On Being Gospel Centered Missionaries in a World of Suffering, part 4
While we won’t always know what to do when confronted with suffering, as Christians, clearly we will want to do something. When we begin to help however, we often discover that the problems people face are bigger than we thought and that providing solutions is more complicated than we imagined. As a result, we might be tempted to start spending more time doing things for people than we do making disciples. This response might feel more compassionate than simply ignoring the suffering we see, but if we allow helping someone with their physical needs to keep us from pursuing their spiritual good, we are not actually being compassionate enough.
What’s the highest happiness a person can experience? It’s seeing God’s excellency and enjoying His love. This provides joy in troubles, strength in hard times, peace in confusing circumstances. The greatest good you could ever do for anyone is to help them know and enjoy that for themselves. If someone is engaged in mercy ministry because they want a person’s good, how could they not want their best good, which is to see and enjoy the glory of God?
If you are trying to help someone who is an unbeliever without trying to help them know God, you are not seeking their highest good, and you are not addressing their most significant problem. The most significant problem a person has is that they are a sinner and they are going to stand before the judgment seat of God. Warning people about hell is a matter of being compassionate. Hell is a real place. It lasts forever. It would be cruel not to tell people the danger they are in. Sharing the gospel is mercy ministry.
The question is, do we believe it?
We have to ask this question, because there is a lot of pressure not to. Talking about the fact that people are going to be eternally judged by God for their sin is not politically correct. The people around us minimize the importance of believing in Jesus. As a result, I am afraid that many are in danger of losing a sense of the urgency of the evangelistic task.
We don’t become distracted from sharing the gospel because we are too focused on helping people. We become distracted when hell doesn’t seem very real to us. When we lose sight of forever, we begin to focus primarily on the now.
Listen to how Jonathan Edwards once pleaded with his congregation. “Is it not a great pity that things which are so precious as souls are, should be lost? Should we not, if we saw any man in distress of body and in great danger of dying, be willing to lend him a hand to save his life? Why, let us look about us and we shall see thousands of men in a sorrowful condition, and in danger of dying every moment. Should we see a man a-drowning, should we not be willing to afford him some assistance to help him out of the water? If we look about, we may see thousands of poor souls drowning in sin and iniquity, and in danger of being drowned in the lake of fire and brimstone. Let us therefore do what we can for them; perhaps we may be instrumental of saving several souls from everlasting ruin and destruction. If each one here present should do what he could towards it, there is no doubt to be made but that many souls might be saved by their means. Let us therefore do our utmost; don’t let us be so inhuman as to see men sick and not help them.”
Not only are we showing mercy by proclaiming the gospel to unbelievers, we are demonstrating mercy by helping believers see the glory of Christ. Life right now is filled with troubles. They are like waves in the ocean. No matter how hard you try, difficulties will keep coming. Escape one, here comes another. If we are going to help people find a lasting true solution to the problems in their lives we can't stop with simply helping them with their material needs. We have to help them see the glory of Christ.
It's seeing the glory of Christ that provides a comfort that cannot be taken away. Think about the apostle Paul. In 2 Corinthians 4 he writes, "We are afflicted in every way...perplexed...persecuted...struck down..." Those are very difficult circumstances. But how he was responding? He was afflicted but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed. How? "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."
If we are going to help suffering people experience true relief in the middle of affliction, if we are seeking to make their burdens light and enable them to endure trials with joy, we must help them learn to look to the things that are eternal, the most important of them being, the person of Jesus Christ. For, as John Owen once explained, "we behold the glory of God himself 'in the face of Jesus Christ.' He that can at all times retreat unto the contemplation of this glory, will be carried above the perplexing prevailing sense of any of these evils, of a confluence of them all."
Mercy ministry cannot be separated from a teaching ministry, because a teaching ministry is mercy ministry. If the way we are trying to help people with their problems right now is simply by doing things to help them with their problems right now, we are not even really helping them with their problems right now as much as we might hope. If we are not teaching them what's true, we are not seeking their highest good, we are not providing a solution for their most significant problem, and the solution we are providing will be far too superficial to even really help them with their current physical problems, long term.