Bearing Witness: Notes on Seeking the Welfare of the City at CTK

I. Introduction

1. Edmund Clowney¹: ‘The church is called to serve God in three ways: to serve him directly in worship; to serve the saints in nurture; and to serve the world in witness.’

2. We seek to pursue this threefold mission in ways that are:

a. Gospel-driven

The gospel is that the eternally begotten second person of the Trinity,² having taken on human flesh, opened a way to God by his death on a cross as an atoning sacrifice and by his resurrection from the dead.³ We are convinced that this gospel changes everything, our beliefs, our actions, our instincts, our identities, our hopes, our relationships.⁴ If God allows it, we will remain faithful to this historic orthodoxy.

b. Community-based

We believe that the Gospel subverts our culture’s individualistic tendencies. Central to our existence will be opportunities provided other than Sunday mornings by which the members of CTK can become connected to each other and love and serve their neighbors. Principal among these opportunities will be community groups in which participants seek to care for one another, spur one another on to love and good deeds,⁵ and pray for each other⁶ and for the purposes of God.⁷

c. Contextualized

While the content of our theology remains anchored to the Scriptures and thus needs no contextualization, we desire to proclaim the Gospel in language that is intelligible to our neighbors.⁸ We will constantly seek to remain more faithful to our theological core⁹ and more flexible regarding its communication.¹⁰

3. Here we focus on witness.

a. We work and pray for a transformed community where God is glorified through the advance of his kingdom through the proliferation of churches committed to justice, mercy and faithfulness

From the beginning we have understood ourselves to be pursuing the planting of dozens of churches in the Greater Boston area. We identify ourselves by Jesus’ great commission to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in his name to all nations and hope not to be swayed from this identity.¹¹ We believe that the ascendancy of true justice and peace cannot be separated from the advance of God’s kingdom and his call to repent and believe.¹² Rather than privatized religion our aim is for the decisive reign of Christ¹³ over the cities of Greater Boston to the end that God would be glorified¹⁴, the poor would be lifted up, the helpless protected and the oppressor overthrown.¹⁵

b. To this end, we seek to serve God by bearing witness to Jesus’ resurrection in word and deed.

The resurrection of Jesus shows him to be both Lord and Christ.¹⁶ We recognize that our primary endeavor is to bear witness to the resurrection of Jesus, calling all people to lives of continual repentance as His disciples, both in our community and throughout the world.¹⁷ We aspire to proclaim and to demonstrate the transforming power of the gospel¹⁸ from a posture of weakness and repentance¹⁹ so that God would be pleased to bring the advance of his kingdom in righteousness and peace and joy.²⁰ By bearing witness to the resurrection, we testify to the inauguration and promised future coming of the kingdom in which sin and its consequences will be conquered and the shalom of God will be fully manifest.²¹ Looking forward to that day and consonant with God’s instruction to the Israelites that they, while in exile, work and pray for the peace of the city to which he had sent them²² and with Jesus’ definition of his ministry as the gospel for the poor,²³ we aspire to work for the good of those who are helpless.²⁴ As Jesus demonstrated the values of God’s kingdom in his care for the marginalized we also hope to come alongside those who have been crushed by sin and a fallen world.²⁵ Where God allows it, we desire to extend His kingdom into the neighborhoods of the downtrodden by planting churches in their midst.

II. Why are church planting and social justice put into a single point?

We believe that mercy and evangelism are inseparable. If the Church is defined as the worshipping community of the people of God who order their lives, relationships, vocations, etc., in light of the values of his kingdom, which drive us to live for the city in a way that no other worshipping community can, then it becomes obvious why we aim at church planting. We aim to see justice come about and believe that it will only do so where there are communities living like this – i.e., churches.

By bearing witness to the resurrection, we testify to the inauguration and promised future coming of the kingdom in which sin and its consequences will be conquered and the shalom of God will be fully manifest.

