Gospel.com Blog

How much time do you spend worrying about clothes, food and other necessities of life?

In Matthew 6 Jesus tells us that our worry over those things is misguided. Instead, our priorities should be seeking the kingdom of God and pursuing God’s righteousness (or justice depending on the translation). And, as Kent Van Til of the Today devotional reminds us, by seeking the kingdom and God’s justice, everything that we need will follow:

In ancient times, a king was the provider of justice and peace in the land. So seeking Gods kingdom involves a search for the justice of God. And we know what Gods justice is like if we have read Jesus teaching in the text surrounding our passage for today (see Matthew 5-7). In the kingdom great reversals occurthe poor inherit kingdom riches, the sorrowful are comforted, the empty are filled. The justice of God turns worldly justice on its head. The first are last, and the last first.

As Christians, we are called to seek out and establish this upside-down justice of Gods kingdom. Remember that seeking this justice is primary. To justice seekers in Gods kingdom, other things will come.

Is God convicting you about any of your priorities? What changes could you make to your life in order to make pursuing the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness bigger priorities?

Justice has been on my mind this morning since I read about the conviction of Khmer Rouge torturer/executioner Kaing Guek Eav. Is a 19-year prison sentence “just”? Does the extent of his crimes merit a harsher sentence, or should his regret and guilty plea earn him a lighter one?

Those are questions that will be much discussed in Cambodia over the next few months, you can be sure. But today’s Words of Hope devotional, about the Christian understanding of justice, seems timely. What does justice look like through the Bible’s eyes, and should a Christian’s definition of justice differ from a non-Christian’s?

There is a great debate in legal and philosophical circles about the nature of justice. The ancients defined justice as giving others their due. Modern theories of justice often talk about fairness and equality.

Micah 6:8 says, “And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” God calls us to be agents of his justice on earth. But doing this requires deep, prayerful humility. Christian justice has no place for vengeance, self-righteousness, or “getting even.” Instead, justice requires us to seek the good of others, even those who have wronged us. And though that may still require us to take legal action against wrong-doing, we are called to do it in a spirit of love and mercy.

Read the full devotional at Words of Hope.

This quiet and humble approach is a far cry from the “justice” regularly presented in our popular entertainment and in the day-to-day news cycle. What do you think? Does your Christian concept of justice ever conflict with your instincts, and if so, how do you resolve that tension?

Today is Earth Day. Even just a decade ago, many evangelicals would have shied away from commemorating this date, due to its perceived association with extremist activism and politics.

But today, the significance of “creation care” is something that Christians of all stripes recognize. Christians, after all, have a unique understanding of creation—one that has nothing to do with partisan politics or extremist ideologies. We believe that God has given us stewardship over the Earth and its resources, and that as stewards, we have both authority over and responsibility for the flora and fauna around us.

A ThinkChristian post from a few years ago offers a good look at the steadily growing engagement of environmental issues by Christians individuals and organizations, as well as many links to Christian stewardship organizations. Of particular interest to Christians should be the social justice aspect of environmental care, since it is often the case that the people most directly affected by environmental problems are those living in the poorest and least developed parts of the world.

Is your church marking Earth Day this week? Whether or not your church community commemorates Earth Day, do you have any stories about how you or your church have acted out the role of “creation steward”?

Are you ever tempted, when you read about a crisis in a faraway place or an injustice committed against somebody you don’t know, to say “Well, it’s none of my business”? Today’s devotional from Our Daily Bread calls to mind not only the ongoing struggle against racism and discrimination, but the disaster unfolding in Haiti. If we are followers of Christ, then all of these truly are “our business”:

Making another’s concerns our own is what Leviticus 19:18 calls us to do: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus quotes this verse and interprets it as not placing any limitations on loving those around us (Matt. 22:39; Luke 10:25-37). Our neighbor doesn’t just mean someone close by; it’s anyone who has a need. We are to care for others as we care for ourselves.

To love our neighbor means to make the persecution, suffering, and injustice of our fellow human beings our own. It is the business of all who follow Christ.

