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The gospel does more than connect Christians to one another; it also connects us to those in our cities who do not yet know God and who have needs we can help meet through ministries of justice and mercy. In the West, two sets of ministry concerns — emphasizing word or deed, proclamation or service — have been split off from each other into rival political and denominational factions for nearly a century. “Conservative” ministry stresses the importance of personal morality and approves of calling people to conversion through evangelism and preaching of the gospel; “liberal” ministry stresses social justice and rejects overt calls to convert others. But Jesus calls his disciples to both gospel messaging (urging everyone to repent and believe the gospel) and to gospel neighboring (sacrificially meeting the needs of those around them, whether they believe or not). The two concerns must always go together. Let’s see why.1
First, word and deed go together theologically. The resurrection of Jesus shows us that God not only created both body and spirit, but that he will also redeem both body and spirit. The salvation Jesus will eventually bring in its fullness will include liberation from all of the effects of sin — not only the spiritual effects, but physical and material ones as well. Jesus himself came both preaching the Word and healing and feeding. The final kingdom will be one of justice for all. Christians can faithfully proclaim the gospel through both words and deeds of compassion and justice, serving the material needs of people around us even as we call them to faith in Jesus.
In addition to the theological harmony of these concerns, they also go together practically. In some ways, gospel neighboring is gospel messaging. Loving deeds of service to someone, regardless of their race or faith, are always an attractive testimony to the truth and motivational power of the gospel. The church’s ministry to the poor makes great sense as a corporate witness to the community of Christ’s transforming love and as an important “plausibility structure” for the preaching of the gospel.
Biblical Foundations for Ministries of Mercy and Justice
To examine in greater depth the theological foundations for this type of ministry, let’s look at three primary biblical concepts: neighbor, service, and justice.
1. Christians are to love their neighbor. It is typical to think of our neighbors as people of the same social class and means (Luke 14:12). The Old Testament, however, called Israel to recognize the immigrant, the single-parent family, and the poor as neighbors, even if they were from another nation or race (Lev 19:34). In Luke 10:25 – 37, Jesus takes this even further. He says that your neighbor is anyone you come into contact with who lacks resources, even someone from a hated race or another religious faith. Our responsibility to neighbors includes love and justice — two things the Bible closely links. When God says, “Love your neighbor as yourself ” (Lev 19:18), he also commands us not to defraud, pervert justice, show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, or do anything to endanger our neighbor’s life (vv. 13 – 17). According to Jesus, God is a God of justice, and anyone who has a relationship with him will be concerned about justice as well (Luke 18:1 – 8).
2. Christians are called to serve. The Greek word diakoneō denotes humbly providing for the most basic and simple needs through deeds. The root meaning of the word is “to feed someone by waiting on a table.” Luke gives the example of Martha preparing a meal for Jesus (Luke 10:40). A group of women disciples followed Jesus and the apostles and provided food and other physical needs, and this ministry is called diakonia (Matt 27:55; Luke 8:3). The work of providing daily necessities for the widows in the early church is also referred to as diakonia (Acts 6:1). In the upper room, Jesus asks the question, “Who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves [diakonōn]?” (Luke 22:27). This question is remarkable because in the value system of the culture of that day, serving others was considered demeaning work. Against this backdrop, Jesus makes the startling statement that Christian greatness is the polar opposite of the values of the world: “I am among you as one who serves (?diakonōn)” (Luke 22:27). A diakonos! A busboy! This is the Christian pattern of greatness, and it directly follows the pattern of Christ’s work. Our acts of service for others are the evidence that God’s love is operative in our lives: “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:17 – 18).
3. Christians are instructed to “do justice” or “live justly.” Evangelicals tend to translate this phrase (as in Mic 6:8) as “live righteously” and generalize it to mean a broad understanding of Christian obedience to God’s Word or simply a commitment to avoiding certain egregious sins. This understanding simply isn’t adequate, especially when we study the term as used in the Old Testament.
So what does the Bible mean by doing justice? Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke defines justice in this startling way: “The righteous (s.addiq) are willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community; the wicked are willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves.”2 Most people think of “wickedness” as disobeying the Ten Commandments, as actively breaking the law by lying or committing adultery. And those things are, of course, wicked! But lying and adultery are best understood as the visible tip of the iceberg of wickedness. Below the surface, less visible but no less wicked, are things like not feeding the poor when we have the power to do so or taking so much income out of the business we own that our employees are paid poorly or shoveling snow from our own driveway without even thinking to do the same for our elderly neighbors. In all these ways we disadvantage others by advantaging ourselves.
With this understanding, we begin to see that justice is an everyday activity; it is not to be pursued only in courts or legislatures. Living justly means living in constant recognition of the claims of community on us; it means disadvantaging ourselves in order to advantage others. This works itself out in every area of life — in our family and sexual relationships, our jobs and vocations, in our use of wealth and possessions, the rights of citizenship, how we pursue our leisure, how we seek and use corporate profits, how we communicate and present ourselves, and how we form and conduct friendships. It means going well beyond what is legally required of us. A CEO who is willing to say, as Job did, that “justice was my robe” (Job 29:14) cannot think only of his shareholders’ profit but must also think of the good of his employees and the community in which the business operates. Many things that managers of a bank can legally do are, according to the Bible, unjust. The Old Testament makes it clear that God’s justice means to share food, shelter, and other basic resources with those who have smaller amounts (Isa 58:6 – 10).