‘...we shall not be glorified alone. The healing kingship of Christ will extend to all of life and nature. The blessedness of the kingdom is radical and all-embracing (Matthew 5:3-10). All the alienations caused by sin are healed. Each Christmas we sing Isaac watts’ hymn of praise to the blessedness of the kingdom. He paraphrases Psalm 96 in stanza 2.

‘Joy to the world! The Saviour reigns:

Let men their songs employ,

While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains,

Repeat the sounding joy.

‘No more let sins and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make his blessings flow

Far as the curse is found!’²⁶

‘Christians go into the world as witnesses of the kingdom (Acts 1:6-8). To spread the kingdom of God is more than simply winning people to Christ. It is also working for the healing of person, families, relationships, and nations; it is doing deeds of mercy and seeking justice. It is reordering lives and relationships and institutions and communities according to God’s authority to bring in the blessedness of the kingdom.’²⁷

Zechariah 8:1-3, 14-17, 20-23

And the word of the Lord of hosts came, saying, “Thus says the Lord of hosts: I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I am jealous for her with great wrath. Thus says the Lord: I have returned to Zion and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem shall be called the faithful city, and the mountain of the Lord of hosts, the holy mountain…

For thus says the Lord of hosts: “As I purposed to bring disaster to you when your fathers provoked me to wrath, and I did not relent, says the Lord of hosts, so again have I purposed in these days to bring good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah; fear not. These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace; do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate, declares the Lord.”…

“Thus says the Lord of hosts: Peoples shall yet come, even the inhabitants of many cities. The inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, ‘Let us go at once to entreat the favor of the Lord and to seek the Lord of hosts; I myself am going.’ Many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts: In those days ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’”

III. Community-Based and Contextualized

A. Clowney notes that we cannot ignore the Great Commission or the Great Constitution. Matthew 28 requires the lost to be brought into the Church ordered in Matthew 16 – which, on the other hand, is constituted for a missionary purpose.

B. A church in the city, for the city

1. Why the city?

Jeremiah 29:4-7

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Different churches have failed to obey this in different ways

i. ‘Flight to the suburbs’ fails to be for the peace of the city or for the suburbs.

ii. Urban Christianity fails to live for the sake of the city – but therefore fails to live in the city as the passage instructs, investing and not just consuming.

The goal is not achievement within the cultures of the world; the goal is the advance of the kingdom of God, the culture of the Cross, the saving rule of God’s Spirit on the earth. The intersection of the church and culture is not realized when the church becomes an entrant into the culture of the world, but when the gospel is contextualized in its presentation to the world’s culture, which is loved by the church as God loves the world.

iii. Our aim is to convert the city, but if we are living here for ourselves, we are being converted by the city.

Douglas Wilson:

‘At the center of every culture is a cultus, a form of worship. Suffice it to say that the Great Commission requires us to disciple, baptize, and teach obedience to all the ethnoi, all the nations of men. This means that robust evangelism cannot be done without challenging the gods of the system. While we must not despise the day of small beginnings, and must labor faithfully in the little things, we must not be distracted from the ultimate mission and goal, getting diverted into picking off the devil's stragglers, and going off with them to build an isolated evangelical ghetto. Evangelism is combat between the gods, that is, between the living and triune God of the Bible and the idols of the age. Evangelism is therefore religious war at the highest level.’

A ‘city on a hill’ – a counterculture centered on the worship of God, in which money, power, sex, learning, etc. are all defined and located differently than in the world

Proverbs 11:10 - When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices,
 and when the wicked perish there are shouts of gladness.

We are not about prospering the church only; we are here for the city. The city rejoices when the righteous prosper because the righteous understand that their stuff isn’t their stuff (Bruce Waltke).

C. Investment in the community by our community

‘American evangelicals have a tradition of individualism that sees the church as a voluntary club for the converted. Until we have a deep biblical sense of the corporate identity of the new people of God, we will not be able to present the gospel of peace on the front lines of our “culture wars”. The true drawing power of the church transcends the cultural enclaves of contemporary society to dissolve the hatreds of a fallen world in the love of Christ.’²⁸

Community groups that are missional, rather than seeker-sensitive

i. Mutual Ministry as Outreach

Outreach begins with building up one another; each person in the group needs to be concerned with seeing Christ formed in the other group members. As we look beyond the needs of the group, to the outside, we must also be practicing selflessness within the group. This aspect of outreach is crucial to a group at every stage of its development, no matter how mature its ‘outward focus’ – in particular, it is crucial even to the ministry it carries on outside its borders. This is partially a credibility issue, partially a survival issue!

