Showing the Love of Jesus

Warning: Stick-in-the-mud alert.

Ed Stetzer has an interview with Geoff Surratt of Seacoast Church. Geoff talks about ministry and says,

At one of our Seacoast locations we go out into the very tough neighborhood once a month to be a blessing to people who have very little in life. We take them clothes, food, work in their yards, pick up their trash, anything that will show the love of Jesus in a tangible way. … we're all just trying to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

This should raise for us several questions about the nature of gospel ministry.

First, where does the Bible equate these kinds of things with showing the love of Jesus in a tangible way? It doesn’t. The tangible love of Jesus was shown by a  bleeding and broken body, not a bag of yard waste at the end of the driveway.

Second, how is this distinctively the love of Jesus? This kinds of acts go on everyday by people who have no intention of showing the love of Jesus.

Third, where did we get the idea that the “hands and feet of Jesus” came into this world to do things like pick up trash and do yard work? When Jesus came into the world, it wasn’t “once a month to do things in a needy community.” It was for three years to live the life we should have lived and die the death we should have died.

Here’s my view: All of these are good things to do. They are things that Christians should do. They are things that might open up the door to a proclamation of the gospel to other people.

But they are not gospel ministry showing the love of Jesus. This is common grace activity that recognizes the value of the image of God in man.

I think we are too readily searching for feel-goodism that leads us to think that if we go once a month into a needy neighborhood to do kind things for people we have somehow shown the love of Jesus. We have confused the ministry of the proclamation of the gospel with things that have nothing to do with the gospel. And people think they are showing the love of Jesus even though no one was talked to about our Creator, our sin, the coming judgment, and the rescue in Christ alone.

If going there once a month is good, then just move there, start a church there, and show the love of Jesus by preaching the gospel of salvation from sin. Help them do yard work, give them clothes, and food. Sit on their porches and talk to them. Cry with them when they lose their job (or can’t find one). Weep when they have family trouble. But don’t mistake that for the gospel. And don’t lead people to believe that they have done gospel ministry by leaving their middle class neighborhood for a few hours one Saturday a month to help people in a poor community.

The gospel deserves more and so does the community.