Health care in the New Testament church

Spending time in a hospital this week has provided some lessons regarding life as the church of Jesus.

We received word Sunday evening Linda's mother had suffered a heart attack, and we headed out Monday morning by car for Arkansas. Since arriving Tuesday afternoon, much of our time has been spent in the hospital with this woman whom we love.

This time has offered not only the opportunity to visit with her, as well as family and friends who have come to see her, but to interact with a litany of health-care workers. Multiple doctors, nurses and aides have entered her room -- and our lives -- as they seek to serve her and to help her recover. God has blessed us with the opportunity to engage with them and to visit at length with some.

Their care for our loved one has reminded me of what life is like in the body of Christ.

Just as these professionals seek to help those who are ailing physically, those who belong to the true church endeavor to help those who are sick spiritually. We seek to provide the remedy everyone needs -- the gospel of Jesus. We seek to come alongside others in the church and help them by direct or indirect means to diagnose why they are unhealthy. We seek to provide others with doses of truth and grace to gain healing and to recover from the infirmities of sin.

At least one difference exists in the analogy. Those of us who are doing spiritual health-care work in the church are patients at the same time.

All of us need our fellow saints in the church to help us become or remain spiritually healthy. We need others to provide spiritual health care to us, and they need us to offer the same kind of spiritual health care to them.

Jesus said in Mark 2:17, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

He is indeed the Great Physician, but we -- the sick who have been healed eternally -- are spiritual health-care providers on His behalf and in His power. We need to extend and receive this care in our lives together.

-- Photo by Alex wong on Unsplash

A season for lament

Lament is good. Sometimes, lament is necessary.

I am thankful lament to God is a biblical virtue, because I am living with it right now. In some ways, it is a season for ongoing lament.

Many reasons for lament exist regarding realities outside the church -- the proliferation of evil in multiple forms, the desecration of the image of God in human beings at various stages of life, the distortion of God's design for marriage and sexuality, the corrosiveness of public discourse, as well as the suffering and lostness of loved ones.

But there are reasons also for lament based on what is happening within the church. And those are especially my basis for lament at this time. Last night, a sadness enveloped me after I read news reports and social media posts from those outside our fellowship that reflected the attitudes of some conservative Christians.

For me, here are some reasons for lament regarding the wider evangelical and Reformed church:

-- The racial insensitivity, maybe racism, of some who appear unwilling to listen to the viewpoints and experiences of brothers and sisters of different ethnicities and skin colors.

-- The mind-set of some who seem to believe a woman's value is based solely on her roles as a wife and mother. (This has nothing to do with female preachers or elders, notions I believe to be unbiblical.)

-- The caustic, prideful rhetoric of some who apparently would rather conquer fellow Christians than communicate with them lovingly as evidence of the power of the gospel.

And that is not to mention such causes for lament as the departure from Christian doctrine and the failure to keep marriage vows that mark some in the church.

I invite you to lament with me. It is biblical, as numerous psalms testify. And it speaks to important truths about the One we worship. Former professor and now pastor David Gundersen put it this way: "[L]amenting to God implies belief in his listening ear, his fatherly care, and his sovereign power."

Let's lament our sins and the sins of others, and let's place our hope in the God who transforms hearts and minds.

-- Photo by Ian Espinosa on Unsplash