Yesterday’s post on the pragmatic nature of love in the Kingdom of God raised some good questions, and provoked a couple further thoughts for yours truly. (Incidentally, this is one reason I blog: not because I have something to say all the time, but because often if I just say something there will be a conversation that furthers my own thinking, pushes me to explore a new crevice, shows me the limits of my own understanding.)
The very good question was raised about individual salvation, and the possibility that someone might gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul.
This got me thinking a bit about who comes to Jesus, and what such an approach might signify.
The main thrust of my reflections from yesterday was, essentially, that Jesus [almost] never does a bait-and-switch. If someone comes in asking for healing, he doesn’t tell them that what they really need is to have their soul set right with God. He seems to trust that they have actually come to him to have their real problem dealt with.
We evangelicals are often much less comfortable with such attention to worldly needs, fearing that providing for them might get in the way of supply what’s truly needful; or, using such provision as a bait-and-switch for the “real” thing, which is the message we bring with us.
But that got me thinking, Who are these people who come to Jesus? Why are they coming to him? Is there something in their coming that might indicate some level of faith? In fact, it got me thinking: why do people come to Jesus and who would we need to be in order for people to come to us?
Jesus’ inauguration of the Dominion of God indicated at least two things: (1) he had power/authority to control the world in which we’re living–changing it for the better, beating back its evils; and (2) he had the compassion to help those who would come to him with their need.
As I’ve been thinking about the failures of Christian love over the past couple of days, I’ve been honing in on 2 as the principal area in which we are failing to image Jesus for the world in which we live. And I find myself asking questions that would draw out answers to the question, “What kind of people would we need to be in order for even our apparent enemies to come and ask for help in time of need?”
If a Roman centurion would come to Jesus and ask for help in healing his servant, this tells me that he not only knew of Jesus’ great authority, but that Jesus’ use of that authority was not restricted to the insiders. I think we have failed here.
But here’s where some of the rub comes in–that centurion is still coming to Jesus with faith that Jesus is a man of sufficient authority to heal his ill servant. Not even in Israel has Jesus seen such faith. So even in the coming there’s a faith in the person of Jesus as Lord.
But that brings me back again to us. As those who bear Jesus’ name, who are called to extend his mission into our own time and place, do we so act that the world around looks at our deeds and says, “There is a place where great power is at work to transform the world for good”?
Do we so act that people see the power of the Spirit of the resurrected Christ flowing through us such that they would come to us to aid them in those places where they see that the world is not as it should be, in need of transformation?
And do we so act that the world, watching what we do, knows that it can come to us and find us, as those who act like our heavenly Father and firstborn brother, to be an ever present help in time of need?





