A Needed Reminder for ALL of Us.

(HT: B-Lo)

getting to know the homeless

We’ve had the privilege of working with a lot of homeless folks recently at DSC. It seems that when you start offering financial/nutritional help, word gets out… fast. However, we’ve been impressed with our own lack of ability to help get people back on their feet. Its a DSC policy that we don’t give hand-outs, we give hand-ups. Cheesy, but it gets the point across: we want to get people back on their feet so that they can reintegrate as stable, self-sustaining members of society.

So, in our struggle to meet real needs as well as push for change in their lives, we’ve been thinking through how the gospel confronts homelessness, as it does every other thing in our lives. I’ve written out a quick survey of my thoughts below on this issue. This is NOT a gospel presentation, and I don’t intend to use it as such, but it helps me to think systematically through this so that I can better apply the gospel when I’m talking with homeless people who I have the honor of ministering to. (Mat 25:40) I wonder if you guys would look over this and let me know how I can be more loving/biblical/christ-centered/whatever else you see. I’m sure there are lots of areas of improvement so please be free with your suggestions and corrections.

1. God is establishing a kingdom
2. The kingdom has been broken by sin (sin = treason against the king of the world)
3. Jesus came to restore kingdom and reconcile us (sinners)
4. We have to recognize our need for him, we all are enemies of God, Jesus died to take the punishment, Jesus earned the free gift of forgiveness for us (thats why the church gives)
5. That is the good news of Jesus, He died so that we could be friends with God and forgiven for our sins
6. All we have to do is trust in Jesus and the good news becomes good news for us
7. But God is always challenging us, testing us so that we grow to be more like Jesus. He asks questions like, “do you believe in Jesus this much?” God finds the idols in our lives (things that we love more than we love him) and he challenges us to knock them down

8. One of the idols that we see in your life that God wants you to knock down is idleness (not working).
9. You have 2 choices:

A. Ignore God and go your own way, or…
B. Recognize that you’ve done wrong (idleness), ask God to help you to do right (to find work and be motivated to do it), then start working

Our Love Must First Be Killed

JT points at this article from First Things which quotes Luke Timothy Johnson on his position on homosexuality and Scripture.  Here is Johnson:

“I think it important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us.”   

Here, and in the comments, there is an evident avoidance of calling “wrong” or “sinful” any part of a human love of another. It reminds me of chapter 11 of Lewis’ The Great Divorce which addresses the inherently sinful nature of all human love, even a love of a mother for a son. After the mother ghost is heard, MacDonald tells Lewis:

“Someone must say in general what’s been unsaid among you this many a year: that love, as mortals understand the word, isn’t enough. Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried.” 

And after the man’s attendant lizard, his lust, is killed and subsequently transformed into a beautiful stallion, Lewis asks if “everything that is in us can go on to the Mountains?”, MacDonald explains:

“Nothing, not even the best and noblest, can go on as it now is. Nothing, not even what is lowest and most bestial, will not be raised again if it submits to death. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. Flesh and blood cannot come to the Mountains. Not because they are too rank, but because they are too weak. What is a Lizard compared with a stallion? Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.” 

Finally, Lewis says that the woman’s love was different than the man’s lust, for it was merely excess of love. MacDonald objects:

“Excess of love, did ye say? There was no excess, there was defect. She loved her son too little, not too much. If she had loved him more there’d be no difficulty. I do not know how her affair will end. But it may well be that at this moment she’s demanding to have him down with her in Hell. That kind is sometimes perfectly ready to plunge the soul they say they love in endless misery if only they can still in some fashion possess it. No, no. Ye must draw another lesson. Ye must ask, if the risen body even of appetite is as grand a horse as ye saw, what would the risen body of maternal love or friendship be?” 

Basically, Lewis is asserting that there is in all human love, something of sin and therefore something that is ungodly (as he did with intellect with the Episcopal ghost). In all love, then, even my love for my wife and kids and parents, there is something sinful and sinister, something that transgresses God’s law and goodness and therefore something that had to be forgiven and punished on the cross. No love is “purely good” and thus outside the piercing light of God’s holiness. Heb. 4:12-13 says that the Word is double-edged, and God wields it while at the same time seeing everything in the heart of every creature—we are “naked and exposed” before him. If our righteous deeds, like loving another human as much as we can, are but filthy rags before our holy God, then we must all repent of our sinful loves, know that Christ took them on himself, and then submit them to the law for transformation (3rd Use! Right after Law then Gospel!).

Speaking of Heaven

Here is a great interview of N.T Wright by Time magazine. The interview centers around the biblical view of heaven vs. the contemporary Christian culture. I tend to agree with almost everything he says here.

Tom Wright interview

One thing to note, I think that N.T. Wright has the opposite problem of the track that Los posted below. He focuses on a gospel that is a salvation to the Kingdom of God but does not highlight the salvation from our sins and judgment. Not that he doesn’t believe that kind of salvation is essential, but it seems to be glossed over. Both need to be held on to.

HT: JT

The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross.

Leon Morris’ book ‘The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross‘ has been republished, reprinted and will be back in the Westminister Bookstore sometime this month. Check it out if you can!

“This modern classic of biblical scholarship explains what the apostles meant when they used such words as “redeem,” “covenant,” “propitiate,” “reconcile,” and “justify.” Leon Morris carefully explores these themes against the backgrounds of both Old Testament Judaism and New Testament Christianity — a rewarding task that results in a more complete understanding of these key Christian terms.”

B-Lo