Extension: ministry within the group to ministry within the church – intentional pursuit of those in the church who aren’t yet in a group, children’s ministry, welcoming, mercy, etc.

ii. The Benefits of Group Witness

Utilization of all the gifts in the body – some members may be gifted with hospitality, some with establishing relationships easily, some with the wisdom to answer difficult questions, some with mercy, some with the energy to fervently pray for those outside the group, or those who have recently come in. Working together puts all these gifts on display (Philemon 6: I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.), reinforcing that we are a body, strengthening our community, and, on a pragmatic note, making us more effective. It is true to our corporate nature - in moving from an emphasis on personal evangelism to group outreach (while not abandoning the former), we buck an individualistic culture which will tend to lay all the burden on a single ‘Superchristian’ and elevate certain gifts over others.

Second – returning to the discussion of mutual ministry in the previous section – group evangelism allows non-believers to see how relationships operate in gospel culture. John 13:35: ‘By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ The church is called to bear witness to Christ as a counterculture that is nonetheless for the redemption of the world’s cultures.

iii. Models of Group Witness (primarily via Community Groups)

a. Open Group Evangelism: The norm for every group should be openness to non-believers – we should be inviting them to the group and encouraging our members to do the same. But it is crucial that the normal life of the group – worship, discussion, prayer – not be altered because non-believers are present. Again, the church is called to bear witness to Christ, in part by serving as a model to the world of what a Christ-centered culture looks like. Nevertheless, sensitivity is required – Christian jargon should be minimized (this is probably a good idea anyway), and in preparing for and leading discussion we must be mindful of those who do not embrace or are skeptical of beliefs we take for granted. We must take care not to set up an insider-outsider dynamic within our groups. This should be our practice even when non-believers are not present, for at least two reasons. One is that there might be regular members of the group who, though you may not know it, are themselves somewhat skeptical of or struggling with the truth of the gospel. The other is that our groups need to be places that members would feel comfortable inviting friends to.

b. Prayer: All effective and sustained evangelism begins with prayer. In the past we have talked about kingdom-centered prayer, and this should include weekly time to pray for the advance of God’s kingdom via outreach, with group members praying specifically for nonbelievers in their lives if possible. One reason for this is to develop accountability for outreach.

c. ‘Open Forums’: Discussions of art works including books, films, theater, visual arts. These must be transparent (a general rule for all of this): no bait-and-switch. The idea should be to recognize common questions being asked by our culture, pressing issues, and to invite nonbelievers to a discussion that will include Christians and a Christian worldview/response to these issues.

d. Outreach Dinner/Parties: This can simply be a social gathering - pure hospitality. You may also include some informal discussion of a topic, announced beforehand (see above on transparency), in which everyone is encouraged to participate and share their views. It is expected and known that the ways in which Christian faith relates to the topic will come out. One person may serve as ‘moderator’ for the evening and expressly share the gospel as it relates to the topic of the evening, and invite guests to continue coming to the group and/or to worship on Sundays, or to speak to a pastor or elder if there remain questions about how Christianity responds to the issues raised during the evening.

e. Investigative Bible Studies: E.g., Christianity Explored. If there is interest – this can be a substitute for regular sermon discussion or might be added on. Consider doing this with more than one group.

f. Service Projects: Consider inviting nonbelievers to whatever service projects your group ordinarily undertakes. Such opportunities can be a great way to introduce nonbelievers to Jesus and the work to which he calls us, and to see the full range of gifts, community and relationships as they are practiced in the church. Make a point to invite guests to community groups or Sunday worship.

iv. Opus99, Arts conference

v. Campus Ministry – not only nurturing future leaders, but investing in the universities themselves

vi. Graduate Students/Other Academics

vii. Mercy ministries

viii. Welcoming ministry

ix. Church planting/Multi-site

IV. Gospel-Driven Witness

The gospel shapes our witness in three ways. It establishes its importance, defines it in terms of God’s own outreach to the world, and provides us with the hope to fulfill our calling to witness.

