WORDS ARE NECESSARY TO PREACH THE GOSPEL

 

 

There is a popular saying, which requires some examination:

·       “Always preach the Gospel, and but use words if necessary.”

We can preach the Gospel with our lives, but words of the Gospel should accompany them. As Jesus had taught, we are the light of the world. This includes deeds, but it also should include words that give the glory to God:

·       “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
(Matthew 5:14-16)

Jesus taught that the purpose of our light (our good deeds) was to glorify the Father. However, if we fail to speak the Words of the Gospel, the glory will go to the doer of the good works and not to God.

This is why I cannot give to ministries that do not give any indication that their good works are the works of God, rather than their own. Paul also applied this principle to giving towards the needs of the Church. Fundamentally, it was also God’s giving, and He should receive the credit:

·       “For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, while they long for you and pray for you, because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:12-15)

Our giving is a gift from God. We must not obscure the fact that our giving is a matter God providing the seed for us to sow on behalf of others (2 Corinthians 9:10). Therefore, our giving is  “overflowing in many thanksgivings to God.” However, if we do not speak of God, the recipient will thank us instead, and this should not be.

 

DID JESUS BELIEVE IN INCOME EQUALITY?

I couldn’t find one instance where Jesus affirms income equality (IE). Perhaps the parable that comes closest to supporting IE is the parable about an owner who repeatedly goes to the market to hire workers for his vineyard and pays each the same amount, irrespective of how long they had worked. When those who had worked the longest complained, the owner answered:

·       “’Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last.” (Matthew 20:13-16; ESV)

Jesus never suggested that His ideal is IE. Instead, there are a number of reasons that this teaching shouldn’t be taken as a repudiation of capitalism in favor of IE:

1.    Jesus affirmed, as He did in all of His parables, the legitimacy of the employer/employee relationship.

2.    Jesus also affirmed the legitimacy of the owner/employer having disproportionate wealth.

3.    He affirmed the fact that ultimately there will be some who are first and some last. Not all will have the same thing.

4.    Above all else, the owner gave out of generosity and not because he owed it to his employees or to the government.

In other parables, Jesus affirmed the legitimacy of capitalism even more directly. Another parable featured the owner of a vineyard who had leased it out to tenants. However, the tenants, perhaps advocates of IE refused to pay the landlord the profits due to him. However, Jesus sided with the landlord (Matthew 21:33-41; Mark 12:1-9; Luke 20:9-16).

Jesus used the father of the Prodigal Son as a positive role model. However, he had numerous “hired servants” (Luke 15:17) and evidently great wealth. Even in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, who ended up in a place of torment, there is no indication that his wealth had been the problem, but rather that he refused to share what he had (Luke 16:19-31).

In fact, it is important to note that Jesus never criticized but endorsed the Mosaic Law. Instead, He often criticized those who departed from it (Matthew 15:1-8; John 5:44-47). However, the Law had nothing to say against being rich and having employees, even servants. In fact, God had blessed many – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job, David, and Solomon – with great wealth. While the Law did mention equality, it was never a matter of IE.

Jesus’ teachings were in tandem with the Mosaic. He too endorsed the principle that the hard worker should be able to reap his rewards.

Jesus told a parable about a wealthy landowner who was leaving in a long journey. He therefore entrusted with money so that they would use it to make a profit for him. Most did so and were commended by the landowner upon his return. However, one servant simply buried it and returned to his master the very amount that had been entrusted to him.

The master did not commend him but berated him:

·       “‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.’” (Matthew 25:26-29)

Not only did Jesus affirm the master/servant relationship, He also affirmed the fact that the master was using the servant to make a profit. Even “worse,” Jesus affirmed that the little that the “slothful servant” had should be taken from him and given to those who had much more – hardly an advocacy for IE.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t advocating unrestrained capitalism. The Mosaic Law contained numerous safeguards and provisions for the poor. However, the Law didn’t suppress individual initiative, the essential element of capitalism.

However, many, even “Christians,” are not aware of Jesus’ teachings and, therefore, tend to understand Him in a way that affirms their own modern, progressive values. One New York Times columnist cited a fringe figure, Brian McLaren, as proof that the Church is not following its Founder:

·       “Our religions often stand for the very opposite of what their founders stood for…”

·       “No wonder more and more of us who are Christians by birth, by choice, or both find ourselves shaking our heads and asking, ‘What happened to Christianity?’” McLaren writes. “We feel as if our founder has been kidnapped and held hostage by extremists. His captors parade him in front of cameras to say, under duress, things he obviously doesn’t believe. As their blank-faced puppet, he often comes across as anti-poor, anti-environment, anti-gay, anti-intellectual, anti-immigrant and anti-science. That’s not the Jesus we met in the Gospels!”

McLaren claims that the Church has misunderstood Jesus. What is the basis of his charge? Certainly not Scripture! Rather, it seems that the Church is wrong because it fails to understand Jesus in a way consistent with McLaren’s progressivism.

And what of McLaren’s charge that the Church is not following Jesus’ teaching about feeding the poor? Jesus never petitioned the ruling classes to establish entitlement programs to feed the poor. However, He did appeal to individuals to give generously.

