Help and Hope in a Divided WorldSample

The Good News of Both

The early Christians have a lot to teach us about how the Gospel is not just Good News for our souls but for the world. Despite the rampant persecution they experienced at the hands of the Roman Empire, Christianity grew into a world-shifting movement.

Christianity was a dangerous affront to ruling powers not because of its doctrines or religious lists of do’s and don’ts. It was because following Christ compelled one to live in a completely counter-cultural and disruptive way. The Gospel was Good News for the hungry and the sick, the lonely and the desperate.

While most of us—especially in America—aren’t attempting to share the Gospel under pain of death, we are still living through some crazy times. Poverty, war, greed, polarization, hatred, disease, hopelessness, and in recent years, a global pandemic. If you’re paying any kind of attention, it’s impossible not to know what’s happening.

We hear it on the news. We see it on our screens. We feel it all around us. We’re all thinking: None of this is normal. This is not how things ought to be.

But I believe it is precisely in these times that we need to be reminded that a truer vision of the world has already been given to us. “The Kingdom of Heaven has come near.” It isn’t some distant dream. It’s here. It’s now. And it is already at work restoring every part of the world to God’s original idea of wholeness. The desperate places. The persecuted places. The places that are in dire need of Good News.

The world is full of people made in the image of God who have hopes and dreams, just like you and I. Refugee parents from Ukraine and Afghanistan who dream of a life beyond war for their children. Children starving from food shortages and malnutrition in Latin America. Families in India and Nepal and Uganda torn apart by poverty, disease, and despair.

If the Gospel isn’t Good News for them, it isn’t Good News at all.

The Gospel must be Good News for the world.

Matthew 11:4-6 (NIV)

“Jesus replied, ‘Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.’”