For generations the church has been polarized between those who see the main task being the saving of souls for heaven and the nurturing of those souls through the valley of the dark world on one hand, and on the other hand those who see the task of improving the lot of human beings and the world, rescuing the poor from their misery. The longer that I’ve gone on as a New Testament scholar and wrestled with what the early Christians were actually talking about, the more it’s been borne in on me that the distinction is one that we modern Westerners bring to the text rather than finding in the text. Because the great emphasis in the New Testament is the gospel is not how to escape the world, the gospel is that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Lord of the world. And that his death and Resurrection transform the world, and that transformation can happen to you. You, in turn, can be part of the transforming work. That draws together what we traditionally called evangelism, bringing people to the point where they come to know God in Christ for themselves, with working for God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. That has always been at the heart of the Lord’s Prayer, and how we’ve managed to say the Lord’s Prayer without realizing that Jesus really meant it is very curious.
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