A. The importance of witness

1. Covenental Origins

Genesis 22:17-18

I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.

2. In Truth…

Isaiah 55:3-5

Incline your ear, and come to me; 
hear, that your soul may live; 
and I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
 my steadfast, sure love for David.
 Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples,
 a leader and commander for the peoples.
 Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know,
 and a nation that did not know you shall run to you,
 because of the Lord your God, and of the Holy One of Israel,
 for he has glorified you.

Romans 10:12-15

For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?  And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

3. …and Deed

Isaiah 58

“Cry aloud; do not hold back;
 lift up your voice like a trumpet;
 declare to my people their transgression, 
to the house of Jacob their sins.
 Yet they seek me daily 
and delight to know my ways,
 as if they were a nation that did righteousness 
and did not forsake the judgment of their God;
 they ask of me righteous judgments;
 they delight to draw near to God.
 ‘Why have we fasted, and you see it not?
 Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’ 
Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,  and oppress all your workers. 
Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
 and to hit with a wicked fist.
 Fasting like yours this day 
will not make your voice to be heard on high.
 Is such the fast that I choose, 
a day for a person to humble himself? 
Is it to bow down his head like a reed,
 and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? 
Will you call this a fast,
 and a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I choose 
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
 to undo the straps of the yoke,
 to let the oppressed go free ,
and to break every yoke?
 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry 
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
 when you see the naked, to cover him,
 and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
 Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
 and your healing shall spring up speedily;
 your righteousness shall go before you;
 the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
 you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’ 
If you take away the yoke from your midst, 
the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
 if you pour yourself out for the hungry
 and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness 
and your gloom be as the noonday. 
And the Lord will guide you continually
 and satisfy your desire in scorched places
 and make your bones strong;
 and you shall be like a watered garden,
 like a spring of water,
 whose waters do not fail.
 And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
 you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
 you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
 the restorer of streets to dwell in. If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath,
 from doing your pleasure on my holy day,
 and call the Sabbath a delight
 and the holy day of the Lord honorable;
 if you honor it, not going your own ways,
 or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly; then you shall take delight in the Lord, 
and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;  I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father,
 for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Matthew 25:41-46

Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

God did not just empathize with the poor, he became poor (2. Cor. 8:9)

Proverbs 19:17 - Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord,
 and he will repay him for his deed.

James 1:27 - Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Luke 14:12-14

He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.”

B. The pattern for witness: the missio Dei

1. Salvation belongs to the Lord (Jonah 2:9).

‘The goal of God speaking ought never to be separated from the center of Christian theology, namely the salvation of sinners. The center of Christian theology is not divine self-identification, but divine saving action.’²⁹

John 10:14-18, 27-30

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”… My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one.”

Ezekiel 34:11-24

“For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy.  I will feed them in justice.

“As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord God: Behold, I judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and male goats. Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, that you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture; and to drink of clear water, that you must muddy the rest of the water with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have muddied with your feet?

“Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them: Behold, I, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you push with side and shoulder, and thrust at all the weak with your horns, till you have scattered them abroad, I will rescue my flock; they shall no longer be a prey. And I will judge between sheep and sheep. And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the Lord; I have spoken.

