Repentance and Mission

"But you must return to your God, by maintaining love and justice, and by waiting for your God to return to you." Hosea 12:6

Reading through the Minor Prophets, I find it impossible to conceive of any type of compartmentalized faith that would be okay with God.

Consistently, God's prophets point out the relational and moral failures of His people, linking those sins with their idolatrous practices. What's fascinating to me is that God doesn't just call them to lay down their idols and resume the religious practices He established in Leviticus. Instead, He calls them to return to Him and let their actions demonstrate heartfelt repentance. Put in modern terms, He didn't want a dynamic Sunday morning worship experience. He wanted their entire lives.

"Love and justice" - that was the fruit of the repentance God was calling Israel to pursue. Though Israel claimed innocence, God charged them with cheating businessmen and dishonest scales. Amos addressed the oppression of the poor and needy (Amos 2:6-8; 4:1). As God's covenant people, Israel had been blessed to be a blessing. Israel was supposed to be a witness to the surrounding nations - a glimpse of the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. Their failures of love and justice hindered that mission, making Israel look like the surrounding nations, or worse.

It seems to me that the message for the church today is obvious. As the people of God, Jesus said we should be known for our love. Paul exhorted the Galatians to bear each other's burdens and meet each other's needs. And we shouldn't stop there - Jesus spoke of the great white throne judgment where true and false believers would be separated not by what they claimed to believe or what rituals they followed, but by their response to the needs confronting them throughout life.

Don't misunderstand -- this isn't salvation by works, or minimizing the importance of sound doctrine or the person of Jesus. Through following Jesus we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to live the life God wants us to live based on His sacrifice. Observing Him in the Gospels we see what that life should look like, and sound doctrine throughout the centuries has taught Christians the priority of love. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone. But none less than the reformer himself, Martin Luther, wrote, "Faith alone saves us, but the faith that saves is never alone" -- meaning, as James wrote, "Faith without works is dead".

The purpose of this blog is to encourage missionaries and all those who desire to be on mission with God wherever you are, whatever your season of life. The witness of Scripture - and the reminder from the Minor Prophets - is that we can't be passionate about missions without returning to the basics. Love and justice.  Passing on our blessings. And ultimately, God's heart flowing through us to a world desperately in need of Him.