Admittedly, we fail in many regards. However, it is not because, as McLaren alleges, the Bible-believing church has willingly distorted His teachings.

WILL LOVE CONQUER ALL?

 A battered woman was encouraged to return to her husband with the advice that, “Love conquers all.” However, she was found dead several months later.

Perhaps love will not conquer all. One woman suggested that the wife simply had failed to love completely enough. In other words, the fault was hers and not the batterer’s.

On another occasion, a young professional woman confidently informed me that if we truly practiced love, we would not need the police or even the military. Love would overcome the hardest of hearts. No reminders of serial killers, Hitler, Genghis Khan, or Stalin would convince her otherwise. It seemed that she was convinced that, because love has meant so much to her, it can cure everything. One size fits all.

Well, if it is as simple as that, why hasn’t the “love message caught on?” Why are there still wars and criminals? She was convinced that greed and corruption had undermined attempts at loving. However, I didn’t get to ask her my next question: “Why hadn’t love overcome the ‘greed and corruption?’”

The youth, especially, are convinced that the answer is simple – love. However, even adults believe this way. Just today, I read:

• The Bishop of Stockholm has proposed a church in her diocese remove all signs of the cross and put down markings showing the direction to Mecca for the benefit of Muslim worshippers. 

It is not that she is unaware of the problems. In the same article, Chief Superintendent Torsten Elofsson illustrated that the red carpet need not be rolled out for the Muslims. On their own, they are making themselves quite comfortable in Sweden:

• “Years ago you could go with two officers, no problem. Now you have to send four officers and two cars – if the fire brigade want to go, they have to take a police escort. They throw stones and try to stop the fireman from putting out fires.

• “They sabotage the police cars. You can’t leave them unguarded – when you come back to it you find the windows smashed and the tires deflated. It isn’t quite a no-go zone, but we have had to develop special routines to go there”

Politicians are very aware of these disturbing facts. However, they have managed to convince themselves that love will overcome. Just make the Muslims feel accepted and loved, and they will reciprocate with love. Never mind that we find no examples of this in the Western world or even throughout history. Faith in the power of love seems to be impervious to any evidence.

We now treat our children with “unconditional positive regard.” Schools refuse to do anything that might bruise their self-image or feelings. Shame, let alone corporal punishment, is entirely rejected in favor of love – the carrot without the stick. However, as many have reported, we are raising a generation of heathen. Disciplinary problems are accelerating.

From where did this emphasis on love come? Not from the Romans and the Greeks. Historian Rodney Stark commented that their love was very limited:

·       “Classical philosophy regarded mercy and pity as pathological emotions—defects of character to be avoided by all rational men. Since mercy involves providing unearned help or relief, it was contrary to justice.”

Love and mercy has been a central theme of the Christian Church. The Christian theologian Tertullian (200AD) claimed that:

·       “We Christians have everything in common except our wives. It is our care of the helpless, our practice of lovingkindness that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. ‘Look,’ they say, “how much they love one another.’”

Aristides of Athens added:

·       “If the brethren have among them a man in need and they have not abundant resources, they fast for a day or two so as to provide the needy man with the necessary food!”

Even the pagans commented on Christian love. Lucian (190 AD) observed:

·       “The earnestness with which people of this religion help one another in their needs is incredible. They spare themselves nothing for this end.”

Emperor Julian, an opponent of Christianity:

·       “Ordered the creation of hospices saying, ‘It would be shameful, when the Jews have no beggars, when the impious Galileans feed our own people along with their own, that ours should be seen to lack the help we owe them.’” (How Christianity Conquered the World)

Julian was not alone in noticing Christian love. The Western world has become convinced of the primacy of love.

From where did the emphasis on love among Christians come? Jesus, in concert with the teachings of the Hebrew Bible (Lev. 19:17-18), taught:

·       Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?  And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? (Matthew 5:44-48)

However, Jesus also taught that love had to be accompanied by wisdom and discernment. In the same Sermon, He warned that love had its limitations:

·       "Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.” (Matthew 7:6)

There were times when love would not conquer all, when the disciples would have to pack up their pearls and move on:

·       If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. (Matthew 10:14-16)

His disciples would have to be “shrewd” about giving their riches. They would have to exercise discernment, because love would not overcome all obstacles.

The disciples were not to naively “hang in there” with indulgent love, expecting that it would conquer all. Instead, they had to be mindful of the dangers:

·           Then He [Jesus] charged them, saying, "Take heed, beware of the leaven [teachings] of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod." (Mark 8:15)

Jesus didn’t instruct his disciples to merely befriend and love the Pharisees until they’d come around to the truth. Instead, there were people from whom they would have to flee, because love would not prevail with them:

·           "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. (Matthew 7:15)

The New Testament often acknowledges that love will not conquer all. In such cases, the believer is counseled to depart (Rom. 16:17; 2 Tim. 3:5-6; 2 Thess. 3:14; 2 John 1:10-12).

Love is powerful, but it must be guided by wisdom. When it is not, it becomes indulgence and enablement. Secular culture has embraced the idea of love but not its accompanying and necessary wisdom. This has brought upon the West the fruits of decay and destruction.