Like the prophets and New Testament writers (e.g.
James 2:1–7), he accused God’s people of pandering to
the rich and cheating the poor out of their central place
in God’s kingdom. He viewed all of these as symptoms
of a grave illness, a departure from the Bible standard of
Christianity. The newly forming Free Methodist Church
was not unanimous in rejecting every injustice our founder
deplored, including the subjugation of women. B.T.
Roberts himself was a man of his own historical context,
so he may not have seen the far-reaching possibilities of
racial equality, but he championed the “one-bloodism of
the New Testament” and took as a central text Galatians
3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor
free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in
Christ Jesus.” Under his leadership, our movement began
as a community of earnest Christians with an ideal of
oneness and an outsize outward reach.
Protection + Purpose
Jesus’ petition for His disciples in all historical contexts
is that God would not take us out of the world but would
protect us from the evil one. He taught us to pray this
for ourselves in the Lord’s Prayer, “And lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew
6:13). He understands what we sometimes fail to
comprehend, that we are engaged in a battle against evil
forces from which we need God’s protection. We may try
to protect ourselves by avoiding conflict and shying away
from costly involvement in kingdom causes, but that is not
Jesus’ intention. Self-protective risk avoidance only lulls us
into a different form of danger, the self-centered and self-absorbed
life, which is not discipleship at all. He asks the
Father not to take us out of the world, but to shield us while
we redemptively engage in it. Jesus’ followers are on His
mission together, and this mission is mightily opposed.
pg. 8 — lightandlifemagazine.com
In His prayer, Jesus also asks the Father to sanctify Jesus’
followers by the truth and declares, “Your word is truth”
(John 17:17). Part of the meaning of sanctification is to be
set apart for a higher purpose. The truth of God’s Word,
when we abide in it and allow it to transform our minds,
compels us upward to kingdom priorities and kingdom
values. Our lives are no longer our own. As God’s Spirit
gains control of our lives, this prayer constantly emanates
from the core of our being, “Your kingdom come; your
will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).
We want God’s will, in our own lives and in our world.
Wherever injustice assaults people whom God has made
in His image, we long for change and work for it. Sanctified
believers live by the Spirit and walk in the Spirit. God’s
compelling truth is their aim and their path.
Kingdom Manifesto
What about us? Our movement is 160 years old. The
temptation to conform to the world has never left us. Each
generation has shifted focus and redefined what it means
to be sanctified or perhaps lost sight of it altogether. For a
while, we got caught in the trap of legalism, listing sinful
practices for each individual to avoid, creating a checklist
mentality that can never result in true heart holiness. We
have drifted at times, blown by the winds of controversy in
the church and the nation. In every cultural context, the
world’s seduction takes a different form. Yet all followers
of Jesus must live in the tension of being “in the world but
not of it.”
How do we discern the truth of God’s Word for our own
time? Perhaps the tumultuous events of 2020 have roused
us from a kind of slumber. Someone called the first month
of the COVID-19 pandemic a “shot across the bow of
cultural Christianity.” If we have formed our entire identity
around the quality of our Sunday gatherings in beautiful
high-tech sanctuaries, for at least a few months we lost
our reason for being. Yet after an initial cry of desperation,
many of our pastors and churches have discovered a new
passion to serve the world in its brokenness, to share our
food with the hungry, to clothe the naked and bind up the
brokenhearted.
Leaving our buildings has in some cases sent us into
the world with new eyes and common cause with our
communities. Will we press on once we re-enter our
worship spaces? Will we follow Jesus’ mission to “proclaim
good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners and
recovery of sight for the blind”? Will we finally begin to
“God would not
take us out of
the world but
would protect
us from the evil
one.”
/lightandlifemagazine.com