Note that in the Bible, acts that meet basic human needs are not just called acts of mercy (see Luke 10:37), which implies compassion for the undeserving; they are considered acts of justice, which implies giving people their due. Why? We do not all start out with equal privileges and assets. For example, inner-city children, through no fault of their own, may grow up in an environment extremely detrimental to learning. People may argue over who is primarily at fault in this situation — the parents, the culture, the government, big business, systemic racism, the list goes on. But no one argues it is the child’s fault that they are in this situation! Everyone would recognize that as far as the children are concerned, their plight is part of the deep injustice of our world — one of the effects of the fall — that we are duty bound to help improve.
It’s one thing to want to help remedy injustice; it’s another thing to go about it wisely. One of the main reasons this is especially difficult is the unbalanced political ideologies and unbiblical reductionisms that reign in our culture today. Many conservatives are motivated to help the poor solely out of a disposition of mercy — a motivation perhaps rooted in a belief that poverty is almost solely a matter of individual irresponsibility. But this attitude often overlooks the fact that the “haves” are in their position to a great degree because of the uneven distribution of opportunities and resources at birth. As Christians, we know that every material blessing we have is a gift from God. If we fail to share the material benefits we have been given or are impatient and harsh with the poor, we are not just guilty of a lack of mercy; we are guilty of injustice. On the other hand, many liberals are motivated to help the poor out of a sense of indignation over aborted justice. But this too misses an important truth, namely, that individual responsibility does have a great deal to do with helping people escape from the cycle of poverty.
So conservatives may advocate “compassionate, responsibility-based” solutions that can become paternalistic and even patronizing and are blind to many of the sociocultural factors contributing to the problems of poverty. The liberal orientation against “systemic injustice” can lead to anger, rancor, and division. Both views, ironically, become self-righteous. One tends to blame the poor for everything; the other tends to blame the rich for everything. One approach overemphasizes individual responsibility; the other underemphasizes it.
Christians live justly as a response to grace. At first glance, it does not seem logical that Christ’s salvation, which is of sheer grace, should move us to do justice. But the Bible tells us it should. In the Old Testament, God tells the Israelites, “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God” (Lev 19:34). The Israelites had been foreigners and oppressed slaves in Egypt. They did not have the ability to free themselves — God liberated them by his grace and power. Now they are to treat all people who have less power or fewer assets as neighbors, demonstrating love and justice to them. So the theological and motivational basis for doing justice is salvation by grace!
In James 2:14, the writer states that, while we are saved by faith and not works, real faith in Christ will lead us to deeds of service. And then James shows what these deeds look like: “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead” (2:15 – 17).
Read in the context of the entire book of James, we see this is the same reasoning that God used in Leviticus 19:34. A desire to help the poor arises from a heart touched by grace, a heart that has surrendered its feelings of superiority toward any particular class of people.
Practical Approaches for Ministries of Mercy and Justice
Once we have answered the question of why the church should participate in ministries of mercy and justice, we must still address the question of how it will do so. Within this broad question are dozens of practical questions, and as we begin to debate them, it is important to consider different levels of assistance to the poor and to think about the appropriate role of the church in each.
1. Relief. The first level to consider is relief— giving direct aid to meet physical, material, and social needs. Common ways of providing relief are such things as temporary shelters for the homeless, food and clothing services for people in need, medical services, and crisis counseling. A form of relief is direct advocacy in which people in need are given active assistance to receive legal aid, find housing, and gain other kinds of support. But relief programs, when not combined with other types of assistance, will invariably create patterns of dependency.
2. Development. A second type of help is necessary at the level of development, bringing a person or community to self-sufficiency. In the Old Testament, when a slave’s debt was erased and he was released, God directed that his former master send him out with grain, tools, and resources for a new, self-sufficient economic life (Deut 15:13 – 14). Development for an individual can include education, job creation, and training. But development for a neighborhood or community means reinvesting social and financial capital into a social system — housing development and home ownership, as well as other capital investments.
3. Reform. We can call the broadest level of assistance reform. Social reform moves beyond the relief of immediate needs and dependency and seeks to change the social conditions and structures that aggravate or cause the dependency. Job declared that he not only clothed the naked but “broke the fangs of the wicked and snatched the victims from their teeth” (Job 29:17). Moses communicated God’s stance against legal systems weighted in favor of the rich and influential (Lev 19:15; Deut 24:17) and systems of lending capital that gouged persons of modest means (Exod 22:25 – 27; Lev 19:35 – 37; 25:37). The prophets denounced unfair wages (Jer 22:13) and corrupt business practices (Amos 8:2, 6). Daniel called a pagan government to account for its lack of mercy to the poor (Dan 4:27). As we read the Bible, we realize that Christians should take a stand in their particular communities as they advocate for better police protection, more just and fair banking practices and zoning practices, and better laws.
