01.30. Chapter 4 The wider world
Chapter 4 The wider world Restoring what has been damaged
Because of sin, nothing in the world is as it should be. On every hand people suffer from the consequences of sin. Instead of enjoying life as God intended, they are troubled in mind by fear and tension, and troubled in body by sickness and disease. They experience conflict and stress in all their relationships, from personal to international. They are also in conflict with the natural environment, because even the world of nature suffers because of human sin. Above all, they are in conflict with God.
Jesus Christ came to bring healing. He healed people not only in their bodies and minds, but also in their relationships with each other and with God. He even worked healing in the natural environment.
None of Jesus’ healing work, however, was universal. He showed that he was the Son of God who came to save, and he made complete salvation possible through his death and resurrection. People have the opportunity to accept that salvation now, so that they can enjoy it in its fulness when Jesus Christ returns at the end of the age.
Christ’s final triumph will mean that all the rebellious will be taken away in judgment, and all the effects of sin in the world will at last be reversed. Disease, sickness, suffering, war and death will be removed. People will enjoy perfect peace – within themselves, with others and with God. The world of nature will have the perfect splendour originally intended for it. As they look forward to sharing with Christ in a life that isfree from sin, Christians are encouraged to work towards freedom from sin in the present life. This concerns all the damaging effects of sin: not just those in their own lives, but also those in the world at large. A message for all nations In the work of restoring all things to a state of harmony with God, the Christians’ first task is to spread the message of God’s salvation to a sinful world. This work will start in a person’s own family and neighbourhood, but it must not end there. Jesus told his disciples to take his message ‘to all nations’, ‘into all the world’ and ‘to the ends of the earth’. There is only one God, and there is only one person who can bring sinners back to God, and that is Jesus Christ. ‘Salvation is to be found through him alone; in all the world there is no one else whom God has given who can save us’ (Acts 4:12). As Christians take the message of Christ into new regions, they baptize those who believe in him, teach them how to be his followers and build them into local churches. These churches then become centres from which the new Christian community expands into the regions round about. The Christian message is for all people; it is not tied to a particular culture, race or language. Christ brings new life and new hope to the entire human race. In fact, he is the human race’s only hope.
Throughout the world Christians are busy spreading the message of Christ. Some devote their full working time to the task, while others use their normal occupations to gain access to places where full-time preachers may not be welcome. Christians make efforts to reach people everywhere, from remote villages to crowded cities. Whether tribal people or students, whether factory workers or politicians, they all need Christ. A better life now
Although Jesus was concerned first of all with releasing people from the bondage of sin and giving them new life, he was concerned also for their physical needs. He fed the hungry, healed the sick, gave sight to the blind and relieved the oppressed. As his followers do likewise, they carry on Christ’s work and at the same time show people the kind of world God wants.
Wherever Christianity has spread into an ungodly world, it has had a good effect on society. It has produced greater care for the sick and the poor, greater protection for the underprivileged and the defenceless, and greater respect for justice and honesty. In some countries Christianity has, over generations or even centuries, become the dominating influence. Although this has been a benefit to those countries, it has also resulted in careless social attitudes among many Christians. They have become so accustomed to regarding their country as Christian that they unthinkingly approve of whatever their country does.
If Christians live in a society that gives them a comfortable standard of living, they have special cause to examine all issues carefully. A danger of such a society is that people may have high principles of personal behaviour, yet support a system that ignores those principles. Personally, for example, they may give generous aid to needy people in poor countries, yet at the same time support a trade policy that ensures their own country gets richer while other countries get poorer. They may readily approve of something done in business or government that they would condemn if an individual did it.
Christians must avoid two extremes. One is to be concerned only with personal godliness and to ignore the evil that infects the system. The other is to be so concerned with social reform that personal duties are overlooked. People can easily denounce racism in distant lands while despising socially ‘inferior’ people who live in their own street. Others condemn governments for lack of social concern, while they themselves ignore needy families and lonely people in their neighbourhood. Many were condemned by Jesus not because of any wrong they had done, but because of the good they had not done – usually to the sick, the poor and the outcasts.
Respect for human dignity
One difficulty in any society is that those in a position to bring about change are the least likely to want change. People in places of power and influence are the people who benefit most from the existing order.
Jesus refused to use violence in any form, either to protect what was good or overthrow what was bad. But he refused to be silent when he saw people of power and influence exploiting theweak and the defenceless. As a result those who opposed himmost bitterly were the well-to-do, religiously respectable people. It suited them better for the social order to remain unchanged. As always Jesus showed that the root of the problem was human sin. The oppression of the weak by the powerful is one of the evils that resulted when sin entered the human race. It is a denial of the human dignity that all people possess equally, for all are made in God’s image. To treat people as unequal because of race, social status or sex is contrary to all that Jesus taught and practised. He wants his followers to do all they can to remove the hostility that sin has created. ‘Happy are those who work for peace,’ said Jesus; ‘God will call them his children’ (Matthew 5:9).
Renewing the earth
Besides exploiting each other, people have exploited the natural world. Although the world belongs to God, he has placed it in the care of those who live in it. They have God’s permission to use it, enjoy it and develop it, so that on the one hand they might gain benefit, and on the other nature itself might develop its full splendour. As a result of human sin, however, the natural world has suffered. In some ways it may have become more beautiful, but in others it has been made ugly. Through greed people have exploited the earth without thought for its future, and used its resources to enrich themselves at the expense of others. Though in some cases they have brought widespread benefits through their skills, in others they have selfishly enriched only a few and left lands and people devastated.
Christians recognize that people are merely God’s represen- tatives in administering the world he has entrusted to them. They are answerable to God for their treatment of nature and their sharing of its resources. They do not have the unlimited right to devastate the earth for financial profit, or to destroy life for their own pleasure. Christians should encourage a lifestyle that cooperates with God’s work in nature by using the earth’s limited resources with sympathetic care and without unnecessary waste.
God’s plan is that at Christ’s return a new era will dawn, when all sin’s evil consequences will be removed. God’s people will at last be free from all the effects of sin, and the physical creation, which was denied its full splendour because of human sin, will at last be perfected. It will be ‘set free from its slavery to decay and share the glorious freedom of the children of God’ (Romans 8:21). If God’s purpose is to bring the natural world to its full splendour, Christians should be working towards the healing of nature now. God’s goal should be theirs – new people, a new community and a new earth.