The world is filled with miserable people, and only Christ can reveal to them the source of that misery and offer its cure. To the Church has been committed the message of redemption at the point where it can be effective, and that point is primarily spiritual, not physical and material. To try to meet a spiritual need at the physical level is to go against all that Christ taught and did.
Jesus explained the nature of his ministry in the clearest terms, but then as now, the world misunderstood because of spiritual blindness.
In his home town of Nazareth, Jesus began his public ministry with a sermon based on a passage in Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18, 19). Then he said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
What was the “good news” he had come to preach? Was it primarily a message of physical and material relief?
Were the “captives” he was to deliver held under the power of Rome, or of Satan?
Were the “blind” to whom he would minister those lacking physical sight, or those devoid of spiritual vision?
Were the “oppressed” those subject to man’s inhumanity to man, or were they those who all their lives had suffered at the hands of the Oppressor, the Devil?
Similar questions occur as we read our Lord’s response to John’s messengers (Matt. 11:2–6). Were the “blind” who were to “receive their sight” the physically or the spiritually blind?
Did the “lame” who would walk suffer from actual physical handicaps, or did they limp in spiritual ignorance?
Were the “lepers” who were to be cleansed afflicted with physical leprosy or the leprosy of sin?
Were the “deaf” who would be caused to hear those who were unable to hear their fellow men or those who were deaf to the message of God’s redeeming love?
Were the “dead” who were to be raised up those represented by the daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus, or those who were “dead in trespasses and sins”?
Were the “poor” to whom the good news was to be preached the indigent whom Christ saw about him, or were they the spiritually destitute of that and every generation?
Our Lord’s provision for the hungry crowds who followed him, his healing of the sick who pressed upon him or were brought to him by friends—were not these acts of compassion and mercy incidental to his ministry to the spiritual needs of the entire world?
Christ’s kingdom, as of now, is a spiritual kingdom. His victories are not over worldly enemies but over sin in the human heart. His redemption at that time was not from the power of Rome, nor is it today from the menace of Communism; now as then he redeems men from the power of the Devil and his world.
Jesus came as the Friend of the poor in spirit, as the Physician to the sickness of sinful hearts, and as the Deliverer of the soul from its bondage.
It seems that today the efforts of many within the Church are directed toward bringing relief without redemption, to meeting the needs of the body while leaving the soul naked, blind, and in prison.
That the Church has an obligation to help the physically needy goes without saying. But this help should primarily go to those of the “household of faith.” The Church as such has neither the resources nor the obligation to feed the world.
That individual Christians should respond to human need is also axiomatic, but if they expend their resources indiscriminately, who is to meet those needs that are exclusively the concern of the Church? We Christians are confronted with hundreds of appeals to help support secular charitable work, and we should respond as generously as we can. But our responsibility is primarily to support the various causes of the Church and to meet the needs of our brothers in Christ. The non-Christian can and will give to secular organizations, but only the Christian supports the work of the Church.
It is imperative that we grasp the meaning of our Lord’s interpretation of Isaiah and his own mission to the world. We find the same truth indicated by his commissioning of the Apostle Paul on the Damascus road: “I send you to open [the Gentiles’] eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:16–18).
Because of his faith in Christ and his obedience to the Christian ethic, the Apostle Paul was most zealous in ministering first to the physical and material needs of fellow Christians; but his message was directed to the spiritual needs of all—to the Christians and those afar off. Had not his risen Lord commanded him to open spiritually blinded eyes, to turn men from spiritual darkness to light, to deliver them from the power of Satan to God, to preach forgiveness of sins and a place among the redeemed through faith in Him?
In the light of these things, are we not misinterpreting our Lord’s meaning in Matthew 25:31–46 when we think he was speaking solely of the secular and material needs of “these my brethren”? It would appear that until we have confronted men with their spiritual needs and pointed them to the One who alone can meet those needs, we have failed in our calling and done no better than those outside the household of faith.
God forbid that the Church, or individual Christians, should ever be found lacking in love and compassion for the suffering and the needy! But unless in ministering to them we tell them of Christ and the salvation he offers for the present life and for eternity, the “love” we show is not Christian love, the “compassion” no different from that of unbelievers.
It is so easy to write on this subject and to be misunderstood, for with all my heart I know that acts of true love and compassion commend the Gospel of Jesus Christ to those so helped and are in themselves tangible evidence of the love and compassion of Christ.
At the same time, these are only the outward evidence of a deeper reality, the love and compassion of the Saviour, and are therefore a means to an end, not the end itself.
Across the Church there is a renewed emphasis on the needs of mankind here and now. My plea is that there may be at the same time a renewed emphasis on the saving and keeping power of the Lord Jesus Christ, without which the Church would find itself no more than a charitable agency similar to hundreds of others all about us.