Luke 4:18-19

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
 because he has anointed me 
to proclaim good news to the poor.
 He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives 
and recovering of sight to the blind, 
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

2. The mission of the church is derivative of the mission of God

John 20:21 - Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”

Matthew 9:36-38

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

‘In all evangelism there is… a cultural gulf to bridge. This is obvious when Christian people move as messengers of the gospel from one country or continent to another. But even if we remain in our own country, Christians and non-Christians are often widely separated form one another by social sub-cultures and lifestyles as well as by different values, beliefs and moral standards. Only an incarnation can span these divides, for an incarnation means entering other people’s worlds, their thought-world, and the worlds of their alienation, loneliness and pain. Moreover, the incarnation led to the cross. Jesus first took our flesh, then bore our sin. This was a depth of penetration into our world in order to reach us, in comparison with which our little attempts to reach people seem amateur and shallow. The cross calls us to a much more radical and costly kind of evangelism than most churches have begun to consider, let alone experience.³⁰

3. Centripetal and centrifugal force at work in our relationship with God

‘Jesus came to gather, and to call gatherers, disciples who would gather with him, seeking the poor and helpless from city streets and country roads. Jesus said, “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters” (Mt. 12:30, Lk. 11:23). Mission is not an optional activity for Christ’s disciples. If they are not gatherers, they are scatterers… The gospel itself is the story of the seeking Savior who knows the father’s love. If mission is lost, the gospel is lost’³¹

4. We live in light of what has happened and what is to come, with implications for our words and our deeds

The 1966 World Conference on Church and Society in Geneva affirmed the mission of the church as being ‘to support revolutionary movements by participating in them and bearing witness from within.’³² Gustavo Gutiérrez called for ‘a theology of salvation incarnated in the concrete historical and political conditions of today.’³³ Similar themes, often explicitly Marxist, were heard at the Eighth Conference on World Mission in Bangkok in 1973 and the WCC Assembly in Canberra in 1991,³⁴ identifying systemic evil in economic, sociological, and ecological institutions and practices worldwide and charging the church with combating this evil in the world.³⁵

At the same time, the reports emerging from these conferences, while not fully syncretic or pantheistic, have argued that salvation is not only to be found in Christ, but that ‘The Holy Spirit, the giver of life, is at work among all peoples and faiths and throughout the universe.’³⁶ A primary impetus for this drive away from confrontation was the belief that fundamentalism, ‘an intolerant ideological imperialism, closed to other approaches and realities,’ is largely to blame for many of the world’s violent ills.

‘The resurrection of Jesus, in the full bodily sense… is the reaffirmation of the universe of space, time and matter, after not only sin and death but also pagan empire (the institutionalization of sin and death) have done their worst. The early Christians saw Jesus’ resurrection as the action of the creator god to reaffirm the essential goodness of creation and, in an initial and representative act of new creation, to establish a bridgehead within the present world of space, time and matter (the “present evil age”, as in Galatians 1:4) through which the whole new creation could now come to birth… Death is the ultimate weapon of the tyrant; resurrection does not make a covenant with death, it overthrows it. The resurrection, in the full Jewish and early Christian sense, is the ultimate affirmation that creation matters, that embodied human beings matter.’³⁷

‘In the folds of the gospel sleepeth the manifold wisdom of God, and his manifold goodness also toward the sons of men. Behold, the nations of the earth this day are still the bond-slaves of tyrants—many lands are still subject to despotic dynasties, who trample men beneath their feet, as if men were but earthen pitchers to be broken in pieces by the iron wills of kings. How is liberty to be established in these lands? Shall the point of the bayonet bring liberty to these nations that still are slaves? Never, never. Iron makes our fetters, iron rivets them, but iron never can unloose them. We need something more potent than steel to carve out the liberty of mankind. Love, love of the Gospel, must be the ground work of liberty, and if liberty, equality, and fraternity, the three great words that are the world's heir loom, are ever to be fully known and realised, it must be by the preaching of the Word of Jesus.’³⁸

David L. Chappell’s A Stone of Hope – argues that the scriptural convictions of black southerners were instrumental to the success of the civil rights movements

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
 and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

C. The hope of witness

1. As with worship and nurture – gospel-driven witness seems impossible!

‘When we look at the regulations of the Old Testament individually, we see many that are possible to keep. But if we look at the principles beneath the particulars and at the kind of life that the law is really after, then we see how we fail utterly to reach it.’³⁹

1 John 3:16-17

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?

