, but for many people that might not be possible.

So let’s assume we really understand that (following the reasoning of Ephesians 2:10):

1. We are God’s handiwork, people who have no need to strive for riches or acclaim to assure ourselves of our worth.
2. We are his handiwork created to do good works that are not just for our own benefit but for the benefit of others.
3. We each live out the call to love in unique ways so our vocation—our purpose—is unique to each of us.

But how in the world do we make progress in actually deciding on a direction to pursue, let alone the myriad decisions that face us each day?

1. We trust that God provides just as much in the ordinary as the extraordinary.

A booming voice from heaven would make decision-making a lot easier, but not everyone is called in such supernatural ways. If we proclaim God as sovereign over all of creation, then we should also proclaim that what we casually label as “natural,”—talents, interests, passions, opportunities, and experiences—are God’s direct work in our lives just as much as a voice from heaven would be. In fact, when we pray for guidance, God often allows us to see how one choice is actually the direction he has been leading us in all along. It is, of course, also within God’s sovereignty to completely change our direction and to do so dramatically!

2. We trust that God has given significance to our decisions.

God created humans to make decisions. Following the creation of Adam, “the Lord God formed out of the ground every living animal of the field and every bird of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them, and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name” (Genesis 2:19). We reflect His image when we are creative and make decisions. So while we are attentive and responsive to His leading, we are also not to be paralyzed waiting for extraordinary guidance.

3. We trust that God speaks through His Word and in times of prayer.

Reading scripture is one way to get to know His will. We will understand better who God is and what He cares about through reading His word. This is essential for gaining the wisdom to see how the various options before us fit or don’t fit into His will. As we make ourselves available to God in prayer, He will help us submit to His will and bring to mind what He wants us to be focusing on for that day.

4. We trust that God has given us unique gifts, passions, opportunities, and communities.[3]

We must identify our God-created giftedness and passions. This humble self-knowledge is essential, as God’s call on our lives is usually consistent with how he has made us.[4]

God also presents us with specific opportunities to exercise our giftings. These opportunities are often either bigger or smaller than our perceived capacities!

Finally, He places us in particular communities of believers. He expects us to live interdependently, so those who benefit from our vocational living also invest in our vocational development with their wisdom and affirmation.

In all four points, trust is central. And that is what separates Christian vocation from the clichéd American dream. To live vocationally is to live in a radical dependence on God. We trust that his purposes in the world are worth living (and dying) for. We trust that He has provided already and will continue to provide for us into eternity. We trust that He has freed us to serve each other in love.

[Read “God’s Call for Me: Tasks and Responsibilities“]

Footnotes:

1. David P. Setran and Chris A. Kiesling, Spiritual Formation in Emerging Adulthood (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 114.
2. Ibid., 117.
3. Ibid., 130.
4. Gordon T. Smith, Courage and Calling (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 53-55.