Calling the Church of Christ back to humility, integrity and simplicity (2)

Today’s reading is Part II, E. 3-4.

Read here.

Walk in humility, rejecting the idolatry of power

In our fallenness and sin, power is often exercised to abuse and exploit others. We exalt ourselves, claiming superiority of gender, race, or social status. Paul counters all these marks of the idolatry of pride and power with his requirement that those who are filled by God’s Spirit should submit to one another for Christ’s sake. Such mutual submission and reciprocal love is to be expressed in marriage, family, and socio-economic relations.

We long to see all Christian husbands and wives, parents and children, employers and employees, living out the Bible’s teaching about ‘submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ’.

We encourage pastors to help believers understand, honestly discuss, and practise the mutual submission that God requires of his children towards one another. In a world of greed, power and abuse, God is calling his Church to be the place of gentle humility and selfless love among its members.

We particularly and urgently call Christian husbands to observe the balance of responsibilities in Paul’s teaching about husbands and wives. Mutual submission means that a wife’s submission to her husband is to a man whose love and care for her is modelled on the self-sacrificing love of Jesus Christ for his Church. Any form of abuse of one’s wife – verbal, emotional or physical – is incompatible with the love of Christ, in every culture. We deny that any cultural custom or distorted biblical interpretation can justify the beating of a wife. We grieve that it is found among professing Christians, including pastors and leaders. We have no hesitation in denouncing it as a sin, and call for repentance and renunciation of it as a practice.

Walk in integrity, rejecting the idolatry of success

We cannot build the kingdom of the God of truth on foundations of dishonesty. Yet in our craving for ‘success’ and ‘results’ we are tempted to sacrifice our integrity, with distorted or exaggerated claims that amount to lies. Walking in the light, however, ‘consists in …righteousness and truth’.

We call on all church and mission leaders to resist the temptation to be less than totally truthful in presenting our work. We are dishonest when we exaggerate our reports with unsubstantiated statistics, or twist the truth for the sake of gain. We pray for a cleansing wave of honesty and the end of such distortion, manipulation and exaggeration. We call on all who fund spiritual work not to make unrealistic demands for measurable and visible results, beyond the need for proper accountability. Let us strive for a culture of full integrity and transparency. We will choose to walk in the light and truth of God, for the Lord tests the heart and is pleased with integrity.

Closing Prayer:

Lord, grant us humble hearts to forsake power, steadfast integrity to reject success as our idol, and simplicity that resists greed. May we walk daily in these virtues, reflecting your light and truth. Renew our lives, O God, that our distinctiveness may glorify you above all. Amen.