2. Christ, who moved into our ‘city’ for our sake and chose to go under the shroud (Isaiah 25) in order to remove it from the world, is our pattern

Luke 10:25-37 – The Good Samaritan

‘As well visualize the Ethiopian changing his skin or the leopard his spots, as imagine a Samaritan helping a Jew. But nothing else will do. “An Irish Republican fell among thieves, and an Ulster Orangeman came and helped him; a white colonist fell among thieves, and a black freedom fighter came to his aid; that is what God’s law requires of you”’⁴⁰

Luke 15 depicts three episodes of seeking the lost. In the first two, Jesus depicts the seeking mission of God, for which he himself was sent. But in the last he makes his point (and condemns the Pharisees and those like them) by contrast, replacing himself with the elder brother, who refuses to rejoice when his brother is found. Jesus is the true elder brother: motivated by the Father’s love for the prodigal, he not only feasts with his younger brother at his Father’s table but leaves the comfort of his Father’s house to seek his younger brother in the pigsties.

As Edmund Clowney has put it, “God requires the love that cannot be required.” Mercy is commanded, but it must not be the response to a command, it is an overflowing generosity as a response to the mercy of God which we received.⁴¹

Philippians 2:5-8

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

‘He was led by His love for others into the world, to forget himself in the needs of others… Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our fellows: it means absorption in them. It means forgetfulness of self in others. It means entering into every man’s hopes and fears, longings and despairs: it means many sidedness of spirit, multiform activity, multiplicity of sympathies. It means richness of development. It means not that we should live one life, but a thousand lives – binding ourselves to a thousand souls by the filaments of so loving a sympathy that their lives become ours…

‘Now dear Christians, some of you pray night and day to be branches of the true Vine; you pray to be made all over in the image of Christ. If so, you must be like him in giving… “though he as rich, yet for our sakes he became poor”… Objection 1. “My money is my own.” Answer: Christ might have said, “my blood is my own, my life is my own”… then where should we have been? Objection 2. “The poor are undeserving.” Answer: Christ might have said, “They are wicked rebels… shall I lay down my life for these? I will give to the good angels.” But no, he left the ninety-nine, and came after the lost. He gave his blood for the undeserving. Objection 3. “The poor may abuse it.” Answer: Christ might have said the same; yea, with far greater truth. Christ knew that thousands would trample his blood under their feet,; that most would despise it; that many would make it an excuse for sinning more; yet he gave his own blood. Oh, my dear Christians! If you would be like Christ, give much, give often, give freely, to the vile and poor, the thankless and the undeserving. Christ is glorious and happy and so will you be. It is not your money I want, but your happiness. Remember his own word, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”’⁴²

3. Christ our righteousness

‘We must see that all of us are spiritually poor and bankrupt before God (Matt. 4:3), and even when we put on our best moral efforts for God, we appear as beggars clothed in filthy rags (Isa. 64:6). Yet in Jesus Christ, God provided a righteousness for us (Rom. 3:21-22), a wealth straight from the account of the Son of God, who impoverished himself through suffering and death that we might receive it (2 Cor. 8:9).’⁴³

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones on ‘poor in spirit’:

‘It means a complete absence of pride, a complete absence of self-assurance and self-reliance. It means a consciousness that we are nothing in the presence of God. It is nothing, then, that we can produce; it is nothing that we can do in ourselves. It is just this tremendous awareness of our utter nothingness as we come face to face with God. That is to be poor in spirit.’⁴⁴

‘But one day… this sentence fell upon my soul, “Thy righteousness is in heaven”; and methought withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God’s right hand; there, I say, as my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say to me “He wants my righteousness,” for that was just before him. I also saw, moreover that it was not by my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet by bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, “the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

‘Now did my chains fall of my legs indeed… Oh! Methought, Christ! Christ! There was nothing but Christ that was before my eyes… Now I could look from myself to him, and would reckon that all those graces of God that now were green on me, were yet but like those cracked groats and four-pence-half-pennies that rich men carry in their purses, when their gold is in their trunks at home: Oh! I saw my gold was in my trunk at home! In Christ my Lord and Saviour. Now Christ was all; all my righteousness, all my sanctification, and all my redemption.’⁴⁵