But even if we agree these are all essential pursuits for Christians (and they are!), we have not yet answered the question of how the institutional church should be involved. For both theological and practical reasons, I believe the local church should concentrate on the first level of assistance (relief) and to some degree the second (development). At the second and third levels, in the domains of community development, social reform, and addressing social structures, I think it is generally best for believers to work through associations and organizations rather than directly through the local church.3
Why this distinction? One concern is the allocation of scarce financial resources. Many argue that the second and third levels are too expensive and will take financial resources away from the ministry of the Word. I don’t see this as an insurmountable problem, but it is true that development and reform efforts tend to require significant sources of funds beyond what can be provided through the operations of a church. Leadership capacity and focus are other scarce resources. The issues of justice and mercy are so complex that the elders and staff of a church likely do not have the skills or time to deal with them properly.
Another reason relates to independence. Many say (and I agree) that these efforts can require too much political activity and enmeshment and may result in the congregation becoming too allied with particular civil magistrates and political parties in ways that can compromise the witness, independence, and authority of the church. In the end, I have seen that most churches in the United States that are deeply involved in caring for the poor have found it wisest to spin off nonprofit corporations to do community development and reform of social structures rather than seek to do them directly through the local congregation under the oversight of the elders.4
With these levels of assistance in mind, let’s look at several practical issues of philosophy with respect to this aspect of integrative ministry. Often people with the same basic vision will disagree, so you may have to work hard to come to consensus.
1. Level of priority: How much should we help? This kind of ministry is very expensive. How high a priority should it hold in relationship to other ministries? Should a church wait until it has more people and is better established before doing something in this area? The needs are endless, so how can we know what percentage of the church’s energy and money should be devoted to it? Here is a place to start. Deed or diaconal ministry — particularly for people inside the church — is prescribed by the Bible in Acts 6:1 – 7 and many other places. So someone in your church should be set apart to meet material and felt needs through deeds. This should be your commitment, regardless of how extensive the ministry becomes.
2. Defining “the poor”: Whom should we help? How do we define need so we are sure we are serving those we should be serving? How needy must someone be? What if someone in your church says, “We are helping him? Why, he’s not so bad off!” Here is a guiding idea. Jonathan Edwards applies the principle “love your neighbor as yourself ” to this question. You don’t wait until you are absolutely destitute before you do something to change your condition; so then you shouldn’t help only the absolutely destitute people around you. Don’t be too narrow in your definition of “the poor.”
3. Conditional or unrestricted: When, and under what conditions, do we help? What should be required of those we help? Anything? Do you require that the persons come to your church or become part of some ministry? Should you work more with members than nonmembers? A guiding thought is Galatians 6:10: “Let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.” This makes it quite clear that we should give priority to brothers and sisters in our church. But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give help to people who are not members but who are in some relationship to our church — either in the immediate neighborhood or in relationships with believers inside.
4. Relief, development, and reform: In what way do we help? I mentioned that justice ministry can consist of helping individuals through simple relief — but it can also mean taking on unjust social systems. Should the church get into politics or stick with feeding the hungry? Keep in mind our discussion above about relief, development, and reform.
Ultimately, it is impossible to separate word and deed ministry because human beings are integrated wholes — body and soul. It is both natural and necessary that ministers of mercy also minister the Word while they are in the process of meeting human needs, and that communicators of the gospel also show compassion with regard to the material needs of the people they are trying to reach. An integrative ministry means weaving together word and deed ministry as much as possible. When Jesus raised the dead son of the widow of Nain, he spoke words of comfort (Luke 7:13). After he healed the blind man, he returned with a gospel charge (John 9:35 – 38). These go hand in hand. In Acts 2, explosive growth in numbers (v. 41) leads to radical sharing with the needy (vv. 44 – 45). In Acts 4, economic sharing by people inside the church accompanied the preaching of the resurrection outside the church with great power (vv. 32 – 35). The practical actions of Christians on behalf of people in need demonstrated the truth and power of the gospel. The Roman emperor Julian was an enemy of Christianity, but he admitted that believers’ generosity to the poor made it highly attractive: “Why do we not observe that it is their [Christians’] benevolence to strangers . . . and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done most to increase atheism [Christianity] . . . For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galilaeans support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us.”5
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What does it mean, biblically, to be a neighbor, to serve others, and to do justice? How do our definitions of these terms compare with your own understanding?
2. Discuss the differences between relief, development, and reform. Which of these have you or your church community been involved in? Do you believe the local church should participate in the work of development and reform? Why or why not?
3. Keller writes, “Ultimately, it is impossible to separate word and deed ministry because human beings are integrated wholes — body and soul. It is both natural and necessary that ministers of mercy also minister the Word while they are in the process of meeting human needs, and that communicators of the gospel also show compassion with regard to the material needs of the people they are trying to reach. An integrative ministry means weaving together word and deed ministry as much as possible.” How are you and your church seeking to weave together these two aspects of ministry?