Read the full devotional at Our Daily Bread.

In today’s world, the number of injustices and needs that demand addressing far exceed the ability of any individual Christian to deal with. But these things nevertheless are our business. Sometimes that might mean helping out in a direct, physical way… and sometimes, it means simply praying and yearning for the justice that will arrive with the Kingdom of God.

Capital punishment is considered only in the most extreme of cases, and even then, it’s rarely used. Despite its infrequent use, is the death penalty something Christians should support?

Share your thoughts!

If we’re honest with ourselves, many of us do acts of justice out of a sense of guilt. We see ads on TV for a compassion ministry that reaches out to kids in the third world and feel bad for them. Then we realize we’re watching that ad on our fancy LCD Televisions and we start to feel those uneasy pangs of guilt. So we silence that guilt by donating some money.

Is that really justice?

Rick McKinley recently wrote an article over at Christianity Today called Why We Do Justice that explores the interplay between justice and guilt.

Here are his own words on the subject:

It is easy to see the victims of injustice as “those” people who have a need. We have a resource. We believe that if we use our resource to meet their need, our guilt will be removed. This means we have a need too—the need to not feel guilty. Are our efforts toward justice really about loving others, or are they about alleviating our guilt? Or perhaps we are both using each other to have our own needs met.

In truth, justice isn’t about guilt. Guilt is too easy. Justice is about God and what we believe about him. If we are going to move away from guilt-driven efforts, we must root our hearts and our imaginations in the deeply significant theology at the heart of the gospel. There is a question that we have to wrestle to the ground: How are we to see the “other”?

McKinley goes on to argue that when we practice justice born out of love we find instead of blessing others, we are blessed. He tells the story of a man named Bruce who served the homeless every Saturday. Through loving and learning from the men and woman he was serving he realized all of humanity is in need of God’s grace and mercy. He started seeing them as equals rather than as “others” and found himself blessed by them.

Have you had similar experiences? Have you gone to serve someone and found yourself the recipient of the blessing? Do you think that a guilty conscience can be a good thing when it comes to justice?

Events in Sudan this week have left Darfur relief agencies—including many Christian organizations—worried and uncertain about what the future holds for millions of displaced people in that war-torn region.

Last week, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Sudanese government responded by expelling numerous aid organizations from Darfur, a move that has many worried about what will now happen to the millions of people who depend on aid brought it via those organizations. A recent Mission Network News article reports on the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, which does work in Darfur and has not (yet) been expelled:

The Sudanese government is having a difficult time filling the gaps left when Sudan expelled 13 aid groups. This was done in response to the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue a warrant for President Omar al-Bashir, charging him with war crimes for the Darfur conflict. […]

Even though CRWRC is still there, they can’t make up the difference the 13 groups were contributing. Little says many were involved in water and food projects. “If in fact they do have to leave, it will just enhance the suffering and increase the suffering of many, many, many people in Darfur.”

Franklin Graham and the Samaritan’s Purse ministry are heavily involved in relief work in Darfur, and have posted a short article about the crisis. An article in the Guardian discusses the expulsions’ impact, noting that “about 4.7 million people rely on food, medical or water aid in Darfur, including 2.7 million people displaced by fighting. The expelled organisations carry out at least 50 per cent of the work there.”

And in a bleak new development, several aid workers in Sudan have been kidnapped, leading to the withdrawal of the Doctors Without Borders organization from the country.

There’s no doubt it’s a messy and chaotic situation—the politics of the ongoing Darfur crisis are complex and defy easy understanding. (For a brief overview of the situation, see this Q&A about the Darfur conflict from the BBC and the War in Darfur Wikipedia entry.) But it’s a good time for Christians to focus their prayers on the millions of people who eke out tenuous existences in Darfur displacement camps and who will bear the brunt of this recent flurry of political events. If you know of an organization or ministry at work in Darfur, they can almost certainly use your prayers and support.

[Photo shows a Darfur refugee camp in Chad. Taken by Mark Knobil and used under a Creative Commons license.]