2 Corinthians 5:21 - For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 8:9 - For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

4. Examples

i. Evangelism

Paul was a bitter opponent of the gospel, but Christ laid His hand on Paul, and Paul was broken down and born again. You yourself, since you became a Christian, have been learning constantly how corrupt and deceitful and perverse your own heart is; before you became a Christian, your heart was worse; yet Christ has saved you, and that should be enough to convince you that He can save anyone. So persevere in presenting Christ to unconverted people as you find opportunity. You are not on a fool’s errand. You are not wasting either your time or theirs. You have no reason to be ashamed of your message, or half-hearted and apologetic in delivering it. You have every reason to be bold, and free, and natural, and hopeful of success. For God can give His truth an effectiveness that you and I cannot give it. God can make His truth triumphant to the conversion of the most seemingly hardened unbeliever. You and I will never write off anyone as hopeless and beyond the reach of God if we believe in the sovereignty of His grace… These facts ought to drive us to prayer. It is God’s intention that they should drive us to prayer. God means us, in this as in other things, to recognize and confess our impotence, and to tell Him that we rely on Him alone, and to plead with Him to glorify His name.⁴⁶

ii. Vocation

Our work can be done in a way consistent with God’s purpose to restore creation. But when your vocation becomes a way of making a name for yourself (Tower of Babel), it leads to exhaustion, busyness, exploitation, characteristic of our culture. So long as work, money, etc. is a source of our identity, an end in itself, we will not live for the city. But we can’t do without an identity – human beings are worshippers. What identity will free you to live for others?

iii. Mercy

‘If they are come [into poverty] by a vicious idleness and prodigality; yet we are not thereby excused from all obligation to relive them, unless the continue in those vies… If we do otherwise, we shall act in a manner very contrary to the rule of love one another as Christ loved us. Now Christ hath loved us, pitied us, and greatly laid out himself to relieve us from that want and misery which we brought on ourselves by our own folly and wickedness. We foolishly and perversely threw away those riches with which we were provided, upon which we might have lived and been happy to all eternity.’⁴⁷

iv. Justice

‘There is a profound “injustice” about the God of the biblical traditions. It is called grace… it was “unjust” of the father to receive back the prodigal as a son, and, on top of that, to throw a party for him… But the father was not interested in “justice.” He acted in accordance with a “must”⁴⁸ that was higher than the “must” of “justice” (v. 32). It was the “must” of belonging together as a family. Put differently, the relationship defined justice; an abstract principle of justice did not define the relationship. If we want the God of the prophets and the God of Jesus Christ, we will have to put up with the “injustice” of God’s grace – and rethink the concept of justice… since “justice” is impotent in the face of past injustice, reconciliation is ultimately possibly only through injustice being forgiven and, finally, forgotten. The act of forgiveness will name injustice as injustice and therefore demand that its causes be removed; the act of forgetting will be possible only after the threat of repeated violation has disappeared. Yet the demands of “justice” will have to remain unsatisfied… If our identities are shaped in interaction with others, and if we are called ultimately to belong together, then we need to shift the concept of justice away from an exclusive stress on making detached judgments and toward sustaining relationships, away from blind impartiality and toward sensibility for differences.’⁴⁹

‘We have seen how completely the message of the Bible centres in God the Saviour. It is God who must come, because the human condition is hopeless, and God’s promises are so great. We need God, not because we need his help to solve our problems, but because God’s holy justice is our problem. Only he can make us right in his sight, and to do so he must bear our judgment, provide our righteousness, and transform our natures... Biblical theology has long taught the lesson of solidarity. We are all God’s creatures, but our solidarity is solidarity in sin. Human lostness means alienation from the source of life. It also means doom. We and all creation for our sakes, are under the deserved wrath and curse of God. Human pretensions to implement justice fall infinitely short of the execution of true justice.’⁵⁰